Understanding the perception of edible insects

Abstract

PurposeEdible insects are increasingly recognized as great food resources of the future. Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects, has a predicted market by 2030 of nearly $8 billion. But this market could grow even more with the acceptance of insects as food by Western consumers, as an alternative to conventional protein sources. In this context, the authors aim to collect and analyze information about consumers' perception of insects as food in Brazil, through the word association task.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 751 participants agreed to complete the word association task in relation to entomophagy through an online questionnaire. They had to write down the first five words or terms that came to their minds when they thought of eating insects.FindingsIndividual mentions were categorized according to their similarities and/or proximity. Based on this grouping the authors identified six dimensions, with emphasis on “hedonic attitudes and feelings”, “cultural aspects” and “exotic”. The study concludes that Brazilians see insect consumption as belonging to another culture, not Western.Originality/valueFew studies have explored the association of words in relation to entomophagy, especially in Brazil. This article aims to fill this gap, using this methodology applied to the Brazilian public.

What motivates consumers to accept whole and processed mealworms in their diets? A five-country study

“…Across countries, "dislike " and "aversion " -as mild and strong forms of disgust, respectively -were the main reasons to reject whole and processed mealworms in the diet. This is in line with other studies performed in different countries across the globe, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the US, and Brazil, where disgust was found to be the main barrier to insect consumption ( Cunha et al, 2022 ;Orsi et al, 2019 ;Tuccillo et al, 2020 ;Van Thielen et al, 2019 ;Woolf et al, 2019 ). The emotion of disgust is linked to the idea of increased health risks provoked by insects as disease vectors ( Looy et al, 2014 ).…”

“…All textual analyses were carried out in the original languages (i.e., French and Dutch in Belgium, Italian in Italy, Spanish in Mexico, Chinese in China, and English in the United States). First, a lemmatization process ( Cunha et al, 2022 ), performed by native speakers in each country, was conducted in the original language to reduce terms to their simplest form (e.g., "disguise insects " and "not noticeable insects " can both become "invisible insects "). Moreover, when researchers could not define whether some similar words had the same meaning (e.g., "good " and "looks good "), both categories (e.g., personal approval and appealing, respectively) were created.…”

“…So far, few studies employed open questions, where participants are asked to answer spontaneously (unbiased) in their own words ( Piqueras-Fiszman, 2015 ). For instance, one recent study by Cunha et al (2022) , conducted in Brazil, found that "disgust " was the most mentioned word to indicate an aversion toward eating insects. Another study, which also took place in Brazil ( Bisconsin-Júnior et al, 2022) included open-ended questions and confirmed that "disgust " was the central core of the social representation of food made with edible insects.…”

“Eating with Your Eyes First”: Cross-Cultural Evaluation of Visual Expectations Generated by High-End Pastry

“…The use of free word association methodology has been increasingly used in crosscultural studies in order to assess the perception of consumers from different countries and cultures, such as the concepts of well-being [11,12], "feeling good" [13], and traditional food [7] and regarding specific food products like meat [14], or insects [15].…”

Nuevas herramientas para la valoración del impacto visual sobre la percepción sensorial y emocional de productos de "Alta Pastelería"

“…En las últimas décadas uso muy difundido, lo que posiblemente se deba a la facilidad de aplicación en comparación con otras técnicas. Ares & Deliza, 2010 b;Avilés et al, 2020;Banović et al, 2016;Cardoso et al, 2023;Cunha et al, 2023;da Fonseca et al, 2023;Mitterer-Daltoé, Carrillo, Queiroz, Fiszman, & Varela, 2013;Molina-Castillo et al, 2023;Ryder, Jaworska, S., & Grasso, 2023;Sánchez-Vega et al, 2023;Viana, dos Santos Silva, & Trindade, 2014).Otra técnica de asociación empleada es la personificación, donde se debe identificar un producto o marca a un perfil de persona (Gambaro et al, 2019).…”