Recommended Citation Palframan, Kristen Marie, "The Impact of Modern Processed and Natural Food Diets on Flavor-Nutrient Learning and Response to

Animals use classical conditioning to learn predictive relationships between flavors and postingestive nutrients, which allows them to regulate their body weights. This is made difficult by modern diets, which have confusing flavor-nutrient relationships due to added fats, sugars, and flavors in processed foods. Cafeteria diets containing a variety of human-typical foods are often used to study the effects of a modern diet in animal models. Foods used in cafeteria diets typically combine aspects such as high-fat high-sugar, variety, and high palatability. However, no past studies have analyzed the effect of variety on flavor-nutrient learning by using only natural foods. In the current study, 36 rats were assigned to three dietary conditions: a processed foods (PF) cafeteria diet, natural foods (NF) cafeteria diet, or chow-only control (CON) diet. After three months on the diets, rats were tested on their ability to learn about new foods and on their response to sweet taste. The rats were first tested with flavor-nutrient conditioning (FNC) to analyze the degree to which they were capable of learnin