The promotion of edible insects as a sustainable source of protein has gained considerable attention. However, consumer resistance remains high in Western countries, driven by disgust, food neophobia, and cultural taboos. Quantitative research has addressed the individual-level barriers to insect consumption, whilst the social and cultural meanings of entomophagy and its practitioners are under-explored, particularly in Central European contexts. The present study explored how Polish adults perceive insect-eating as a dietary practice, how they socially categorise and stereotype insect-eaters, and what psychological and sociocultural mechanisms underlie resistance to entomophagy. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 19 Polish adults (15F, 4M; age range 19–62 years) in August 2025. Data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis from a constructivist epistemological position. The findings suggest that social and political factors shape dietary rules and have implications for how we design culturally sensitive ways to encourage people to adopt them, and that resistance to certain types of food operates as a form of social categorisation, in which disgust can be transferred from food to its consumer. This approach to analysis allowed for an exploration of how individual barriers, such as disgust, may be transformed and reinforced by social processes and political polarisation. The study suggests that resistance to insect-based food was not organised solely around knowledge. Participants often recognised nutritional or ecological arguments, but still rejected insects because they were associated with disgust, contamination, social deviance, political meanings, and threats to familiar food identity. The study shows that insect-based foods may be rejected not only because they are unfamiliar, but also as markers through which consumers are socially imagined and evaluated.
Goncikowska et al. (Wed,) studied this question.