[Brakenshire]

It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of people feel icky about fresh tomatoes.

It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there are large parts of the population in the West who actively seek out different experiences. Or, to put it another way, the food market is heavily segmented by interest, class, age, location (national, regional, and metropolitan/rural), and so on. In the short term, you're likely to get movement into early/adventurous adopter parts of the market.

[nate_meurer]

Or any kind of meat -- just a fuckin chuck of animal muscle, tendon, gristle, sometimes even skin.

I think there'd be a lot more vegetarians if everyone had to do their own butchering.

[TylerE]

I suspect there'd be a lot more carnivores if people had to grow their own veggies, too.

[shaftoe]

Actually, butchering has given me a new appreciation for meat and the variety of cuts.

It definitely gets you over the "ew, there's blood in my pack of chicken breasts."

[mhurron]

> I think there'd be a lot more vegetarians if everyone had to do their own butchering

I know I would be. Of course I already knew I would be if I had to raise my own food.

When I look at it the only way I can eat meat is because I can ignore the fact that it was an animal at the point I eat it.

[Nursie]

That's the thing though - it's been there for years (maybe not in the form of cricket flour), and it gets hyped every few months, yet AFAICT there's not been any indication of it being any more than a niche interest.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the sector is really growing this time...

[belorn]

I can't speak about the other foods on that list, but half-rotted herring is far from a mainstream food in Scandinavia. It more or less a ritual in the fall, in which people eats it while drinking a lot of Vodka and beer.

[davidw]

I always like to bring visitors to Padova down to the piazza for drinks. On some evenings, there's a guy who cooks up delicious octopus that you eat from a plate with toothpicks. My kids love this, and happily slurp up the tentacles and then ask for more. So do I, now, but it did take some getting used to.

[philwelch]

I do have the same reaction to prawns and I did grow up with them.

[7952]

People feel icky about fresh tomatoes? Really?

[smorrow]

Tomatoes are so bitter I'd assume they were poisonous if I didn't know about other people eating them.

I can't think of anything else that's even close to tomatoes. I don't touch beer or coffee with a ten-foot pole either, but tomatoes are worse even than that.

There's a chemical(s) in raw tomatoes that most people just aren't able to taste. Cooking alters it in some way; I like tomato soup and stuff, and was very surprised to learn, at 25, that most people find tomatoes and tomato soup taste similar, when they couldn't be more different to me.

Liking tomatoes is basically like being colour blind, except that they're a majority, which makes the non-colour blind people the weird ones.