The Bunbury backyard guide to eating everyday garden snails

And while putting garden snails on a "strict diet" before gulping them down seems as crazy as actually dining out on the slimy gastropods - this Bunbury woman has been doing exactly that.

"When I was back in England we had a long garden and we would go foraging for wild berries, mushrooms and snails," she said.

"There used to be a show about foraging and they would show how to eat things like squirrels and snails.

"I ate snails a number of times and I've done it about four or five times since moving here."

"The best part is I can get them from my garden and they are free."

Preparing the snails gives a new meaning to the term slow cooking, as putting the escargot on the plate is time-consuming.

Ms Hatherall-Ward puts the snails on a diet of lettuce and carrots and whatever vegetable she feels like for five days, then "starves" them for two days to purge the molluscs of any harmful toxins.

She then cooks them up in a variety of spices and sometimes throws in a bit of butter, garlic and chilli.

And the taste?

"Well, they don't really taste like anything, other then what you add to them or cook them in," she said.

"My son found them disgusting."

Ms Hatherall-Ward said the common garden variety snail is no different from the slimy creatures the French eat by the tonne.

And she hasn't been sick once from munching down on the molluscs.

"There is a disease, I don't know the proper Latin name for it, but I've had food poisoning twice from buying food from the supermarket," she said.

"My friends think it's a bit weird, but it's no different from eating shellfish, which are bottom feeders."

Perth- based nutritionist and dietician Julie Meek said she wouldn't recommend people just plucking the snails from their gardens.

"They can consume a lot of pesticides and poisons from the garden," she said.

"And even if you purge them, the meat – I know it's odd calling it meat but it is – can still contain some pesticides.

"But they are a protein source."