ABSTRACT
Animals which ingested a saccharin flavored water while being exposed to gamma rays from a cobalt 60 source avoided the saccharin flavor in subsequent saccharin-water preference tests. The basic demonstration for radiation-induced saccharin aversion which people use differs only slightly from the original Garcia, Kimeldorf and Koelling design. Human radiotherapy patients seldom receive whole body irradiation, they normally receive more than one exposure, and they do not necessarily consume novel tastants before they are exposed. Numerous investigators have shown that familiarity with the taste solution prior to conditioning day markedly attenuates the magnitude and duration of the learned aversion. The attenuating effects of preconditioning saccharin habituation are so strong that the animal model would predict that learned taste aversions in radiotherapy patients would be trivial unless they ate novel foods. The course of recovery for these groups was not statistically different.
