Changes in food valence of regular diet depending on the experience of high and low preference food.

Aims: Eating disorders represent an aspect of mental illness involving failure to control eating behaviors. Food valence plays a regulatory role in eating behaviors and changes with eating experiences. Failure to control food valence may be associated with eating disorders. This study presents a newly developed behavior task-food reservation task, which assesses changes in food valence.

Methods: Over three consecutive days, mice were fed a regular diet for 30 min and subsequently were offered either palatable or low-palatable foods for 30 min.

Results: Mice decreased regular diet consumption on the days that it was followed by a palatable food-sweet chocolate (SC) or cheese (CH) and increased it when it was followed by a low-palatable food-bitter (dark) chocolate (BC). Our findings indicate that mice can change regular diet consumption by learning whether it will be followed by a palatable or low-palatable food. This suggests that palatable food devaluated the food valence of regular diet, whereas low-palatable food evaluated it.

Conclusion: We developed a new food reservation task, which allows to assess experience-dependent change in the food valence of a regular diet. This task will contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying those changes.