Enduring social enhancement of rats' preferences for the palatable and the piquant☆
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Cited by (69)
Socially conditioned flavor preferences with fluids: Transfer with solid foods, palatability, and testing constraints
2020, Physiology and BehaviorCitation Excerpt :A naïve rat (observer) will prefer flavors previously consumed by an experienced rat (demonstrator) when given the opportunity to briefly interact with the demonstrator prior to the preference testing [2-7]. Food preferences learned by social interaction are robust and powerful enough to reverse not only previous established food preferences [8] but also previous learned food aversions [9]. Moreover, social acquired food preferences can be established even when observer and demonstrator rats are unfamiliar with each other [10].
Why is piquant/spicy food so popular?
2018, International Journal of Gastronomy and Food ScienceCitation Excerpt :Or, as Paul Bloom puts it in his best-selling book How Pleasure Works: “Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce” (Bloom, 2011, p. 52, as cited in Gorman, 2010). That said, there is some evidence that chimps and rats can both acquire a liking for piquant foods following social exposure to others eating such stimuli (Galef, 1989; Rozin and Kennel, 1983). According to Fraenkel (1959), capsaicin should be considered a secondary plant substance, one that is produced by plants in order to prevent their predation by insects (this ecological phenomenon also known as ‘directed deterrence’; Tewksbury and Nabhan, 2001).
Social influences on food neophobia in nonhuman animals
2018, Food Neophobia: Behavioral and Biological InfluencesRelationship of 6-n-propylthiouracil taste intensity and chili pepper use with body mass index, energy intake, and fat intake within an ethnically diverse population
2015, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and DieteticsA case study in behavioral analysis, synthesis and attention to detail: Social learning of food preferences
2012, Behavioural Brain ResearchCitation Excerpt :For example, when we maintained rats ad libitum on both cinnamon- and cocoa-flavored food and for 1 week before giving them 30 min/day to interact with demonstrator rats fed either cinnamon- or cocoa-flavored food, we still saw massive effects of the food fed to demonstrators on the food choices of their observers. Changes in observers’ food preferences seem to result from exposure to food-related cues in the social context provided by the presence of a demonstrator [35]. To identify the nature of the contextual cues rendering demonstrators effective in altering their observers’ food preferences, we exposed observers to demonstrators treated in four different ways: (1) we anesthetized powdered-face demonstrators, rolled their faces in either cinnamon- or cocoa-flavored diet and then presented their faces to observers. (
Comparison of sensory, physiological, personality, and cultural attributes in regular spicy food users and non-users
2012, AppetiteCitation Excerpt :Another potential explanation for discordant responses to spicy foods is that cultural beliefs facilitate hedonic shifts leading to greater pleasure from their consumption. Attempts to induce preferences for spicy foods in animal models have had limited success (e.g., mice (Simons, Dessirier, Jinks, & Carstens, 2001) and rats (Rozin, Grass, & Berk, 1979)) except under conditions where there is social induction via forming close personal relationships with humans (e.g., chimpanzees (Rozin & Kennel, 1983)) or repeated exposure to same-species-peers consuming piquant foods (e.g., rats (Galef, 1989)). This suggests that social interactions may contribute to the acquisition of a preference for spicy foods, as has been demonstrated for other facets of the diet (Kikuchi & Watanabe, 2000; van den Bree, Przybeck, & Robert Cloninger, 2006).
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Support for this research was provided by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the McMaster University Research Board.