German [34]:


### Korean [19]:

1. 구데기 무서워 장 못담굴가 = Goodeogi mooseoweo jang motdamgeunda (one can make soybean paste sauce even in the presence of maggots).

#### Japanese [18]:


Although assigning idioms to categories designated as 'negative', 'neutral', and 'positive' is a subjective exercise that is likely to show some variation depending on who makes the distinction, our view is that of the 40 Finnish idioms related to insects and eating, feeding and food, 20 contained predominantly negative, 9 neutral, and 7 positive information (idioms with seemingly identical meaning, but slightly different wording were not counted separately). Clearly negative are idioms like "Kirpum potku ei paljoo tunnu" and "On niinku kärväne siirapi" while "Kussa vähä kimalaisia, siinaä vähä hunajata" and "Yksin tehty työ on kun tervaa, kaksin kun hunaja" are seen as neutral and positive, respectively. Although we did not have complete comparative lists of insect idioms in connection with food and eating from other languages, what we can nevertheless state with confidence is, that it is the negative content which is always more dominant in Western than Eastern cultures. One idiom each from Korea and Japan has served as an example of the more positive attitudes towards insects in these countries.

#### **4. Discussion**

We need to stress that in Finnish and other languages there are many more idioms referring to insects, spiders, and worms than those we mention in this article. We deliberately selected only idioms that had some connection with food, eating, and digestion. It was, after all, our intention to

demonstrate that the use of these figuratively explicit idioms could affect the attitude of people towards accepting insects as food. Therefore: did our study provide evidence for a role of insect idioms in the mindset of people with Western cultural backgrounds?

Most people would agree that if a happy and smiling one-year-old infant sees and hears another, unrelated baby cry, the mood of the former, happy infant will change and it may also start to cry for no apparent reason other than seeing and hearing another baby cry. Likewise, as Stadler [35] explains, when a customer happens to phone a shop owner and talks with an angry voice (irrespective of the call's content (our addition)), it will affect and change the mood of the recipient. Emotions are copied by mirror neurons and learning is not involved. That repeated emotional stimulation can ultimately alter the emotional right hemisphere of the brain and lead to a deeper unconscious reaction in connection with the appropriate stimulation has originally been postulated by Tsunoda [36], who went as far as claiming that the brains of Japanese people differed from those of Westerners in regard to linguistic, musical, and aesthetic perception because of the greater appreciation of insects by the Japanese.

Duda and Brown [37] thoroughly investigated lateral asymmetry of positive and negative emotions and Schapkin [38] confirmed hemispheric asymmetries in connection with emotional words. Holtgraves and Felton [39] studied hemispheric asymmetries in relation to the processing of negative and positive words and Beraha et al. [40], a year later, examined the hemispheric asymmetry for affective stimulus processing. Finally, Gainotti [41] very recently reviewed the evidence for the role of the right hemisphere in emotion processing. It therefore appears highly likely that frequent exposure to idioms expressing a negative attitude towards consuming insects as food can indeed lead to long-lasting effects and a habitual rejection of insects as a food item. Idioms and proverbs, after all, have been credited with an ability to affect the experience and the behaviour of humans [15].

Given that idioms with references to insects and spiders in Western cultures are predominantly negative, but less so in Eastern cultures [16–19,42], there could therefore be one until now overlooked component of the reasons why people with Western cultural orientation hesitate to accept edible insects. Obviously, semantic and scientific knowledge (of the insect mentioned in an idiom) can "affect the outcome of the degree of mirror" [13], irrespective of a person's dislike or even disgust triggered by the person's exposure to the insect idiom. Rational thoughts and learning can override the inherent and unconscious reaction mediated by mirror neurons. A person familiar with cockroaches, knowing the latter do not transmit or carry diseases will in all likelihood be displaying less disgust than someone who knows little more than that the insect in question is a pest, perhaps clumping it together with lice, fleas, and irritating bugs. Thus, educating the public that the vast majority of all insects represents beneficial species would be a step in the right direction. Phasing out negative insect idioms could also be helpful since it has been shown after Citron et al. [43] that negative idioms are rated as more arousing than positive ones, in line with results from single words.

An aspect not to be ignored is 'familiarity' with insects and other arthropods. Urbanization certainly leads to an increasing alienization regarding insects and one consequence of this is that nowadays fewer people know and use idioms that make reference to insects and other arthropods as seen especially in the cases with English and German speakers when compared, for example, with the Japanese [18]. This, however, does not repudiate our suggestion that insect idioms did and still do affect the attitude with which people contemplate insects and spiders, for firstly, historically many more insect and spider idioms were in use than is now the case [44] and secondly, as with taboos [45], once prejudices and antipathies become established, it takes a very long time before they are abandoned. And in the same vein, once a food habit has taken root, it is difficult to eradicate [46].

#### **5. Conclusions**

In conclusion, to establish insects as a regular food item (even if it is simply as a component of some other food) in countries that in the distant past had given up the consumption of insects and other arthropods and now enjoy no shortage of other food items, is likely to be an uphill struggle. A number of reasons have been documented and predictions on the intentions of eating insect-based

products have recently been formulated [47], but a possible effect of idioms and proverbs in shaping consumers' attitudes towards edible insects and other arthropods has never before been considered as a possible factor—even though the power of words and the role of mirror neurons in connection with emotions has received considerable attention. New idioms appear all the time [48] and perhaps coining some like "forget about the pork when there's a cricket on your fork" or "mealworms and spaghetti is food that makes you happy" can help change attitudes!

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, V.B.M.-R. and A.K.; Methodology V.B.M.-R. And A.K.; Software, not applicable; validation, V.B.M.-R.; Formal analysis, V.B.M.-R.; Investigation, V.B.M.-R. and A.K.; Resources, V.B.M.-R. And A.K.; Data curation, V.B.M.-R.; Writing—original draft preparation, V.B.M.-R.; Writing—review and editing, V.B.M-R.; Visualization, V.B.M.-R.; Supervision, V.B.M.-R.; Project administration, V.B.M.-R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** To complete this study Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow received support from Chuleui Jung of Andong National University's Insect Industry R&D Center via the Basic Science Research Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2018R1A6A1A03024862).

**Acknowledgments:** Both authors wish to express their thanks to the many informants who contributed idioms and shared their knowledge of local lore with us. They also appreciated the comments that they had received by the reviewers on the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests.

#### **References**


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