Browsing by Subject "hyönteisruoka"

Objectives Insect food has been marketed as an ecological and ethical alternative to meat with vegetarians as the main target group. Recent studies have shown that several factors affect how people approach the use of insects for human nutrition. Consumers who value ecological, natural and taste aspects in food tend to be more open-minded towards edible in-sects. In this study, I aimed to examine the motives behind food choices and analyse the opinions of vegetarians and vegans towards insect-based nutrition and how their attitudes differ from those of omnivores. The effects of being knowledgeable about insect food was al-so considered. The target group of this study was ecologically and ethically conscious individuals. Methods. The data was collected by structured questionnaire which was shared via social media and University of Helsinki student organisations’ e-mail lists. The sample of this study consisted of 355 consumers’ answers of which 296 were women, 35 men, 13 other gender and 11 who preferred not to answer. Most of the respondents were undergraduate students and highly educated. The data was analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 -software. Quantitative data analyses were carried out using crosstabs, explorative factor analysis and Kruskal-Wallis -test. Results and conclusions. The results of this study indicated that the most important motives behind food choices in all diet groups were environmental effects and necessity of meat consumption, food hedonism and sustainable values. Majority of respondents had critical attitudes toward meat consumption. Omnivores’ attitudes towards insect food tended to be more positive while vegans’ opinions on the topic were in general negative. Vegetarians opinions didn’t align with either of the extremes but were slightly closer to those of omnivores. The results also showed that respondents with good or moderate knowledge about insect food had more positive attitudes towards it than those with poor knowledge. The majority of respondents followed discussion on edible insects but only less than half were interested in consuming insect food. In conclusion, the results of this study indicate that insect food was primarily intriguing to omnivores and vegetarians. Those interested on the topic hoped that insect food was introduced to consumers via various courses. They would prefer to try edible insects in restaurants and cafeterias rather than eat them at home.