LEARNED CONTROLS OF INGESTIVE BEHAVIOR

During the 25 year history of the Columbia Appetitive Seminar there ha ve been many notable developments in ingestive behavior research. One area of rapid progress concerns learned controls of feeding behavior. During the 1960's and 1970's most research related to food learning fo cused on conditioned flavor aversions. While it was assumed that anima ls also learned to prefer foods based on their positive nutritive cons equences, there were few experimental demonstrations of this effect. E xamples often cited involved animals learning to prefer a flavor assoc iated with recovery from illness or a vitamin deficiency. There were i solated reports in the 1960's of nutrient infusions increasing flavor preference and acceptance, but it wasn't until the 1970's that nutrien t-based learning was firmly established, and not until the 1980's and 1990's investigated in detail. This brief review highlights some of th e major findings of nutrient-based learning. Other important aspects o f food learning (social, cultural, ecological, environmental) are not discussed here. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.