ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence that cancer patients may also develop aversions to familiar diet items which they eat before gastrointestinal (GI) toxic chemotherapy and discuss methods for preventing these aversions. Learned food aversions are aversions to specific foods (or tastes) which develop as a result of the association of those foods with unpleasant internal symptoms— such as nausea and vomiting. Subjects in the Experimental Group who consumed Maple Nut ice cream during conditioning had a lower preference for that flavor than those who consumed Hawaiian Delight. The vast majority of previous taste-aversion studies have employed deprived subjects and novel, flavored solutions. A number of differences between our "food" stimuli and our "drink" stimuli could have contributed to the robustness of food aversions. Multiple regression analysis was performed to indicate which variables best predicted the incidence of aversions.
