During a marketing class we invited two guest speakers - expert in the insect-based food world - and we prepared a tasting session. Students were not informed in advance neither about the topic of the class nor about the identity of the guest speakers.
At the beginning of the class, we asked students several questions about novel food and entomophagy and about their “willingness to eat” insects. After the filling out of a first quick survey, the two guest speakers were officially presented to the class. The field experts talked for approximately one hour about entomophagy and its main benefits, showing data, examples and several stats to support their reasoning. Further, students were asked to solve a brief groupwork, where the company asked to help them in designing a communication campaign to spread the awareness and the willingness to eat their insect-based products among the youngest. Therefore, in order to solve the task, students looked for examples and information on the web, becoming more familiar with this interesting new world.
After the speech of the guests and for the whole time dedicated to the group project, students had the possibility to taste insect-based snacks. In particular, chips, chocolate and other small snacks were available for students to taste. At the end of the class, students filled in a second survey where we asked whether they had effectively eaten insect-based food and whether they were more “willing to eat insects” after the lecture of the experts.
Interestingly, participants were reluctant to eat insect-food at the very beginning of the class. However, after the class, people declared to be more willing to eat insect-based food also in the future, pointing out how concepts such as sustainability, environmental respect, healthy food might also play a role in shifting towards this new eating habit.
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