Mindfulness makes one more aware of present and incoming information & is relevant to food choice and food sustainability issues; it may increase disgust & reduce attitudes toward eating insects

Mindfulness and Willingness to Try Insects as Food: The Role of Disgust. Eugene Y. Chan. Food Quality and Preference, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2018.08.014

Highlights
•    Mindfulness makes one more aware of present and incoming information.
•    Mindfulness is relevant to food choice and food sustainability issues.
•    We study and test the impact of mindfulness on insect-eating attitudes.
•    Mindfulness may increase disgust and reduce attitudes toward eating bugs.
•    Results from three studies are consistent with this theorizing.

Abstract: Mindfulness, commonly associated with Buddhism, refers to the state of being aware, taking note of what is going on within oneself and outside of the world. In the current research, we examine the possible impact of mindfulness on willingness to try insect foods. We present the results of three studies—one correlational and two experimental—illustrating that mindfulness increases disgust and lowers willingness to try eating insects. On the one hand, this counters existing literature that mindfulness reduces emotional reactivity. On the other hand, it is in-line with mindfulness making one more aware and accepting of present and incoming information, which would conceivably include context-relevant emotions such as disgust in the case of eating insects that Western cultures see as disgusting. Our findings support the latter possibility. We situate our work within the literature on the various impacts of mindfulness on food choice. We also discuss implications for food sustainability practitioners.