Investigating social and educational interventions to reduce the disgust response to ingestion of insects and cultured meat
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Experimental Psychology
Abstract
Food-related emotions are understudied in psychology, especially the emotion of disgust which underpins food rejection. This project aims to introduce novel measures of food-related disgust and use them to investigate the effectiveness of social and educational interventions to increase consumption of novel insect-containing food and cultured meat. The context for this is the need to reduce demand for 'conventional meat' due to its contribution to climate change.
The studies included in this project will be based on a research design with certain common aspects. First, there will be conditions in which participants are invited to taste and consume food they believe contains insects or cultured meat.
Second, the disgust response will be measured in anticipation of, and during, food consumption. These measures will include liking and desire to eat judgements, amount of food consumed and implicit measures such as tactile sensitivity. Previous research has almost exclusively measured self-reported attitudes or acceptance of food which do not always reflect actual behaviour.
Third, studies will investigate the effectiveness of both educational and social interventions in overcoming disgust. Arguably, as disgust is a 'basic emotion' which leads to deep-rooted, visceral responses, top-down approaches based on rationality can be expected to have limited impact. Social interventions that appeal on an innate, deep-rooted level may, however, be more effective.
Unilever are developing insect-containing food products and have conducted preliminary research into this topic. They have extended an invitation for a 3-6 month placement within their R&D centre in the Netherlands under the supervision of Professor Lisbeth Zandstra. Zandstra and her colleagues have recently used EEG to investigate neurophysiological responses during cooking of insect-containing dishes. As well as collaboration on specific methods this placement will offer the opportunity to gain an understanding of the objectives, impact and constraints of research conducted in a commercial setting.
An academic collaboration has been arranged with the LEAP project at the University of Oxford. There is an opportunity to use their simulated online supermarket to test the effect of messages (interventions) on decision making in a close to real-life context, rather than lab setting.
Food and disgust research interests and excites people. At least one public engagement event a year is planned. For example, Cargo Cantina, a local Bristol restaurant, are enthusiastic to work on public engagement and potentially extend the collaboration to use their facilities to implement studies.
Based on the research design and these collaborations the study plan is:
Studies 1&2 (months 0-8). Explore the usefulness of the five novel implicit measures of disgust (listed previously).
Studies 3&4 (months 8-17). Study 3 will make use of LEAP's online supermarket to test the effect of educational labels on food purchasing choices.
Study 5 (months 17-20/23). Unilever placement. Here the aim will be to develop and implement interventions based on Unilever's knowledge and current understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviour towards meat alternatives replacing conventional products.
Study 6 (months 20/23-31). Based on the findings accumulated over the research degree this study will assess the longevity of the disgust reduction resulting from interventions by including follow-up assessments.
Write-up (months 31-36).
Academic impact will lie in insight for emotion researchers to understand food-related emotions, specifically disgust, and how to reliably measure it. Societal impact will come from the creation of evidence-based interventions to increase acceptance of novel, more sustainable protein sources.
The studies included in this project will be based on a research design with certain common aspects. First, there will be conditions in which participants are invited to taste and consume food they believe contains insects or cultured meat.
Second, the disgust response will be measured in anticipation of, and during, food consumption. These measures will include liking and desire to eat judgements, amount of food consumed and implicit measures such as tactile sensitivity. Previous research has almost exclusively measured self-reported attitudes or acceptance of food which do not always reflect actual behaviour.
Third, studies will investigate the effectiveness of both educational and social interventions in overcoming disgust. Arguably, as disgust is a 'basic emotion' which leads to deep-rooted, visceral responses, top-down approaches based on rationality can be expected to have limited impact. Social interventions that appeal on an innate, deep-rooted level may, however, be more effective.
Unilever are developing insect-containing food products and have conducted preliminary research into this topic. They have extended an invitation for a 3-6 month placement within their R&D centre in the Netherlands under the supervision of Professor Lisbeth Zandstra. Zandstra and her colleagues have recently used EEG to investigate neurophysiological responses during cooking of insect-containing dishes. As well as collaboration on specific methods this placement will offer the opportunity to gain an understanding of the objectives, impact and constraints of research conducted in a commercial setting.
An academic collaboration has been arranged with the LEAP project at the University of Oxford. There is an opportunity to use their simulated online supermarket to test the effect of messages (interventions) on decision making in a close to real-life context, rather than lab setting.
Food and disgust research interests and excites people. At least one public engagement event a year is planned. For example, Cargo Cantina, a local Bristol restaurant, are enthusiastic to work on public engagement and potentially extend the collaboration to use their facilities to implement studies.
Based on the research design and these collaborations the study plan is:
Studies 1&2 (months 0-8). Explore the usefulness of the five novel implicit measures of disgust (listed previously).
Studies 3&4 (months 8-17). Study 3 will make use of LEAP's online supermarket to test the effect of educational labels on food purchasing choices.
Study 5 (months 17-20/23). Unilever placement. Here the aim will be to develop and implement interventions based on Unilever's knowledge and current understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviour towards meat alternatives replacing conventional products.
Study 6 (months 20/23-31). Based on the findings accumulated over the research degree this study will assess the longevity of the disgust reduction resulting from interventions by including follow-up assessments.
Write-up (months 31-36).
Academic impact will lie in insight for emotion researchers to understand food-related emotions, specifically disgust, and how to reliably measure it. Societal impact will come from the creation of evidence-based interventions to increase acceptance of novel, more sustainable protein sources.
Organisations
| Description | To date, the work funded by this award has provided knowledge on improving research methods in the field of food-disgust and has provided potential new insights into food-disgust theory. First, it has shown how best to implement widely used appetite rating scales (taste pleasantness and desire to eat) and food-disgust scales in food-disgust research. It was hypothesised that making disgust ratings could prime negative emotion and lead to reduced ratings on taste pleasantness and desire to eat scales compared to when food-disgust ratings are not made. It was found that conventional appetite scales are appropriate for use alongside food-disgust measures and do not need to be adapted for use in food-disgust studies. Second, methods to implicitly measure food-disgust have been developed. Methods such as latency to eat (the time gap between being instructed to eat and consuming a food) and tactile sensitivity have emerged as useful implicit methods to measure food-disgust. Implicit methods that are less useful when measuring food-disgust have also been identified. For example, facial expression categorisation tasks (two-option forced choice task where participants choose if ambiguous faces are displaying happiness or disgust; their responses can be indicative of the emotion they themselves are feeling) and heart rate variability (measured by wearable heart rate devices). The work has also involved testing an important theory of food disgust which states that disgust is experienced when ideation (knowledge about a food) causes distaste (perception of negative sensory properties of a food). The results of this work suggest that ideation (in the form of food labels) can cause taste perception to be slightly altered. The findings of this work raise further research questions surrounding the role of 'wanting', a component of appetite, in food-disgust. |
| Exploitation Route | Outside of academia, the outcomes relating to methods of implicitly measure food-disgust could be implemented in studies conducted within research and development centers for food manufacturing companies. Food-disgust is induced in response to certain foods such as insects and cultured meat. These foods have the advantages of being highly nutritious and animal-based, but far more sustainably produced than conventional meat. Companies with an interest in developing environmentally friendly animal food products may wish to develop products incorporating insects or cultured meat. They will therefore need to understand how to reduce the food-disgust response towards these foods. By measuring food-disgust in the ways outlined in the outcomes of this award, studies can determine the relative successfulness of different approaches to reduce food-disgust. Further to this, if all the objectives of my award are met by the end of it, methods to overcome food-disgust towards these foods may have been developed and could be directly used by these companies when marketing such products. The outcomes relating to food-disgust theory could be taken forward in an academic setting to progress knowledge in this area. Finally, outcomes relating to the implementation of disgust measures in appetite studies can be used in future food-disgust research projects. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |