If you don’t want to splash out £200,000 for one of the world’s first lab-grown burgers – taste tested in London recently – there are plenty of cheaper alternatives.

Like eight burger patties for £1, which you can find in most supermarkets.

And after the horsemeat scandal they may actually be beef . . . although who knows what bits.

Is it worth paying more?

We got Tom Silberberg – a hungry 18-year-old – to try a variety of burgers from Oxford supermarkets. We aimed at buying the most expensive chilled and the cheapest frozen patties at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Iceland, except Iceland didn’t have chilled and M&S didn’t have frozen. Here’s how he rated them in a blind test: “The £1 burgers tasted pretty much the same but I thought the Iceland one came out on top, followed by Sainsbury’s and then Tesco. There wasn’t much to chose between them and it would just be a matter of personal taste. None of them would be too bad in a bun with salad and ketchup but they’re not as good as fresh ones.”

On looking at the small print the Iceland British beef burgers contained 79 per cent beef; Sainsbury’s Basics 62 per cent beef and Tesco Everyday Value 63 per cent beef. All packs weighed 397g.

On to the chilled burgers and Tom picked M&S’s The Grill Ultimate Steak Burgers (£5 for a pack of two, 340g, 95 per cent beef) “nice and juicy with a natural flavour” as his favourite. That was followed by Sainsbury’s Ultimate Steak Burgers (£3.29 for a pack of two, 340g, 93 per cent beef) for it’s “good texture and seasoning” followed by Tesco Finest British Steak Beef Burgers (£3.75 for four, 454g, 94 per cent beef) which was deemed to be “a bit grisly”.

So no big surprises, it seems you get what you pay for.

And despite the criticisms – our tester polished them all off.