Food Technology Neophobia as a Psychological Barrier to Clean Meat Acceptance

Laboratory-grown (or “clean”) meat is structurally similar to traditional meat yet comes with several environmental, health, and ethical benefits compared to regular meat. However, while some people are favorable towards clean meat, others are reluctant to engage with it. We tested whether these marked differences in clean meat acceptance are rooted in pre-test differences in fears of novel food technologies (i.e., food technology neophobia) and valuing the naturalness of food products (i.e., food naturalness importance). In three experiments (total N = 1,169), participants evaluated dishes labelled as either clean or regular meat (counter-balancing dish labels across participants). The findings (Experiments 1-3) consistently demonstrated that only omnivores higher (but not lower) in food technology neophobia evaluated clean meat dishes more negatively than regular meat dishes. We found no support for the moderating role of food naturalness importance in the evaluation of clean (vs. regular) meat dishes. Experiment 2 also included dishes labelled as plant-based meat, revealing that vegetarians and vegans evaluated clean meat dishes considerably more negatively than plant-based dishes, an effect exacerbated among those higher in food technology neophobia. Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that safety concerns, but not naturalness concerns, partly explained why those higher in food technology neophobia evaluated clean meat dishes as less favorable. Taken together, the findings highlight the role of general concerns about the use of new food technology as a psychological barrier to clean meat acceptance.