Learned food aversions in the progression of cancer and its treatment.

The studies included in this chapter examine the learned food aversions that develop as a result of cancer and cancer treatment. Clinical studies have shown that cancer patients can develop learned aversions to a novel ice cream flavor when it is consumed before drug treatments that produce nausea and vomiting. They also provided evidence that patients can acquire aversions to food in their usual diets when these foods are eaten before similar drug treatments. Observations in the clinic, supported by complementary studies with animal models, suggest that learned aversions are more likely to arise to protein foods than to other nutrient sources and that the presentation of a novel food in association with drug treatments may act as a "scapegoat" in blocking the development of aversions to foods in the normal diet. Laboratory studies using transplantable tumors in rats have shown that tumor growth can be associated with the development of strong aversions to the available diet. These aversions are specific to the diet eaten during tumor growth and they appear to play a causal role in the development of tumor-induced anorexia. The food aversions apparent in animals with certain experimental tumors point to physiological consequences of tumor growth that act as unconditioned stimuli in taste aversion conditioning. The identification of these changes and development of methods for correcting them are the current goals of our research in this area.