**4. Vegetarians' Attitudes to Insect Consumption—Neophobia or Respect for Life?**

Insect-based food has a low ecological impact and a high nutritional value, and is thus a potential sustainable alternative for human nutrition [30]. However, consumers' interest in insect-based products is weak [31], as Western food culture generally considers insects disgusting and inappropriate as food [30]. Vegetarians are an under-investigated but interesting population in relation to the consumption of insects. The vegetarian or vegan diets are based on different beliefs about animals that could influence attitudes towards consuming insects in a variety of ways [84,85]. People can fluctuate between different versions of the vegetarian diet. The vegan diet stands out among them, as it is more restrictive than a merely vegetarian diet, since it involves no animal derivatives of any kind [86], and usually entails rather strict ethical positions that are generally very strong in terms of personal identification [87–91]. In a study conducted in Finland, Elorinne et al. [90] examined groups with different diets (vegans, non-vegan vegetarians and omnivores) to compare the consumer's attitude towards insects as food, the influence exerted by social expectations (which the authors call the participants' "subjective norm") on insect consumption, participants' perceived control over their own eating behavior (the three factors underlying Ajzen's "Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)") [92] and the level of food neophobia. Non-vegan vegetarians and omnivores shared similar values, while vegans differed significantly in almost all investigated constructs. In particular, the three groups interpreted the construct of "responsibility" very differently: vegans consider it very important and translate it into the choice of not eating insect-based food, whereas for omnivores and non-vegan vegetarians, responsibility coincides with environmental sustainability. Vegans also consider eating insects to be morally wrong, given their general tendency to consider meat consumption as more of a moral issue than one of sustainability, which leads them to be disgusted [87]. Vegans are also significantly more neophobic than non-vegan vegetarians and omnivores, a finding which the authors maintain may be partly explained by the fact that vegans' stricter moral attitude towards food of animal origin leads them to rule out eating insects more categorically than non-vegan vegetarians do. Unlike omnivores, none of the vegans mentioned disgust as a reason for refusing to consume insects despite their high neophobia scores, while all cited ethical reasons. This does not necessarily mean that disgust does not figure among the reasons, but it is not among the criteria that respondents considered relevant. As the literature testifies, vegans and non-vegan vegetarians tend to express feelings of disgust about meat consumption [90], but the reasons behind this disgust have not been scrutinized. As a result, a choice of an ethical-moral stamp has been confused with a food "phobia".

Among the general population, women are less likely than men to consume insects [93–95]. In the Finnish survey discussed here, highly educated city-dwelling women accounted for most of the sample, which may have influenced the results. However, as the authors point out, more information is needed about the dietarian identity profiles of consumer groups. Food conduct, as the authors emphasize, is not the outcome of an impromptu choice, simply linked to a particular situation. Food conduct is part of a "dietarian career" [77], i.e., dietary schemas that call for consistency [96] and are developed gradually over time, offering support and reinforcing a position that at first seems only exploratory. We believe that investigating this dietarian career can lay the foundations for arriving at the roots of food choices and understanding the principles they reflect.
