Preferences learned food aversions

Pre-gastric factors can include the appearance of food, its taste and odour, learned preferences, aversions and psychological factors. Mental states such as fear, depression and social interactions can all affect food intake. Such factors are of particular importance to clinicians because they can be manipulated to manage anorectic (anorexigenic) patients. 

Many factors are involved in the control of food intake. Some of the most important factors controlling the amount of food that we eat include environmental factors such as food availability, the characteristics of the food itself (e.g., smell, taste, our eating habits, learned preferences and aversions) as well as other psychological and social factors, including our lifestyle. Although these psychosocial factors are extremely important to the food intake patterns of humans, this section will concentrate on the physiological factors, primarily the role of fat in food intake. 

Food preferences also can be learned, and, like learned aversions, conditioned preferences can be used to evaluate chemosensory abilities. Typically, preferences are induced by pairing the ingestion of a novel flavor with calories (Bolles et al. 1981 Messier White 1984 Booth 1985 Mehiel Bolles 1984, 1988 Simbayi et al. 1985), recovery from nutritional deficiency (Garcia et al. 1967 Zahorik et al. 1974), and recovery from malaise (Green Garcia 1971 Zahorik 1977 Sherman et al. 1983). The novel flavor is subsequently preferred, as are other flavors that subjects perceive as similar to the conditioned stimulus. However,... 

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