Conceptualizing the acceptance of insect-based food ingredients in western diets

We draw on a combination of food anthropology, food sociology and new institutional economics to conceptualise the relation between prevailing food cultures, institutional adaptations and the acceptance of food innovations by consumers. We stress the importance of the cultural-psychological dimension in the classification of the radicalness of food innovations. Furthermore, we link types of innovations (from incremental to radical) with the effect that they have at different institutional levels. In order to illustrate the usefulness of our conceptual framework we apply this framework to three scenario’s related to a specific food innovation – at least in Western societies – which is the eating of insects. The three scenarios represent different ways of introducing insects into western diets, where the scenarios are distinguished by the degree of radicalness of the innovation on each of the three dimensions.