Ella could not believe her luck. Here she was, celebrating her birthday at 2031's Restaurant of the Year. And how amazing the menu looked! There was carpaccioThinly sliced raw food. of caterpillar, bluebottle pate, woodlouse tempuraA Japanese dish which involves deep frying in batter.. What on earth should she choose? "I recommend today's special," said the waiter.  "RagoutA French word for stew. of locust with a garnish of fresh larvaeInsects in the next stage of development after they have emerged from eggs. A caterpillar is a larva.." "I'll have that," said Ella. "Yum!"  

This scene is not as far from reality as it might seem. Insect protein is already being used in dog food, with production forecast to reach 500,000 tonnes a year by 2030. And an Israeli firm has started making jellied sweets with protein from locusts, a type of grasshopper.

"Grasshoppers taste like pecans, mushrooms, coffee and chocolate," says the company's head, Dror Tamir. "But with our range of food we can add in different flavours. The gummies come in orange and strawberry."

There is a long tradition of eating insects in the Middle East. In the Bible, John the Baptist survives in the desert by eating locusts and wild honey.

Dror Tamir became fascinated by his grandmother's tales of people feasting on locusts which attacked their crops: "While most kibbutz members ran to the fields to scare the grasshoppers away, the Yemenite and Moroccan Jewish members collected tons of them to eat." As well as sweets, he plans to produce burgers, falafel and energy bars.

Humans need protein, but at present get it mainly from food such as meat whose production is damaging to the planet. According to Professor Robin May of Britain's Food Standards Agency, insects offer a solution:

"Some insect proteins, such as ground crickets or freeze-dried mealworms, are cheap, easy to farm, low fat and have a lower environmental impact than meat. And sometimes they may even provide a valuable 'recycling' service, by consuming waste products as their primary feedstuff, so the potential advantages to society are significant."

It was this idea, together with the problem of the world's growing population, that inspired Dean Smorenberg to start a fly farm in South Africa: "You've got a food shortage, and people who are starving, and then you've got a waste problem at the same time. So I started looking at how we can rebalance that."

He began by cultivating black soldier flies in his bathroom. Today he produces over 10 tonnes of protein-rich feed a month, made from fly larvae fed on waste grains from a local brewery.

In Europe, insect production is still in its infancy, but Continental food companies have been encouraged by a ruling from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that frozen and dried migratory locusts can be eaten by humans.

British firms, however, are in limbo after Brexit, which has left the rules for them unclear. And some anxieties remain about allergies and reactions that consumers might develop.

"We're just not quite there yet," says food scientist Dr Leah Bessa. "Dogs are a lot easier to feed insects to than humans at this point."

Yes: Farming locusts rather than beef would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99%, while using 1,000 times less water and 1,500 times less land.

No: We should respect our fellow creatures, regardless of their size. Eating insects is no more acceptable than eating sheep or cattle, and would just be one more way of exploiting the planet.

Or... Insects could be part of the answer to a much wider problem. The world's population is forecast to increase by 2.1 billion by 2050. But we should also consider other ways to solve the problem - working to bring down population growth or encouraging more sustainable farming practices for example.