Single-trial exercise-induced taste and odor aversion learning in humans

In the present study, it was investigated whether humans acquire an aversion for a flavor paired with a single bout of exercise, and if so, to what degree this effect requires the experience of gastrointestinal distress. To this end, a total of 58 participants either consumed or merely tasted a specifically flavored solution directly prior to a 30 min running exercise. In both cases this led to a negative shift in subjective liking of the flavor (taste and odor) in comparison to the evaluation of another flavor not explicitly paired with exercise, indicative of a conditioned flavor aversion. The degree of subjectively experienced exercise-related gastrointestinal distress did not predict this negative hedonic shift for the flavor paired with the running exercise, implying that such distress may not be a prerequisite for exercise-induced flavor aversion learning in humans.