EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)

Summary

Freakonomics Radio: EXTRA - The Downside of Disgust (Update) Release Date: March 5, 2025
Host: Stephen J. Dubner
Guests:

• Paul Rozin: Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania
• Val Curtis: Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Sandro Ambuhl: Economist at the University of Zurich
• Emily Kimmins: R&D Lead for Sensory and Consumer Science at Kraft Heinz

---

Introduction

In this special archival episode of Freakonomics Radio, host Stephen Dubner revisits a compelling discussion initially conceived in early 2020 but shelved due to the pandemic. Titled "The Downside of Disgust," the episode delves into the multifaceted nature of disgust, its evolutionary roots, its impact on human behavior, and the potential consequences of its influence in the modern world.

Understanding Disgust: An Evolutionary Perspective

[00:01 - 03:19]
Dubner opens with thought-provoking questions about the universality of disgust, using the example of refusing to eat insects despite their nutritional benefits. This sets the stage for exploring why certain things elicit disgust and whether these reactions are universal or culturally specific.

Notable Quotes:

• Val Curtis ([02:16]): "Fecal material, for example, is inherently disgusting. Every person on the planet, with a few strange exceptions, finds fecal material something they want to stay away from."
• Paul Rozin ([02:31]): "There are enormous variations in disgust."

Dissecting Disgust: Insights from Experts

[04:11 - 07:09]
Paul Rozin, a pioneer in disgust research, discusses the evolutionary basis of disgust, emphasizing its role in avoiding pathogens. Rozin highlights the paradox of humans loving meat—a highly nutritious but often tabooed food—raising questions about the complexities of disgust responses.

Notable Quotes:

• Paul Rozin ([10:22]): "Disgust was originally defined as a rejection or offense at the oral incorporation of an offensive substance."
• Val Curtis ([09:55]): "Being an evolutionarily minded sort of person, I saw that disgust is basically an adaptation to make us behave in ways that avoid us getting sick."

Categories and Expressions of Disgust

[08:01 - 14:38]
Val Curtis outlines six categories of disgust: hygiene, certain animals and insects, sexual disgust, specific food types, and more. The discussion extends to the physical manifestations of disgust, such as the "disgust face," and the universal verbal expressions like "ugh" or "blech."

Notable Quotes:

• Val Curtis ([10:54]): "There's disgust about hygiene... disgust related to certain types of animals and insects... sexual disgust related to people who are atypical in their appearance..."
• Paul Rozin ([13:27]): "That's a little different from saying that someone who burns the American flag is disgusting."

The Malleability of Disgust

[14:38 - 15:11]
Curtis and Rozin discuss how disgust is not a static emotion. Factors like hunger or sexual arousal can modulate disgust responses, demonstrating its adaptability based on situational needs.

Notable Quotes:

• Val Curtis ([14:53]): "Our motives compete for our attention at every moment, and the one which is the strongest is the one that's going to win."
• Sandro Ambuhl ([15:30]): "It's the trade-off that you're making that's going up and down."

Disgust's Role in Public Health

[16:12 - 20:33]
Curtis shares a successful hand-washing campaign in Ghana that leveraged disgust without explicitly mentioning germs. By visually showing the contamination of food with feces, the campaign effectively doubled hand-washing rates, illustrating disgust's power in promoting public health measures.

Notable Quotes:

• Val Curtis ([19:33]): "It was a really powerful disgust message."
• Val Curtis ([20:24]): "This was one of the most effective hand washing campaigns ever."

The Economics of Disgust: Incentives and Repugnance

[24:56 - 30:28]
Sandro Ambuhl explores the intersection of economics and disgust, particularly how financial incentives can influence disgust-driven decisions. His experiments reveal that higher monetary rewards can lower the disgust threshold, leading individuals to overcome their aversions. However, Rozin warns that such incentives might hinder long-term acceptance of desired behaviors, like consuming insects.

Notable Quotes:

• Sandro Ambuhl ([28:15]): "I wanted to know, if I offer incentives to somebody, what do I do with their quality of decision."
• Paul Rozin ([30:28]): "If you pay people to eat insects, they're less likely to engage with it after you remove the payment."

Overcoming Disgust: Experiments and Applications

[30:40 - 33:37]
The discussion shifts to practical applications of mitigating disgust. Rozin and Curtis highlight the mere exposure effect, where repeated exposure reduces disgust responses. Curtis mentions traditional practices, such as eating fried flying ants in Uganda, which minimize the association between insects and disease.

Notable Quotes:

• Paul Rozin ([30:50]): "Just as you are exposed to something over longer and longer time periods, you start liking it."
• Val Curtis ([32:07]): "Once you've fried them and salted them and you're having them with a few beers, the wriggly, sticky, gooey nature of insects is rather forgotten."

Insects as a Case Study: Challenges and Opportunities

[33:37 - 47:38]
The episode delves deep into the proposition of integrating insects into mainstream diets. Emily Kimmins from Kraft Heinz discusses the challenges of consumer acceptance, emphasizing the "ick factor" and the importance of blending familiar and unfamiliar flavors. Rozin shares insights from trying insect-based dishes, noting the potential for gradual acceptance through culinary innovation.

Notable Quotes:

• Emily Kimmins ([37:09]): "Consumers need something physical to touch and taste and hold onto to tell you what they like and what they don't like."
• Paul Rozin ([44:50]): "If people didn't know what they were eating, they might think it was pretty good."

Future Implications and Conclusions

[47:36 - 49:31]
The conversation concludes with reflections on the feasibility of making insects a staple in diets worldwide. While progress has been made, such as the EU's approval of insect proteins, significant cultural and perceptual barriers remain. Rozin and Ambuhl express cautious optimism, suggesting that with continued exposure and culinary creativity, insects could become more widely accepted.

Notable Quotes:

• Sandro Ambuhl ([43:44]): "I do think it's going to be very, very hard to convince even a sizable minority of the population to consume insects on a regular basis."
• Emily Kimmins ([46:51]): "If you can blend it with something they already know they already like, you have a better chance of getting new flavors into their repertoire."

Epilogue

The episode wraps up with somber notes, mentioning the closure of the Black Ant restaurant and the passing of Val Curtis in October 2020 due to cancer. Dubner pays tribute to Curtis, acknowledging her significant contributions to the field of disgust research.

---

Key Takeaways

• Evolutionary Roots: Disgust serves as a protective mechanism against pathogens and harmful substances.
• Cultural Variability: While some disgust responses are universal, many are shaped by cultural norms and personal experiences.
• Behavioral Influence: Disgust can both deter negative behaviors (like avoiding contaminated food) and hinder positive changes (like adopting sustainable practices).
• Malleability: Disgust is not fixed; it can be modulated by factors such as incentives, exposure, and context.
• Practical Applications: Leveraging disgust in public health campaigns can be highly effective, but caution is needed when using incentives to alter disgust-driven behaviors.
• Future Prospects: Integrating insects into diets remains challenging but not impossible, requiring innovative culinary approaches and gradual cultural shifts.

Conclusion

"The Downside of Disgust" offers a nuanced exploration of an emotion deeply ingrained in human behavior. By understanding its origins, applications, and limitations, we can better harness disgust's power to promote health and sustainability while being mindful of its potential drawbacks in fostering resistance to beneficial changes.

---

Notable Contributors:

• Produced by: Matt Hickey, Daphne Chen, Dalvin Abuaji
• Freakonomics Radio Network Staff: Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neal Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Teo Jacobs, Zach Lipinski
• Theme Song: "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers
• Composer: Luis Guerra

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For more episodes and transcripts, visit freakonomics.com.

Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Redfin Whether you're searching for your next place or you just want to scroll through some dream homes, use the Redfin app. Redfin makes it fun to search all the homes for sale and apartments for rent in your neighborhood. And if you find a place you love, Redfin makes it easy to go see it in person. Just schedule a tour right from the app. So whether you're looking to buy or rent, Redfin has got you covered. Download the Redfin app to get started. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile with plans as low as 15 bucks a month. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Shop [e-mail] freak upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. We just finished publishing our series on rats, which reminded me of an episode from the archives that I thought you might like to hear. You will understand within the first few seconds why I was reminded of this episode. It was first published in early 2021, although we began making this episode in early 2020 and put it aside when the pandemic struck. Anyway, we have updated facts and figures as necessary. I hope you enjoy it. As always, thanks for listening. If you sat down at my kitchen table and I put an insect in front of you, maybe a cricket or a grasshopper, would you eat it? If you answered no, and I'm guessing you did, but then why not? Your answer likely has something to do with disgust, but have you ever wondered why eating an insect is disgusting? You ever wondered why disgust exists? And what else do you find disgusting? Are there any universal disgusts?

[Val Curtis]

Fecal material, for example, is inherently disgusting. Every person on the planet, with a few strange exceptions, finds fecal material something they want to stay away from.

[Stephen Dubner]

But once you get past poop, absolutes are hard to find.

[Paul Rozin]

There are enormous variations in disgust.

[Stephen Dubner]

Consider, for instance, the animals we eat and don't eat.

[Paul Rozin]

I'm a massive dog lover, but I would eat dog out of curiosity.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

In California, you cannot eat horse, whereas in many European countries you have horse butcheries.

[Paul Rozin]

I've never eaten roadkill, but I would eat human flesh.

[Stephen Dubner]

From an evolutionary standpoint, disgust has often served us well. There is good reason to not eat poop, as well as other disgusting things that might harm us.

[Val Curtis]

There's this real moment.

[Stephen Dubner]

But what if I told you that disgust is also holding us back? That it prevents us from pursuing strategies that could improve the environment, the economy, even our health?

[Emily Kimmins]

Just try them. They're not as disgusting as they look.

[Stephen Dubner]

Today on Freakonomics Radio, we will explore the roots and types of disgust.

[Val Curtis]

There's basically six different types of disgust.

[Stephen Dubner]

How incentives may change your disgust threshold.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

I brought buckets and tissues. I was afraid that somebody might throw up.

[Stephen Dubner]

We look into what psychologists call the mere exposure effect.

[Paul Rozin]

Medical students are disgusted by cadavers, but after they've dissected a cadaver, they're much less disgusted.

[Stephen Dubner]

And we ask what it might take to overcome.

[Unknown]

When in doubt, cover it with chocolate.

[Val Curtis]

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

[Stephen Dubner]

We begin with someone who is an elder statesman and a pioneer.

[Paul Rozin]

Nobody studied disgust 50 years ago. I did sort of start the modern interest in disgust. I mean, Darwin wrote about disgust quite a bit.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's Paul Rosin.

[Paul Rozin]

R O Z I N People call me Rosen, but that's not right.

[Stephen Dubner]

Rozin is one of two scholars of disgust we'll be hearing from today. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

[Paul Rozin]

Much of my work is about how humans relate to food from anthropological, evolutionary and psychological perspectives.

[Stephen Dubner]

It was Rosin who we heard say in the open of this episode that there are enormous variations in disgusting.

[Paul Rozin]

You have people who have almost no disgust. They certainly wouldn't eat feces, but they're not really disgusted by seeing animal feces or something like that. And there are other people who will not blow their nose in a brand new piece of toilet paper because, you.

[Stephen Dubner]

Know, the poop association. As for Paul Rosin's personal disgust levels.

[Paul Rozin]

I'm probably in the 20% of people who are least disgusted.

[Stephen Dubner]

Are there things that you are particularly disgusted by that aren't the common ones?

[Paul Rozin]

Yeah, and I'm puzzled by it. I don't like really stinky cheese.

[Stephen Dubner]

Rosin calls himself a partial vegetarian.

[Paul Rozin]

I do not eat mammals or birds. However, I have a whole bunch of exceptions. For example, I will eat bacon. I will eat rejected food. So if someone's in a restaurant with me and they eat a hamburger and they only eat half of it, I in principle will eat it because it's going to go in the garbage. I will eat calf's liver, which I love in the United States because it's a waste product. Nobody kills a calf for the liver.

[Stephen Dubner]

It was also Rosin who noted in the open of this episode that he would eat dog roadkill, even human flesh.

[Paul Rozin]

I'm curious what it tastes like, whether I'd be disgusted by it. I don't think so, but I could be.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've always wondered, what parts of the human do you think would make for the best eating?

[Paul Rozin]

Well, we in the United States only eat muscle. In other countries, they eat liver. They eat a lot of the viscera. I don't terribly like eating brain, though. I have eaten brain enough. It doesn't taste bad. I have eaten the ashes of one of my dear persons. That's the idea of endocannibalism. You love somebody and if they die, you want to keep them in some sense, in your body. Whereas exocannibalism, which is very different, is eating your enemies.

[Stephen Dubner]

Would you like to see endocannibalism, as you've just described it, become more popular?

[Paul Rozin]

I have no desire for that. But if a religion practiced it, I don't think any current major religion does. I would think that's. That's okay.

[Stephen Dubner]

Disgust doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has ramifications.

[Val Curtis]

So people who are very high on the disgust scale often have comorbidities with other sorts of neuroticisms. So we found, for example, that people who are high on disgust are also high on sex disgust. And that makes it very hard to make a lasting bond in a relationship.

[Stephen Dubner]

That is the other scholar of disgust we'll be hearing from today.

[Val Curtis]

I'm Professor Val Curtis. I'm a disgustologist.

[Stephen Dubner]

In Curtis case, that means a background in engineering, public health, and evolutionary anthropology.

[Val Curtis]

I work on hygiene, sanitation and water at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

[Stephen Dubner]

How does one become a disgustologist, and is that a large field?

[Val Curtis]

There are very few disgustologists in the world. Surprisingly, there are not hordes of people screaming to study the science of disgust, but there are a growing number.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what got you into the disgust racket?

[Val Curtis]

It was a long journey, but there was a eureka moment that got me traveling this route. So I've been working on trying to understand behaviors that made people sick, mostly in developing countries, trying to understand why people were hygienic or weren't hygienic. For example, we'd done interviews in lots of different countries, and I was asking people, so when would you wash your hands? And they would say, well, when they feel sticky and disgusting. And I go, well, what do you mean, disgusting? And I kept coming up with these lists of things that people all around the world, and it was a motley collection of things I couldn't figure out. What connected that all together? But then a colleague asked me to explain the cause of a strange parasitic disease. And I looked it up in a book about communicable diseases. And suddenly I realized all these things that people found disgusting were sitting in the index to this book. And I'm going, hang on. Vomit, People find that disgusting. It makes you sick. Fallen hairs, people find that disgusting. Well, it's a cause of ringworm food that's gone off that can cause typhoid, can cause diarrheal diseases. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that there was a very obvious pattern here, that the things that everyone around the world seemed to regard as disgusting, they were all things that might harbor parasites and pathogens and so might make us sick. So being an evolutionarily minded sort of person, I saw that this was basically an adaptation, something we have in our brain to make us behave in ways that avoid us getting sick.

[Stephen Dubner]

Paul Rosin agrees.

[Paul Rozin]

The core of disgust is almost certainly originally derived from a system to avoid pathogens, which are usually part of animal food, not plant food.

[Stephen Dubner]

And that's what led to his interest in disgust.

[Paul Rozin]

What got me interested is that meat is the most favored food of humans, that also the most tabooed food. So I got curious why we should have such a strong negative emotion about a food that is highly nutritious and highly favored.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can you quickly define disgust for me?

[Paul Rozin]

Disgust was originally defined as a rejection or offense at the oral incorporation of an offensive substance. We added to that definition the fact that that substance is usually contaminating. That is, if it touches a otherwise desired food, it renders it inedible. So when a cockroach touches your sundae, that's the end of the sundae.

[Val Curtis]

It turns out there are different categories of things that might make us sick that we find disgusting.

[Stephen Dubner]

Six categories.

[Val Curtis]

There's disgust about hygiene. There's disgust related to certain types of animals and insects. There's disgust related to sexual disgust related to people who are atypical in their appearance, deformed or not normal, tends to, unfortunately, evoke a sense of disgust. If you meet somebody with a lesion with an infected wound, people do tend to find that disgusting. Types of food, particularly food that smells funny or has gone off. So those are the six disgust categories.

[Stephen Dubner]

So those are the categories of things that generate disgust. What about our responses? We'll start with the physical ones. The first is called the disgust face.

[Paul Rozin]

There are actually two discussed faces. One of them is a jaw drop, sometimes with the tongue sticking out, which is an oral Rejection and maybe a closing of the nostrils. Okay. There's another one which is primarily a raising of the upper lip, and that overlaps a little with the anger expression.

[Stephen Dubner]

And then there are the verbal expressions of disgust.

[Val Curtis]

So I've got a collection of the words from all over the world, and it's quite surprising how many use this onomatopoeic or ich or ugh. It does seem to be almost a universal language. It's to do with the gorge rising. It's to do with this idea that your body is preparing itself for the ingestion of something that might make it sick.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you're saying that that or blech or whatever is literally a pre vomit sound.

[Val Curtis]

Yes, yes, and everybody would understand it wherever you were in the world.

[Stephen Dubner]

But beyond the physical expressions of disgust, there is an emotional component which goes beyond the things we put in our mouths.

[Val Curtis]

So my definition of disgust is a system that have evolved in the first place to help us avoid parasites and pathogens. But when you've got a system like that that is so useful, and we use the same neurons to detect social disgust, and as we do to detect pathogen disgust, I think it's reasonable to call it the same thing.

[Paul Rozin]

That area is not as well defined. And so there's a big discussion now in moral psychology of the extent to which disgust is really a moral emotion.

[Stephen Dubner]

When someone says that they are, quote, disgusted by another person's actions, something they consider immoral or unethical, maybe cruel, is that something that you consider disgust, an extension of the food disgust, or is it more, in your view, view, metaphorical?

[Paul Rozin]

Well, that's the big issue, whether it's metaphorical use of disgust or it's actual disgust. And one critical issue there is whether the same brain areas involved for which there is some evidence, and also whether some of the other features of disgust, even a little sense of nausea, is involved. It does seem that when moral violations are called disgusting, they often have a bodily component to them, like an ax murderer, not a bank robber.

[Stephen Dubner]

But what if I say I'm disgusted by the actions of, let's say, a politician? What he did disgusts me. I can't imagine there's actual nausea attached to that. For instance.

[Paul Rozin]

Well, I would say that's a more metaphorical use of disgust. When we say someone who steals, someone who's corrupt, is disgusting, that's a little different from saying that someone who, say, burns the American flag is disgusting.

[Val Curtis]

So disgust is but one of a functional set of motives that make us do the things that were good for Our ancestors, and they're there in all of us all the time, and they drive a huge amount of what we do. And it's very poorly recognized that that is the complete and necessary set of motives you need to be a human being.

[Stephen Dubner]

You've noted that people are much less disgusted by the notion of eating rotten food when they're very hungry. Also that people are less disgusted by certain sexual matters when they're aroused. So how malleable is our disgust system?

[Val Curtis]

Our motives compete for our attention at every moment, and the one which is the strongest is the one that's going to win. So if it's been a long time since you've had a. What am I allowed to say on the radio?

[Stephen Dubner]

Anything.

[Val Curtis]

Since you've had a shag, can you say that?

[Stephen Dubner]

We don't say that. But you can? Sure.

[Val Curtis]

So if it's a long time since you've had a shag, you're gonna be much more likely to be attracted by the somewhat smelly, greasy hunk who's proposing himself to you than if you good one the day before. So it's not your level of disgust is going up and down. It's the trade off that you're making that's going up and down. If you haven't eaten for weeks the sandwich that has got mold on it, you might scrape the mold off, but you're going to eat it.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay. What have Val Curtis and Paul Rozin taught us so far? Disgust is driven by biological and quite likely evolutionary factors. It's got strong emotional components. It's also malleable and variable among individuals and cultures. The next question is, how useful can disgust be, considering it is an ancient force and that we're living in a modern world? Should we learn to dial down the disgust in some cases. And are there other cases where we might want to turn up the disgust?

[Val Curtis]

This is one of the most effective hand washing campaigns ever.

[Stephen Dubner]

And can you incentivize someone to look past their disgust?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

The way the experiment works is people made decisions in five rounds and each round was associated with one species of insect.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Audi. You know that feeling when you get behind the wheel of a truly special car? Everything just clicks. Well, the all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron is more than a new EV. It's a new way to experience driving. Embrace the thrill of the drive. With effortless power and serious acceleration, this car is fun to drive and it looks good too. A bold design makes for a sleek and sporty exterior and inside it's all about comfort and control. If you own an Audi, then you know what it's all about. The Q6E Tron is all that and more. With legendary Audi performance, an all new panoramic digital stage, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. It's a great time to check out the all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron. The next chapter of Audi starts now. Learn more@audi USA.com that's Audi USA.com Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Empower. Say you've always wanted to take a spontaneous trip to the Caribbean. By getting smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little. So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 19 million customers [e-mail] not an Empower client, paid or sponsored t mobile 5G home Internet keeps getting better get our fastest connection loaded with Benefits get T Mobile's best home Internet starting at 55 bucks a month with autopay in any voice line plus price lock. We won't raise your rate on Internet. Check availability@t mobile.com home Internet exclusions like taxes and fees apply. Guarantees regular monthly rate plan price of fixed wireless 5G Internet data with qualifying service after 15 bill credit with postpaid voice line plus $5 a month without auto pay with debit or bank account Regulatory fees included for qualifying accounts. 35 connection charge applies. Speeds vary due to factors affecting cellular networks. We have been hearing that disgust can be a powerful deterrent to steer people away from negative behaviors or substances. But can it also push them toward positive ones?

[Val Curtis]

So yeah, it is a double edged sword.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's Val Curtis, the London disgustologist we heard from earlier.

[Val Curtis]

So globally, some of the biggest killers are infectious diseases.

[Stephen Dubner]

As the COVID pandemic has reminded us, hand hygiene is an excellent weapon against infectious disease.

[Val Curtis]

We've been working in programs all over the world trying to get people to wash their hands.

[Stephen Dubner]

But let's be honest, the benefits of hand hygiene have been known for a long time now. Some people just aren't very diligent. So Curtis got to wondering if she could apply what she had been learning about disgust.

[Val Curtis]

We use disgust to promote hand hygiene in Ghana. We did it not by talking about germs, not by talking about disease, but by making a very attractive little video where a rather well dressed but typical Ghanaian woman came out of the toilet and you notice that she doesn't wash her hands. And then she prepares food for her kids. And you see her kneading this pounded yam and you see stains of something indeterminate on the pounded yam. And then you see her feeding a piece of it to her child. And there's this real moment. As moms watch this ad, they realize basically that the feces that she was dealing with in the toilet have actually got into the mouths of the kids. So it was a really powerful disgust message.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay, so powerful. I'm buying. Was it effective? Did it change behavior?

[Val Curtis]

This was one of the most effective hand washing campaigns ever. The rates of hand washing more than doubled and they were still high several years after the campaign.

[Stephen Dubner]

So that's a case where dialing up the disgust was fruitful. Another example, those horribly graphic anti cigarette ads you may have seen with rotten teeth and blackened lungs. But let's now consider the flip side. Rather than exploiting disgust in order to promote a certain behavior change, are there other behavior changes that are best promoted by reducing disgust?

[Paul Rozin]

The answer is yes.

[Stephen Dubner]

Paul Rosin again, for example, a lot.

[Paul Rozin]

Of people will not drink recycled water, which is water which goes from sewage to pure water in a matter of minutes by being forced through a membrane that only passes water. So it's pure water, but people are disgusted by it because they know it was in contact with feces. Now that disgust is a barrier to acceptance of this, which is a very efficient way of delivering water.

[Stephen Dubner]

So that's a case where there could be large environmental and economic gains from ratcheting down the disgust, maybe even geopolitical gains, considering that water scarcity is a source of great friction in many places. There is another disgust related mission that Paul Rozin is even more enthusiastic getting people to eat more insects, especially in.

[Paul Rozin]

The developing world where they're short of protein. Insects are a great source of protein, and though more than a billion people eat insects regularly, there are many who could use that protein who don't. And they're disgusted by insects.

[Stephen Dubner]

As with recycled water, you can imagine the various gains from increasing the consumption of protein rich insects, especially compared with meat, which is incredibly resource intensive to produce. In 2013, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization published a report promoting insect eating as an especially relevant issue in the 21st century due to the rising cost of animal protein, food insecurity, environmental pressures, population growth, and increasing demand for protein among the middle classes. And how would these insects be consumed?

[Paul Rozin]

There are generally two Philosophies here. One is to make flour, which is a high animal protein flour that replaces, say, wheat or corn flour. At low levels, you wouldn't even taste it. So that's one approach, as it were. Sneak it in. And the other approach is to say no. Here are insects.

[Stephen Dubner]

As Rosin notes, more than a billion people around the world already eat insects.

[Paul Rozin]

And they don't typically make flour. They will typically cook the insects, maybe on a grill, or they'll mix them in with other foods, but the insects are usually apparent.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what are the most popular insects?

[Paul Rozin]

Often beetles, things like mealworms, larva of insects, and grasshoppers. So in Mexico, chapulines is what they're called. You can get a taco filled with grasshoppers.

[Stephen Dubner]

But a billion people eating insects leaves another 7 billion not eating insects. At least we think we're not eating insects.

[Val Curtis]

You already do eat insects. You're allowed to have five insect legs in a Hershey Barb.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've heard that.

[Val Curtis]

Yeah, look it up.

[Stephen Dubner]

We did look it up. That again was Val Curtis, by the way. And according to the Food and Drug Administration, there's actually an average of eight insect fragments per chocolate bar. Anything up to 60 fragments per 100 grams is acceptable, as is a small amount of rodent hair. And have you ever eaten a salad or peanut butter or canned tomatoes? Have you ever had a beer or glass of wine? If so, then you have been routinely ingesting your fair share of insect all along. That said, most of us do not knowingly eat insects, especially in toto, because they disgust us.

[Val Curtis]

So insects are one of the types of things that we tend to find disgusting inasmuch as how closely they're connected with disease.

[Stephen Dubner]

Curtis, you will recall, is a professional disgustologist with a background in public health and anthropology. I got to wondering whether the field of economics had anything worthwhile to say about disgust.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Economists don't usually think about disgust.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's Sandro Ambule, an economist at the University of Zurich.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

They think, if anything, about moral repugnance, because that puts limits on what can be traded in markets.

[Stephen Dubner]

Repugnance would seem at least moderately linked to disgust, as it often centers around the human body.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

For instance, it limits how much you can pay people to participate in medical trials or surrogate motherhood or human egg donation and so forth. There's limits on the incentives that you can provide for these kind of transactions. But is it true that incentives lead to worse decision making? We have all these laws that are based on this hunch, laws against.

[Stephen Dubner]

For Instance, compensating kidney donors or even offering compensation for breast milk.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

It's something that is empirically testable but hasn't been empirically tested. So that's the main question that I want to answer.

[Stephen Dubner]

He set out to answer this question with a set of experiments. Even though Ambuhl says he was thinking about repugnance, he plainly understands disgust because he built his experiments around the eating of insects.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Yeah, that's right.

[Stephen Dubner]

He used college students, of course, as his research subjects.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

The way the experiment works is people made decisions in five rounds, and each round was associated with one species of insect.

[Stephen Dubner]

He used mealworms and silkworm pupae and a variety of crickets, house crickets, field.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Crickets, and maybe the most disgusting ones are mole crickets. They are really nasty. In the beginning, I brought buckets and tissues because I was afraid that somebody might throw up.

[Stephen Dubner]

It turns out that didn't happen, maybe because the people who knew they'd throw up were the ones who opted out of eating insects during the experiment. Because you were given that choice. In one experiment, for instance, there's two groups of people.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

If you're in the first group, you'll learn that you're going to be given $3 if you decide to eat five mealworms. If you're in the second group, you'll learn that you're going to be given $30 if you agree to eat five mealworms. Now, after you learn how much money you're given, but before you make a decision, you can choose between two videos to watch to inform yourself about what eating these things is going to be like. One video is called why you may want to eat insects. The other video is called why you may not want to eat insects.

[Stephen Dubner]

Ambuil wanted to measure how both financial and informational incentives affected the decisions that his research subjects made. There was a separate experiment to see how much he'd have to pay students to eat a whole scorpion.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

So these are really large scorpions. They're like as big as your hand, and it takes about 2 to $300 to make college students eat those or to make some college students eat those.

[Stephen Dubner]

In the interest of scientific equity, Ambuil ate one of these scorpions himself.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Take a plastic spoon, put a small shrimp on it, season it with some motor oil, and then eat everything, including the spoon. That's about what eating a scorpion is like.

[Stephen Dubner]

What was Ambuil trying to learn with this kind of experiment?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

I wanted to know, if I offer incentives to somebody, what do I do with their quality of decision?

[Stephen Dubner]

Making this goes back to the idea of whether financial incentives might skew someone's judgment towards selling their kidneys or eggs.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

What I'm interested in is whether if I pay people a larger amount of money, are they going to be more interested in watching the positive video than the negative video? And it turns out the answer to that question is yes.

[Stephen Dubner]

In other words, the bigger incentive increases their appetite to persuade themselves that what they're about to do is a good idea. Among the research subjects who were offered just $3 to eat the insects, around a third decided to do it even without access to a video. Among the subjects who were offered $30, nearly 60% decided to eat the insects without video access and more than 70% after watching the video about why eating insects is a good idea. So what did this tell Ambuil?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

This result looks like incentives are causing bad decisions.

[Stephen Dubner]

But if you're an economist, as Ambul is, these are, in fact, good decisions. How so?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

If I offer you very little for doing something you might not like, well, what you want to make sure is that you don't say yes by mistake. You're okay with saying no, because there's not much to gain. Now, if I offer you a lot of money, saying no by mistake all of a sudden is quite expensive. And so you become more interested in learning about the upsides rather than the downsides of the transaction.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now, how does this apply to Paul Rosin's mission of getting people to eat more insects?

[Paul Rozin]

Well, economists, of course, love financial incentives. But there's a problem. If you pay people to eat insects, they're less likely to engage with it after you remove the payment. The fact that they're being bribed to eat something may actually block getting to like it. Now, we don't know how people get to like things. We still don't know that. But it does seem that imposed incentives may block it sometimes, but on other occasions, they may not.

[Stephen Dubner]

In other words, as all researchers like to say always further research is needed. But with the incentives unclear, where does that leave you if your mission is to get people to eat more insects?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

In psychology, there's this phenomenon called the mere exposure effect. And what it says is, just as you are exposed to something over longer and longer time periods, you start liking it.

[Stephen Dubner]

And Ambuil had noticed as he ran his insect experiments that the mirror exposure effect was working on him.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

So I was sitting there for a large number of hours, putting insects into little plastic containers. I started snacking voluntarily on the house crickets.

[Stephen Dubner]

Rosin has seen several examples of the mirror exposure effect.

[Paul Rozin]

If you drink recycled water for a while, not too long, just maybe a week, you won't even think about it anymore. The problem is getting over the disgust hump because people don't realize they'll cease to be disgusted once they get used to something. We've shown that medical students are disgusted by cadavers, but after they've dissected a cadaver for a month or two, they're much less disgusted.

[Stephen Dubner]

And Val Curtis has seen the effect.

[Val Curtis]

In Uganda, we used to eat the flying ants that flew out once a year, and we'd catch them and fry them. They don't really have much disease connection. And once you've fried them and salted them and you're having them with a few beers, the wriggly, sticky, gooey nature of insects is rather forgotten. So basically, people will eat insects that don't have too strong a connection with disease. And the more you can distance them from a connection with disease, the more likely they are to eat them.

[Paul Rozin]

We know that if people eat insects for a while, not for too long, maybe even 10 times, they'll get used to it and they won't be disgusting. They don't taste like meat, but they can be crunchy and little nutty tasting, and so the taste won't put you off Once you don't find it disgusting. What star is that Small companies are making insects and they package them. One person I know puts them in dog food. So that's one way to get people to eat it is to have their pets eat it first. We're looking at these various routes that we can use. A lot of Americans will try a cookie if you say it's 20% insect flour. The biggest problem with getting insects more into the world is cost, because they're not mass produced. If we mass produced insects like Pepsi Cola or, you know, Kraft or somebody made a serious attempt to do this, they would produce insects on a large scale. They'd use all the tricks they use with cows to make it cheap to breed better insects. So one of the problems is to convince a big company to say we're going to get down this road, because there's a lot of business and potential public health.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up after the break, Will one of the world's biggest food companies make that leap?

[Unknown]

So when you say insects, the first thing I want to know is what kind of insects? And the second thing I want to know is, do you have to see the insect? Can the insect be hidden?

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio we'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by ebay. Picture this. You're halfway through a DIY car, fix tools scattered everywhere, and you realize you're missing a part. It's okay, because whatever it is, it's on ebay. Brakes, headlights, cold air intakes. Whatever you need. Guaranteed to fit. No more crossing your fingers and hoping you ordered the right thing. All the parts you need at prices you will love. Guaranteed to fit every time. Ebay Things people love Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Avocado Green Mattress. Dream of better, better sleep, better health, and a better planet. Avocado Green Mattress is on a mission to redefine rest with products that deliver exceptional comfort and sustainability. Their certified organic mattresses, pillows and bedding are thoughtfully crafted with Goals Certified Organic Latex and Gotz Certified Organic cotton and wool. These natural materials not only cradle you in softness, but also promote healthier sleep by reducing exposure to harmful chemicals from synthetic alternatives. Plus, organic materials are naturally more breathable, keeping you cool and comfortable all night long. But the dream doesn't stop there. As a certified B Corp. And proud member of one percent for the planet, Avocado actively champions environmental causes and social responsibility. When you choose Avocado, you're choosing to sleep better and dream bigger. Visit avocadomatress.com to shop organic mattresses, pillows, bedding, and more. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Amica Insurance. At Amica, you will receive coverage with compassion. When you choose Amica, they'll take the time to explain your options for auto, home and life insurance. You can feel confident knowing that they'll protect what matters most to you. Amica will provide you with peace of mind. Go to ameca.com and get a quote. Today I got to wondering what would it take to persuade a big food manufacturer to get into the business of edible insects?

[Unknown]

My name is Emily Kimmins and I'm the Senior manager of the sensory and consumer science team for Kraft Heinz.

[Stephen Dubner]

Since we spoke with Kimmins in 2020, she has a new job title. She is now the R and D Lead for Sensory and Consumer science at Kraft Heinz, which is one of the world's biggest food and beverage companies. They make Kraft Mac and cheese, Philadelphia cream cheese, Oscar Mayer hot dogs, and dozens of other products you have likely run across.

[Unknown]

So I'm in charge of the taste tests for any new innovations that are coming out across all the brands in US And Canada.

[Stephen Dubner]

This means managing the company's professional tasters.

[Unknown]

We can only ask our professional tasters to work for Two hours. Because even though we use them as analytical instruments, they really are just human. So if you ask them to taste more than, let's say, 10 to 12 macaroni and cheeses in a two hour period, it all starts to taste the same. And then we'll do outside consumer panels in the evening. All we ask consumers to do is react. Just, do you like it? Do you not like it?

[Stephen Dubner]

Kimmin says that simply surveying consumers about a potential new product, something with insects, maybe isn't useful.

[Unknown]

Consumers need something physical to touch and taste and hold onto to tell you what they like and what they don't like. And the more different things you can give them, the richer your information's gonna be.

[Stephen Dubner]

So when it comes to new food ideas, volume is important because it's usually.

[Unknown]

Only about 10% that ends up making it out on the market. They may be really good ideas, but there's something that gets in the way. There's ingredients that aren't available. It's just too expensive to manufacture it. There's consumers that are really interested, but not enough consumers to really make it make sense as a business.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay, so when we say insects, Emily Kimmins of Kraft Heinz says, what?

[Unknown]

So when you say insects, the first thing I want to know is what kind of insects. And the second thing I want to know is, do you have to see the insect? Can the insect be hidden? What form is the insect in? Maybe a worm can look happy and be, you know, maybe worms are okay, but cockroach is never okay. And is it cricket flour or am I eating a physical? Big old cricket? All of those things matter. And it also matters what we're used to. So depending on where you live in the world, eating insects might be completely fine. Already part of my diet, no big deal. Give me some more insects.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Have you heard about the insect cheeses?

[Stephen Dubner]

That again, is the economist Sandro Ambuil.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

There's two somewhat well known insect cheeses in, I think Sicily. They eat what's called casa Marzu.

[Stephen Dubner]

Actually, it's Sardinia where they eat casu.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Marzu, which is cheese that they let sit. And then flies come and lay their eggs into the cheese. And then you have the maggots crawling around and people eat that cheese with the maggots.

[Stephen Dubner]

In some parts of Germany, meanwhile, the.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Germans have mite cheese, so they have living mites in the cheese.

[Stephen Dubner]

Before you turn up your nose at the notion of eating insect cheese, especially if you're an American, do you know what beef cattle raised in the US Are often fed?

[Sandro Ambuhl]

It's chicken Litter. So the feces of chicken are processed and are then fed to cattle. And then you eat the cattle that have been fed on chicken.

[Stephen Dubner]

All of this may or may not make the transition to insects more palatable for a company like Kraft Heinz.

[Unknown]

If we're talking US And Canada, yeah. The biggest concern is the ick factor. You need to understand how you can overcome the ickiness of the thought behind, I'm going to be eating some insects. That's the biggest thing. We have to make sure we can get it into people's mouths before they can judge whether they actually like it or don't like it. One of the biggest tricks that we have is blending familiar with unfamiliar. So if you can blend it with something that they already know they already like, you have a better chance of getting new flavors into their repertoire, like new fruits combined with strawberries. You'll see strawberry kiwi, you see strawberry goji berries, strawberry acai berry, because, well, I like strawberries. So I'm willing to try whatever the other new thing is, as long as it's still with strawberries.

[Stephen Dubner]

And, of course, not all consumers think alike.

[Unknown]

So there are classic consumers that say, don't touch my product. I love it. I want it exactly the way it is. I want it the same every time I get it everywhere in the world. For instance, that's a Heinz ketchup. I want Heinz ketchup to always taste the same. It's familiar, it's comforting, it's trusting.

[Stephen Dubner]

So we probably shouldn't expect Heinz to be slipping any insects in their ketchup, at least knowingly.

[Unknown]

Then you have other consumers that might be more adventurous. Even Philadelphia cream cheese. They might be more adventurous consumers. They're dipping stuff in it. Cricket cream cheese. That could be a thing.

[Stephen Dubner]

Does Kimmins really think insects are viable, even for a big mainstream company like Kraft Heinz? We asked her to rate the probability, with 1 being definitely and 10 being no way.

[Unknown]

I think for the general food world, it's probably about a 5, because there are people in the world that eat it. It is available. There are products that I can buy on the Internet right now. It's not that inconceivable. I think for Kraft Heinz, it would be a little bit harder. I think it would be at least a seven. But still possible. Yeah, it's still possible. You're not wasting your time if you use a different language, too, like, oh, this came from Japan, like edamame. You know, those are soybeans. Well, it's edamame. It sounds fancy. I think that Might be a actually brilliant way to do it. Make it sound exotic, make it sound adventurous.

[Stephen Dubner]

Insect in Japanese, by the way, is kanchu.

[Unknown]

It sounds great. A Khonshu brownie sounds delicious.

[Stephen Dubner]

And of course, there is this classic move.

[Unknown]

When in doubt, cover it with chocolate. It always helps.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's also worth keeping in mind how tastes change over time.

[Unknown]

I have my great grandmother's recipe book, and there's a whole section on squirrels. And I would never think of making squirrel or serving it to my children today, but my mother and grandmother ate it all the time.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what we find repugnant in one era may be standard in another. This concept holds not just for what we eat, but what we believe, how we behave. Slavery, for instance, was for centuries treated like a standard business practice. On the other hand, consider life insurance. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was considered, as the sociologist Viviana Zelizer once wrote, a profanation which transformed the sacred event of death into a vulgar commodity. If we are capable of making such big shifts in matters like these, can it really be so hard to make insects appealing? In 2021, the European Union's Food Safety Authority ruled that mealworms are safe for human cons. Two years later, the EU approved the sale of insect proteins in powdered and dried forms for human consumption. But what about human demand? Here again is Sandro Ambul.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

I mean, judging from my own reaction and the reaction of many people I have seen, I do think it's going to be very, very hard to convince even a sizable minority of the population to consume insects on a regular basis.

[Unknown]

I mean, no one thinks of kiwi or mango as being this very unusual food, but 50 years ago, they seemed very odd and very scary. So will crickets and millworms and things like that eventually become mainstream? Partly, if they taste good.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

I mean, they're not as disgusting as you'd think, but they're just not very good. I think it's much more likely that everybody would become a vegetarian than it is that people would start eating insects on a broad scale. But I do need to say I think sushi was at a similar point in the US a couple of decades ago.

[Unknown]

Things tend to start in restaurants first and then filter their way down from fine dining to casual restaurants to fast food, and then end up in retail. There's always going to be adventurous people that are willing to try lots of different things, and then if it tastes good and they're willing to say, hey, try this, it tastes good.

[Emily Kimmins]

Okay, so we have the guacamole we add some insects. We add grasshoppers or black ants.

[Paul Rozin]

Right on top.

[Emily Kimmins]

Yeah, they go on top.

[Stephen Dubner]

Oh, boy. Wow.

[Emily Kimmins]

Just try them. They're not as disgusting as they look.

[Paul Rozin]

If people didn't know what they were eating. I just tried this. They think it was pretty good.

[Stephen Dubner]

I met up with Paul Robinson, the Penn psychologist, scholar of disgust, insect advocate at the Black Ant, a modern Mexican restaurant in Manhattan's East Village. Are you hungry?

[Paul Rozin]

I can eat.

[Stephen Dubner]

The chef is Ileana Sermeno.

[Emily Kimmins]

We also have the chapulinas dish, which is the grasshoppers with avocado and fresh cheese. We also have the chapulines croquettes, which we make mix the croquettes and baby grasshoppers.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can I prepare you one, Paul?

[Paul Rozin]

Sure.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm gonna give you a little bit bigger dose of ant than I.

[Paul Rozin]

How many ants are you giving me?

[Stephen Dubner]

That looks to be about a hundred ants, wouldn't you say? Maybe they're pretty small.

[Val Curtis]

Yeah.

[Paul Rozin]

This may be a good percentage of my total ant.

[Stephen Dubner]

I can't keep my hands off the grasshoppers. They're addictive. They're like. They're like cocktail peanuts.

[Paul Rozin]

You can buy these in stores. Just dried grasshoppers. They won't be seasoned this well.

[Emily Kimmins]

I'm gonna grab one, too.

[Paul Rozin]

They have good texture now. You have a little salt in there.

[Stephen Dubner]

Right.

[Paul Rozin]

What else?

[Emily Kimmins]

Some chili and garlic.

[Paul Rozin]

You're a creative chef. Thank you.

[Stephen Dubner]

So do you personally feel it's your mission to make insect eating more acceptable, or you just happen to land here?

[Emily Kimmins]

I do like grasshoppers. You go through Mexico streets and you can, like, grab a pound of grasshoppers and sit in it while you walk. It's healthier than chips and stuff like that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is there any advice you could give generally on the idea of making insects more palatable to people?

[Emily Kimmins]

So when they come for a first time, I would try to give them the croquettes. It's a little bit more soft. They're delicious. They have cheese, a more similar taste. Then if they want to feel more adventurous, I will send, like, a whole dish of crickets or grasshoppers. I try to push it a little bit at a time.

[Paul Rozin]

Our thing Right. Right now is black soldier flies.

[Emily Kimmins]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Rozin]

Black soldier fly larvae are the best because they are. It's not that they taste better, but they have a short life cycle. They're. They're great for the future.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you'll take the ants and the grasshoppers and the ant flecked guacamole home?

[Paul Rozin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

Thank you very much and it was a great meal.

[Emily Kimmins]

Oh yeah, sure.

[Val Curtis]

Thank you.

[Paul Rozin]

All right, if I come back, I'll bring you some blood. Black Soldier fars I have 10 pounds of them because that's the smallest amount I could get.

[Stephen Dubner]

That meal I shared with Paul Rosin at the Black Ant was in February of 2020. I'm sorry to report that the Black Ant closed last year. I'm even more sorry to report that Val Curtis, the British hygiene scholar we interviewed, died in October of 2020. She was 62. The cause was cancer. I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode from the Freakonomics Radio Archives. We will be back soon with a brand new episode. Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Matt Hickey with help from Daphne Chen and updated by Dalvin Abuaji. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff includes Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarz, Morgan Levy, Neal Carruth, Sarah Lilly, Teo Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. [e-mail] where we publish transcripts and show notes. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.

[Paul Rozin]

The front legs taste the best. The gourmets know that you're serious, no.

[Unknown]

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side.

[Val Curtis]

Of Everything.

[Sandro Ambuhl]

Stitcher.

[Stephen Dubner]

Freeconomics Radio is sponsored by the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs. Maybe your idea of a trip abroad is an all inclusive cruise, or exploring museums and local delicacies, or climbing the planet's tallest peaks. There's a whole world of wonder out there and you need a valid passport to go. So check, apply for or renew yours at least six months before you travel. And visit travel.state.gov for State Department guidance on passports, country specific safety info, and more. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Audi. It's not every day you get excited by a new car, but the all new Audi Q6E Tron is more than a new EV. It's a new way to experience driving. Embrace the thrill of the drive with effortless power, serious acceleration and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. With an all new panoramic digital stage and legendary Audi performance, it's impossible not to love the all new Audi Q6E Tron. Learn more at audiusa.com Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Whole Foods Market. At Whole Foods Market, you can save every day. Look for the yellow, low price signs that help you save money without compromising the quality you expect from Whole Foods Market. Find them with their responsibly farmed Atlantic salmon, no antibiotics ever, ground beef and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Plus more throughout the store. So basically, wherever you see yellow, you know you're saving money. Save on the best of spring with great everyday prices at Whole Foods Market.