Paul Rozin
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
I've never eaten roadkill, but I would eat human flesh.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Well, the answer is yes. Paul Rosen again? For example, a lot 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
to acceptance of this, which is a very efficient way of delivering water.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
especially in 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
And how would these insects be consumed? 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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. And what are the most popular insects? Often beetles, things like mealworms, larvae of insects, and grasshoppers. So in Mexico, chapulines is what they're called. You can get a taco filled with grasshoppers.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Medical students are disgusted by cadavers, but after they've dissected a cadaver, they're much less disgusted.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
But it does seem that imposed incentives may block it sometimes, but on other occasions, they may not.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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 disgusted. They don't taste like meat, but they can be crunchy and a little nutty tasting. And so the taste won't put you off once you don't find it disgusting. What started is that small companies... are making insects and they package them.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
If we mass-produced insects, like if 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,
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
We're going to get down this road because there's a lot of business and potential public health.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Nobody studied disgust 50 years ago. I did sort of start the modern interest in disgust. Darwin wrote about disgust quite a bit. That's Paul Rosen. R-O-Z-I-N. People call me Rosen, but that's not right.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Much of my work is about how humans relate to food from anthropological, evolutionary, and psychological perspectives.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
If people didn't know what they were eating, just try this.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
This may be a good percentage of my total land.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
You can buy these in stores, just dried grasshoppers. They won't be seasoned this well.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
They have a good texture. You have a little salt in there, right?
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Our thing right now is black soldier flies. 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 great for the future.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
All right, if I come back, I'll bring you some black soldier flags. I have 10 pounds of them because that's the smallest amount I could get.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
I don't like really stinky cheese. Razin calls himself a partial vegetarian. 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
I will eat calves' liver, which I love in the United States because it's a waste product. Nobody kills a calf for the liver.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
I'm curious what it tastes like, whether I'd be disgusted by it. I don't think so, but I could be.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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. 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Whereas exocannibalism, which is very different, is eating your enemies.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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 OK.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
Paul Rosin agrees. 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. And that's what led to his interest in disgust. What got me interested is that meat is the most favored food of humans that also causes the most tabooed food.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
So I got curious why we should have such a strong negative emotion about a food that is highly nutritious and highly favored. Can you quickly define disgust for me? 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
There are actually two disgust 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 raising of the upper lip. And that overlaps a little with the anger expression.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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 area is 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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
It does seem that when moral violations are called disgusting, they often have a bodily component to them, like an axe murderer, not a bank robber.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
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.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
There are enormous variations in disgust.
Freakonomics Radio
EXTRA: The Downside of Disgust (Update)
I'm a massive dog lover, but I would eat dog out of curiosity.