Chapter 9 - Social acceptability of radical food innovations

Abstract

Radical and disruptive innovations have always been front and center of food production. In the last centuries, and especially since the mid-1900s, societal concerns about such innovations have been increasing. It appears that consumers balance a desire for authenticity related to traditional production systems, with convenience and an ever more digital lifestyle. In the current chapter, several generic insights into how the public responds to disruptive and radical food innovations are presented. After that, we focus on the current knowledge of how the public responds to several currently emerging innovations that can roughly be divided into the search for novel proteins and the convergence of information technology and microelectronics with food production and marketing.