Investigating social and educational interventions to reduce the disgust response to ingestion of insects and cultured meat

在心理学中，与食物相关的情绪尚未得到充分研究，尤其是导致食物排斥的厌恶情绪。本项目旨在引入与食物有关的厌恶的新措施，并利用它们来调查社会和教育干预的有效性，以增加新型含虫食品和培养肉的消费。其背景是需要减少对“传统肉类”的需求，因为它会导致气候变化。本项目中的研究将基于具有某些共同方面的研究设计。首先，会有一些条件，邀请参与者品尝和食用他们认为含有昆虫或人造肉的食物。其次，厌恶反应将在预期和进食过程中进行测量。这些指标包括喜欢和渴望吃东西的判断、吃的食物量以及触觉敏感度等隐性指标。以前的研究几乎只测量了自我报告的态度或对食物的接受程度，这些并不总是反映实际行为。第三，研究将调查教育和社会干预在克服厌恶方面的有效性。可以说，由于厌恶是一种“基本情绪”，会导致根深蒂固的本能反应，基于理性的自上而下的方法可能会产生有限的影响。然而，在先天的、根深蒂固的层面上具有吸引力的社会干预可能更有效。联合利华正在开发含虫食品，并对这一课题进行了初步研究。他们邀请学生在荷兰的研发中心接受Lisbeth Zandstra教授的指导，进行为期3-6个月的实习。赞德斯特拉和她的同事最近使用脑电图来研究烹饪昆虫菜肴时的神经生理反应。除了在具体方法上的合作外，这次实习还将提供机会，了解在商业环境中进行研究的目标、影响和限制。与牛津大学的LEAP项目安排了一项学术合作。有机会使用他们的模拟网上超市，在接近现实生活的环境中，而不是在实验室环境中，测试信息（干预）对决策的影响。食物和厌恶的研究引起了人们的兴趣和兴奋。计划每年至少举办一次公众参与活动。例如，布里斯托尔当地的一家餐厅Cargo Cantina热衷于公众参与，并有可能扩大合作，利用他们的设施实施研究。根据研究设计和这些合作，研究计划是：研究1和2（0-8个月）。探索五种新的内隐厌恶测量方法的有用性（前面列出）。研究3和4（8-17个月）。研究3将利用LEAP的在线超市来测试教育标签对食品购买选择的影响。研究5（17-20/23个月）。联合利华放置。这里的目标是根据联合利华的知识和目前对消费者对肉类替代品取代传统产品的态度和行为的理解，制定和实施干预措施。研究6（第20/23-31个月）。基于研究期间积累的发现，本研究将通过包括随访评估在内的干预措施来评估厌恶减少的持续时间。总结（31-36个月）。学术影响将在于情绪研究人员理解与食物相关的情绪，特别是厌恶情绪，以及如何可靠地测量它。社会影响将来自于创造以证据为基础的干预措施，以提高对新的、更可持续的蛋白质来源的接受度。

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.