Animal flesh
Read the 4 animal flesh items: raw mean, concrete examples, missing responses and interpretation limits.
Add the 4 numeric 1–6 ratings and divide by 4, rounding to one decimal. Any unscored response withholds this part’s mean. The eight means are separate; no total, norm or cutoff is calculated.
What the animal-flesh items cover
- This FDS part contains four source items about animal cartilage, seeing raw meat, a steak that is still bloody inside and seeing a whole pig en brochette. Rate the disgust the imagined situations evoke, rather than whether you actually eat those foods. The source wording names specific scenes; it does not provide a general measure of your attitude toward animals.
- A response may involve appearance, texture, familiarity, dietary practices or other personal context. The four-item mean does not separate those possible contributions. If a situation is difficult to imagine or you do not want to consider it, the unscored option is available; you do not need to try, touch or view anything.
The four-item raw mean
- All four ratings must be numeric from 1 to 6 for this part’s mean. Ratings of 1, 2, 3 and 6 sum to 12, so the mean is 12 ÷ 4 = 3.0. Four ratings of 3 also give 3.0 with a different response pattern. Your result shows both the chosen options and numeric coverage so the single value does not stand alone.
- One unscored answer leaves this part at fewer than four numeric items, and its mean is not calculated. It is not filled with zero or a midpoint. Other fully rated FDS parts remain available. There is no conversion into an animal-flesh disgust type, a percentage of disgust or a population percentile.
How to read greater or lesser ratings
- A greater raw mean indicates greater reported disgust for these four scenes on this response scale. It does not establish that meat in general is more unpleasant to you, or that a person with a lower mean is less sensitive in every food context. The result is limited to these stated items.
- The scale supplies no universal normal interval or clinical cutoff here. A mean of 3.0 is an arithmetic average, not a population norm or proof that your reactions are balanced. One person may rate seeing meat differently from imagining its texture, which is worth retaining instead of reducing everything to a label.
A specific contrast within the part
- You might find seeing raw meat unremarkable while the idea of cartilage in your mouth evokes substantial disgust. That difference can coexist with the same overall mean as another person who gives moderate ratings to all four scenes. Neither pattern permits an inference about culinary knowledge, courage or the quality of a person’s diet.
- Another person may never encounter one of the named foods. A numeric guess could hide that lack of experience; an unscored choice states it more clearly. The guide remains complete when a personal mean is unavailable. Availability of a number is not a requirement to justify or explain a food practice.
Keep related food parts separate
- The fish part includes a whole fish with its head, raw fish, a fresh-fish smell and texture. Those are separate source items from the four animal-flesh scenes. Different responses across the two parts are possible. A mean is not transferred from one to the other, and the two parts are not merged into a meat-avoidance score.
- Poor-hygiene scenes involve other details, such as utensils or food preparation, that need not be part of an animal-flesh reaction. Comparing a concrete pair of items may help you notice a difference, but ranking the eight means does not identify a dominant personality or a food rule to follow.
A counterexample to diet inferences
- Someone can avoid a food for ethical, religious, practical or personal reasons while reporting little disgust at the imagined scene. Another person can feel disgust and still eat related foods in other settings. Thus a raw mean cannot establish vegetarian identity, nutritional adequacy, an allergy or an eating disorder.
- The questions also do not determine whether any real food is safe. Disgust and food safety are different issues, and a low rating is not permission to consume a source-item food. No tasting or exposure exercise is part of this test or needed to understand the result.
An optional way to reflect
- If useful, look back at one pair of responses and privately note which part of the imagined situation mattered: the sight, texture, familiarity or something else. You may leave the reason open. The exercise is about understanding a stated reaction, not reducing it or proving tolerance.
- You can finish after reading the guide. There is no requirement to compare with others, disclose a diet or complete another test. If you want to discuss a real difficulty, describe that difficulty directly rather than presenting an FDS mean as an explanation or diagnosis.
Source, edition and attribution
- The 32 English prompts come from Supplementary Table 2 of García-Gómez L, Romero-Rebollar C, Hartmann C, Siegrist M, Ferreira G, Gutierrez-Aguilar R, Villalpando S and Pacheco-Lopez G (2020), Food Disgust Scale: Spanish Version, Frontiers in Psychology 11:165, DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00165, reused under CC BY 4.0. The document was supplied through NLM’s PMC open-access collection. This page selects the complete English bank and the article’s 1–6 endpoints; the Spanish table’s printed 1–5 format is not used.
- Changes comprise a fresh Chinese working translation from English, optional unscored responses, complete-part missingness handling, one-decimal display and original explanatory readings. This is not the validated Spanish administration or a validated Chinese version, and source research does not validate this website. No original-author endorsement, norm, diagnosis or food-safety judgment is implied.