Search results

Even though insect products increasingly receive attention as a sustainable food alternative to meat, consumer acceptance remains low. The purpose of this paper is to test consumer acceptance of two different insect species with varying degrees of processing which led to different degrees of insects’ visibility.

Insect dishes that varied according to species and degree of visibility were presented to participants of a self-administered personal survey within a meal context. Consumer acceptance was measured through the willingness-to-try the different dishes, and a hierarchical linear regression was applied to estimate the role of insect species.

Consumer acceptance can be improved by focusing on different forms of food processing and different insect species. The lower the visibility of insects, the higher the consumer acceptance, independent of insect species. However, this is not sufficient to overcome consumers’ widely held rejection. Main barriers for consumer acceptance seem to be low social and cultural acceptance, fear of trying unknown products and a lack of taste experience.

A huge body of literature has examined determinants of insect consumption, but the majority of these studies did not consider the effects of insect species. The study’s main objective is to close this research gap while checking the most relevant individual traits as identified through a literature review: food neophobia and familiarity, social and cultural norms, awareness of benefits of insect production, meat consumption and socio-demographics.

The authors articulate a posthuman politics of hope to unpack the richly embodied personal experiences and web of relationalities formed through repeated encounters with insects. Interrogating insect speciesism teaches to extend the authors’ compassion and live symbiotically with insects. The authors focus on the narrative of insect decline as impacted by colonialism and white supremacy, enabling insect speciesism to flourish alongside exploitation of other human and nonhuman creatures.

The authors pay particular attention the use of everyday language and framing of insects to “other” them, thereby trivializing and demonizing their existence, including “it's *just* a bug” or “they are pests.” Insect speciesism employs similar rhetoric reinforcing discrimination patterns of other nonhuman animals and humans. The authors focus on the unexpected encounters with insects in domestic spaces, such as an office desk, and through the multispecies space of “the allotment.”

The authors reflect on two possible posthuman futures: one where insect speciesism is entrenched and unrepentant; the second a decolonized society where we aspire to live a more compassionate and non-violent existence amidst these remarkable and brilliant creatures we owe our very existence on Earth.

One of the most profound lessons of the crisis-driven epoch of the Anthropocene is this: our existence on Earth is intimately bound with the flourishing of all forms of life. This includes complex multispecies encounters between humans and insects, an area of enquiry widely neglected across the social sciences. Faced with imminent catastrophic decline and extinction of insect and invertebrate populations, human relationships with these fellow Earthlings are deserving of further attention.

This study aims to explore the barriers to upscaling the production capacity of the edible insect sector in the UK and to identify the impact of current regulation on the sector's development.

A significant proportion of edible insect-producing companies within the UK were identified through an online market research database and contacted via email to invite them to participate in this study. Phone interviews were conducted with ten companies. Thematic analysis was adopted for data analysis.

There were five themes identified as barriers to the upscaling of the production for the edible insect sector in the UK: insect feeding materials, production capacity, expertise and knowledge, new product development and regulatory uncertainty.

This research was based on a qualitative study. Further quantitative research is needed to test the extent of the impact of these five themes on upscaling production capacity. In addition to production capacity, marketing and consumers' acceptance, culture and behaviour can also be considered in future studies.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing insight on the barriers to upscaling production capacity in the edible insect sector.

Edible insects have emerged as a promising inexpensive option to address malnutrition among vulnerable groups in the world. However, it is not clear whether including insects in diets can improve health outcomes. This paper aimed to investigate the impact of edible insect consumption on human health.

A search was conducted in PubMed Central, BioMed Central, Plosone, Cochrane, Google Scholar, Google Search and bibliographies for all human studies on the impact of edible insect consumption on human health published from January 1990 to April 2018.

Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. Consumption of cereals fortified with edible insects improved iron status and growth in infants and led to the development of life threatening anaphylactic reactions in sensitive people.

Edible insects are nutritious. More rigorous studies are needed to confirm nutrient bioavailability, acceptability and nutritional benefits in humans.

This review shows that the utilization of edible insects as food promotes desirable health outcomes, but caution must be taken to prevent allergic reactions in some cases.

The purpose of this paper introduces entomophagy as an alternative food consumption (AFC) capable of contributing to food well-being (FWB) among Western consumers. Specifically, it provides a conceptual framework where key factors related to the acceptance and adoption of insects and insects based foods are identified. This paper takes a sociocultural, symbolic and contextual perspective to offer marketers and public policymakers a set of recommendations to promote entomophagy as a sustainable and healthy food practice to help consumers achieve their FWB.

In this paper, first, the authors review the literature on entomophagy from its rise to establishment in different food cultures by considering two main perspectives as follows: historical and sociocultural. Second, the authors review the salience of entomophagy as an important AFC capable of addressing sustainability and food health issues. Finally, the authors propose a framework in which the authors define key factors related to the acceptance and adoption of an insects-based diet in Western food cultures. The identification of these factors will help marketing and public policymakers to set up educational programs and strategies to promote entomophagy as a sustainable and healthy food practice within different Western food cultures, and thus, help consumers to achieve their FWB.

To identify the key factors influencing the acceptance of entomophagy as AFC, this paper provides a summary of the core motivators characterizing the acceptance and adoption of insects and insect-based foods in Western food cultures. Specifically, the authors identify the key factors influencing the acceptance of entomophagy as food consumption in Western food cultures and based on the extant literature by Batat et al. (2017) the authors provide an entomophagy framework that includes both idiocentric and allocentric factors considering the adoption of insects and insect-based foods in Western food cultures. Table I provides a summary.

The authors believe entomophagy has the potential to generate societal benefits, as its appeal at the social (hunger in the world), environmental (reducing meat consumption and its impact on ecology) and health (less calories and nutritive food) level.

The research contributes to creating new knowledge that simulates debate among public policy and marketing scholars about entomophagy as a novel food in Western food cultures. The focus on key factors related to its acceptance and adoption of Western food cultures calls for empirical evidence to be tested in the marketplace using possibly different insect categories and other novel foods. Further, the framework should stimulate thinking about ways the authors can change consumers’ negative perceptions of disgusting food. Marketers and policymakers can achieve it by making their practices more efficient in terms of promoting sustainable AFC, as well as with efficient policy initiatives focused on supporting AFC, including the regulation of insect introduction.

Millions of the British people have for some years now been struggling valiantly to live with hard times, watching them day by day grow worse but always hopefully that the cloud had a silver lining; that one day, reason and a sense of direction would prevail. Tyranny in many forms is a feature of history; the greatest epics have been risings of ordinary people to overthrow it. The modern form of tyranny is that of Money; the cruel and sinister ways in which it can be obtained and employed and the ineffectiveness of any measures taken to control the evils which result. Money savings over the years and the proverbial bank book, once the sure safeguard of ordinary people, are whittled away in value, never to recover. Causes always seemed to be contained within the country's own economy and industrial practices, and to this extent should have been possible of control. The complex and elaborate systems constructed by the last Government were at least intended for the purpose, but each attempt to curb excessive demands for more money, more and more for doing less and less— the nucleus of inflation—produced extreme reactions, termed collectively “industrial strife”. Every demand met without compensatory returns in increased work, inevitably led to rises in prices, felt most keenly in the field of food and consumer goods. What else would be expected from such a situation?

Early detection of forest fires offers the chance to put the fire out before it gets out of control. The purpose of this paper is to look into nature and to learn how certain insects detect remote forest fires. A small group of highly specialized insects that have been called pyrophilous is attracted by forest fires and approaches fires sometimes from distances of many kilometers. As a unique feature some of these insects are equipped with infrared (IR) receptors, which in case of two species of jewel beetles (family Buprestidae) are used for fire detection.

The paper has investigated the IR receptors of the pyrophilous beetles with various morphological techniques including scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, neuroanatomy and the paper also investigated the thermo-/mechanical properties of the IR receptors by nanoindentation. Data were used for subsequent modeling of a biomimetic technical sensor. Finally, a macroscopic prototype was built and tested.

This biological principle was transferred into a new kind of uncooled technical IR receptor. A simple model for this biological IR sensor is a modified Golay sensor in which the gas has been replaced by a liquid. Here, the absorbed IR radiation results in a pressure increase of the liquid and the deflection of a thin membrane. For the evaluation of this model, analytical formulas are presented, which permits the calculation of the pressure increase in the cavity, the deformation of the membrane and the time constant of an artificial leak to compensate ambient temperature changes. Some organic liquids with high thermal expansion coefficients may improve the deflection of the membrane compared to water.

Results so far obtained suggest that it seems promising to take the photomechanic IR receptors of pyrophilous jewel beetles as models for the building of new uncooled IR sensors. The beetle receptors have been shaped by evolution since thousands of years and, therefore, can be considered as highly optimized sources of inspiration for new technical sensors suitable for remote fire detection.

The purpose of the paper is to show that the Arabian Peninsula, and the United Arab Emirates in particular, has not been spared by the trends of biodiversity loss observed on the world scale. The authors aim to present a rapid review of the challenges facing the biodiversity in the UAE and the solutions that this young country proposes to counteract the erosion of its biodiversity.

The authors gathered and compiled published and unpublished information from governmental and non‐governmental sources.

Despite being regarded as a vast desertic and unfertile area with one of the lowest human populations in the world, the UAE hosts a unique and remarkably adapted fauna and flora. Adding to natural causes (drought), the main threats facing biodiversity identified were: coastal development and urbanisation, as well as over‐exploitation of natural resources (fishing, hunting, grazing and water extraction) that are linked with the tremendous population increase and changes in lifestyle. Traditional systems of resource management in the UAE have been abandoned. Over the last few decades, the UAE has lost most of its big fauna and is witnessing the remaining Arabian leopard, Mountain Gazelle, Arabian Tahr, Arabian Sailfish, groupers and shark populations at the brink of extinction.

The paper proposes the inclusion of environmental issues in the development planning (with proper environment impact assessments), the involvement of local communities in the decision making and the improvement of federal and international trans‐boundaries collaborations. Highlights that an urgent step would be the implementation of integrated costal management zoning to stop the current extent of coastal development that contributes through physical alteration of habitats to the disappearance of key resources and habitats.

Lack of acceptance of insects as food is considered a barrier against societal adoption of the potentially valuable contribution of insects to human foods. An underlying barrier may be that insects are lumped together as one group, while consumers typically try specific insects. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which Dutch consumers, with and without insect tasting experience, are more or less willing to eat different insects.

In a quasi-experimental study (n=140), the participants with and without prior experience in eating insects were asked to give their willingness to eat a range of insects, and their attitudes and disgust towards eating insects.

Insects promoted in the market were more preferred than the less marketed insects, and a subgroup of preferred insects for participants with experience in eating insects was formed.

Although well-known insects were more preferred, general willingness to eat remained low for all participants. The results indicate that in future research on insects as food the specific insects used should be taken into account.

Continued promotion of specific, carefully targeted, insects may not lead to short-term uptake of insects as food, but may contribute to willingness to eat insects as human food in the long term.

The paper shows substantial differences between consumers who have and who have not previously tasted insects, with higher acceptance of people with experience in tasting insects for the specific insects that are frequently promoted beyond their generally more positive attitude towards eating insects.

1. Carter, Ernest F. Dictionary of Inventions and Discoveries. New York, Crane, Russak, 1976. 208pp. $6.50. This, the second revised edition of a dictionary first published in Great Britain in 1966, presents over two thousand inventions and discoveries, inventors and discoverers in a single alphabet. Although a few of the entries run for over a page, most are very brief.