Garcia and Koelling Taste Aversion Experiments


In the 1950s John Garcia noticed that rats developed an aversion to sweetened water consumed after being being irradiated. Garcia proposed that the sweetened water had become noxious due to the nausea-inducing effects of the radiation. His findings were confirmed by later studies, such as the Garcia and Koelling taste aversion experiment conducted in 1966. The phenomenon of taste aversion can also be seen in humans.