Acceptance of entomophagy among Canadians at an insectarium | Hacker News Reader

Acceptance of entomophagy among Canadians at an insectarium

nature.com

15 pointsPaulHoule17 comments

> Participants completed a structured questionnaire evaluating willingness to consume various insect-based foods, motivations and barriers, and demographic predictors of acceptance.

Neat, I guess, but I really expected this study to actually offer people insects to eat.

A "yes" on a questionnaire feels about as relevant and actionable as a "maybe" on an event invite.

This kind of stuff faces the same problems as vegetable-based meat replacement products. While traditional vegetarian dishes like various bean dishes, Indian curries, salads, etc. can be quite healthy and require minimal processing, meat substitute products like Beyond Meat are heavily processed. This means they're often not that healthy (containing a lot of salt and added fat) despite being technically vegan while also being expensive and requiring energy-intensive industrial food processing.

Based on the findings here:

> These emotional reactions were particularly prominent for unprocessed or visually apparent insect formats, reinforcing the view that entomophagy challenges deeply anchored cultural expectations about what constitutes acceptable food. Given this barrier, product formats that conceal or process insects can reduce sensory aversion and facilitate initial acceptance.

Any kind of "insect food" is likely to go the same way resulting in heavily processed products with added sugar, salt, and fat to make them palatable. Even then it's a really tough sell given all the "live in the pod, eat the bug" memes out there.

Finally, I struggle to see how insects would be a more economical source of protein than beans or processed foods derived from beans like Beyond Meat and various soy products.

It's not even more economical than raising chickens. Just because raising relatively small batches of crickets uses less water per unit of protein (which isn't even necessarily a problem) doesn't mean that it's manageable at scale.

Moreover, as you said, bugs have to taste good for people to want to eat them. I was into entomophagy way before it became this sort of thing in the 2020s. As much as I appreciate it from a curiosity standpoint, the truth is most bugs don't taste very good. I think there's maybe one insect that I thought was truly worth eating again (sphinx moth caterpillars). Supposedly bee drone larvae taste good but I've not had them. Neither of those can be scaled for mass food production. The rest of the bugs I've had either taste extremely earthy or like nothing.

Civilization should just scale with how much food it can produce. The idea that food production should infinitely scale with civilization is backwards.

A civilization increasing food production to feed itself is civilization scaling with food production. There is no extrinsic food production with which civilization can scale. All food production is intrinsic to the civilization.

All food must be produced by the civilization, either by gathering or farming or any other means.

What I don’t understand is why not push bug based foods on people who already eat bugs?

Why push it on a population that hasn’t traditionally had overtly bug based diets?

Populations that are used to some bugs would definitely be more receptive to having a heavier bug based diet.

Lobster and crab are both just as much a bug as a tarantula is, so the same reason that the seafood industry pushed lobster and crab into mainstream acceptance: profit.

They were more or less remarketed as a luxury, though. Historically (at least in the US), lobster and crab were considered low class foods, if not outright fertilizer for crops. Some terrestrial bug could theoretically be given the same sort of luxury status, but lobsters have the advantage of actually tasting good. The best candidates would be snails and bee drone larvae. But what would be the point? Neither could be farmed at such a scale that they could be made food staples that are also better for the environment.

Sure. But… why not push these foods on a population that is currently used to eating some bugs rather than one that only accidentally or unknowingly ingest them? Like there are areas of the world where insects are a thing. And the US isn’t one of them.

When I looked at this a decade ago, I concluded that if bugs can't get popular as a source of protein powder, they aren't getting popular in the US and Canada. Since then, not a single gym rat I've mentioned this to has liked my concept product, Pretty Fly for a White Powder.

Coincidentally, that's where I ate my first insects as a kid. I was fond of the chocolate covered grasshoppers. The museum also had an impressive butterfly collection.

no discussion about how the authors controlled for respondents from non-western backgrounds

how can we know, for example, that the higher acceptance from those with more postgraduate education is simply that they're just migrants from nonwestern societies

flawed study

I always found it funny that even though many people are reluctant to eat insects themselves, they have no problem with eating insect vomit (aka honey). I suspect that getting people to eat more insects is just a matter of marketing; after all, the "best", most expensive coffee in the world is made of out civet poop.

It's easy: bugs look icky. I wouldn't eat them. Grind them up out of sight and use them as an ingredient? Suddenly I'm fine with it.

I've purposely eaten insects while traveling. for me it is hard to get over the fact that they are not 'cleaned' - you eat everything in their digestive tracts. I intellectually understand that is safe, but my conditioning makes it hard to handle. taste and texture can be challenging once you get past grasshoppers and ants (for my palate of course).

Nice try, but no: honey is not 'insect vomit.'

Honey isn’t actually created or stored in the bee’s stomach. It is excreted through the mouth of the bee: but it is not 'vomit' since it does not empty from the bee's primary digestive stomach, but a separate, dedicated, pleated expandable pouch or crop.

Good work, bees.

https://theholyhabibee.com/honey-bee-stomach

Fine, it's not bee vomit, it's bee spit, but that doesn't really change my point.

Let the politicians lead by example. As for "acceptance" - wake me up when I see fried crickets sold in grocery stores and people actively buying it. I think articles like this are propaganda made to sway people's opinion so that the corporations might add more crap to products to save on costs

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