“Ugh! That's disgusting!”: Identification of the characteristics of foods underlying rejections based on disgust

The psychology of eating insects: A cross-cultural comparison between Germany and China

“…The vision of an entire cricket, with its extraordinarily big legs, in someone's mouth, or a silkworm with its slimy surface, might elicit fear and disgust in consumers. Next to reminders of animalness, perceived mouth feeling and aversive textural properties are the most important characteristics that lead to food being rejected based on disgust (Martins & Pliner, 2006). Therefore, there is reason to believe that people would be more willing to eat products made with processed insects because the origin and disgusting attributes are less prominent.…”

The influence of preparation method on children’s liking for vegetables

“…Humans are predisposed to learn to like high-energy foods through flavour-nutrient learning (Birch, McPhee, Steinberg, & Sullivan, 1990;Kern, McPhee, Fisher, Johnson, & Birch, 1993), but this is less likely to occur with plain vegetables. Another sensory attribute that seems relevant for vegetable liking is texture, which can be an important reason for enjoying and accepting foods, or for rejecting foods (Baxter et al, 1998;Guinard & Mazzucchelli, 1996;Koivisto & Sjoden, 1996;Martins & Pliner, 2006;Szczesniak, 1972).…”

Mating strategy, disgust, and food neophobia

“…The limited data adduced in support of this connection have been indirect or unpublished (e.g., Pliner & Salvy, 2006), based on questionable measures (e.g., Björklund & Hursti, 2004;Nordin et al, 2004), or exclusively focused on single items and specific foods rather than trait-level disgust (e.g., Martins & Pliner, 2006). The findings reported here therefore provide the first direct, sound empirical demonstration of a link between disgust and food neophobia.…”

“…Indeed, several researchers have proposed a link between disgust and food neophobia (e.g. Martins & Pliner, 2006;Nordin, Broman, Garvill, & Nyroos, 2004;Pliner & Pelchat, 1991;Pliner & Salvy, 2006). Surprisingly, however, few studies on food neophobia have actually measured its relationship to disgust, and none has directly investigated the hypothesis that individual differences in disgust are associated with individual differences in food neophobia.…”