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In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, personal hygiene behaviours such as proper handwashing have gained significantly more attention and interpersonal contact is performed with great care. Disgust, as a disease-avoidance mechanism, can play an important role in the promotion of hygiene behaviour. We know from previous research that pathogen disgust can be a predictor of an individual's behaviour in the pandemic. Given that the pandemic greatly affects our food and eating behaviour, the current study aims to add to the existing evidence and to complement it by investigating the role of food-specific disgust in the pandemic. For that, we conducted an online survey in Germany in April 2020, while the pandemic was spreading in Europe. A total of 519 participants completed the survey and provided information about their COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviours and about their food disgust sensitivity. The results show that food disgust sensitivity is an important predictor for an individual's feelings, shopping behaviour, and disease-preventive behaviour related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the success of political measures to fight the pandemic critically depends on the population to support and follow the proposed measures, a better understanding of the factors driving individual behaviour is key. Implications for pandemic management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between people's food disgust sensitivity and their food hygiene behaviour. We asked 1066 participants in Switzerland to complete an online survey. They provided information on how often they performed certain hygiene behaviours, how likely they would be to eat different food items after they had passed their expiration dates, and, using a specific scenario, how they would decide whether milk was safe to drink after they forgot to put it in the refrigerator overnight. We found that food disgust sensitivity was a significant predictor of participants' edibility assessments and their reported frequencies of hygiene behaviour after controlling for age and sex. Our data suggested that food disgust was a strong predictor of food safety behaviour in the domestic kitchen. Learning more about people's behaviour is crucial for the successful design of interventions to improve hygiene behaviour and the prevention of foodborne diseases. • Food disgust sensitivity is a significant predictor of edibility assessments. • Disgust can be used for food safety interventions. • Food disgust sensitivity is a significant predictor of food safety behaviour. • With increasing disgust sensitivity, people choose less invasive assessment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tools that specifically measure food disgust sensitivity are scarce. This gap has been successfully filled with the recently developed eight-item version of the Food Disgust Scale (FDS short). In the present study, we tested the validity of this measure with three behavioural tasks that we designed. Participants ( N  = 108) filled in questionnaires before they tried three products as part of a behavioural task covered as tasting experiment. We presented these products with written scenarios, which aimed to induce disgust. For all three tasks, we found a significant correlation between the amount participants consumed and their FDS short score. In the first task, we presented participants with a meat product ( r  = −0.34, p  < .001); in the second task, it was a banana juice ( r s  = −0.26, p  < .01); and in the final task, we presented participants with an insect product ( r s  = −0.51, p  < .001). A regression analysis confirmed that participants’ FDS short score acted as a significant predictor for eating behaviour in the meat ( ß  = −0.26, p  < .05) and the chocolate task (odds ratio  =  0.51), however, it did not reach statistical significance in the juice task (odds ratio  =  0.66). In this paper, we present two important findings. First, we provide evidence for the influence of food disgust sensitivity on people’s eating behaviour as measured by the amount they consumed. Second, and more importantly, our data support the incremental validity of the FDS short as assessed through its correlation with three behavioural tasks and provide evidence for the suitability of self-report measures such as the FDS short. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present set of studies developed and tested the Food Disgust Picture Scale (FDPS). This is a tool for the assessment of food disgust sensitivity that will measure disgust and predict possible reactions. This eight-picture tool can be used in complement to or as a replacement for currently available text-based measures. In an exploratory Study 1 (N = 57), we constructed a scale consisting of eight pictures. Most of them were taken from validated picture databases. They proved powerful in the assessment of food disgust sensitivity. Study 2 built on these results and refined the scale by substituting pictures from Study 1 with freely available images displaying similar content. The basic structure of the FDPS was then replicated in a bigger sample of Swiss adults (N = 538). Correlational analyses using the eight-item Food Disgust Scale (FDS short), the revised version of the Disgust Scale (DS-R), and the food neophobia scale (FNS) supported the convergent validity of the FDPS. In Study 3 (N = 226), we used a test-retest design to demonstrate the short-term stability of the FDPS. As a result of these studies, the present work provides a short and comprehensive measure of food disgust sensitivity. This novel approach of using pictures to induce a disgust response independently of language significantly facilitates intercultural research on disgust. The FDPS will further contribute to the understanding of food-related disgust and its impact on our food choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Product colour in virtual reality impacts flavour identification in real life. • Seeing chocolate cake but eating lemon cake, 30% indicated tasting chocolate. • Product-atypical colours impeded flavour identification. The use of virtual reality (VR) in sensory science studies can offer new possibilities for experimental design. For instance, VR allows for the modification of visual product properties without changing the product composition. In a set of two augmented virtuality studies, we investigated whether the results we obtained in real-life (RL) settings were comparable to the results we obtained in a VR environment. In Study 1, we transferred an existing sensory science experiment to a VR setting. We invited 100 participants to taste two juices and a piece of cake. In the VR environment, participants saw the product either in its original colour or in a modified, product-atypical colour. After the product tasting, we asked them to identify the most dominant flavour. Participants had more difficulties identifying the flavour when the product was shown in a modified colour than when it was shown in its original colour. In Study 2, we added an RL control condition to facilitate a direct comparison between the two conditions and to verify our findings from Study 1. A chi-square test for association revealed no significant differences between the RL and VR conditions. We conclude that sensory studies can be successfully transferred to VR and obtain a generally similar pattern of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]