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by gumby 4108 days ago
That article was fascinating but ignored the branding factor. I realize that was intentional, but it is an important factor. What's considered food is basically a cultural/fashion issue, and can be explicitly changed by marketing (e.g. rapeseed can sound horrible in the US but was made acceptable by rebranding it "Canola", and likewise the Chinese gooseberry was much more successful as the Kiwi Fruit).

This is different from passive shifts of food from scorned to fashion, such as lobster or oysters, or how açai briefly swept the Whole Foods set -- that's more of a Veblen issue. Once the technical issues are worked out, someone's going to make a killing (literally I suppose) by rebranding ground up mice and crickets as "Natural Field Protein"

BTW I enjoyed this quote: > "Journalists always ask me what do you say to people that can't get over the psychological hurdle of eating insects?", said Crowley. "I say, 'nothing' - we're not targeting these people. We're targeting people that are receptive to our message, that will be our early adopters."

Good for him!