Taste control over sodium intake in sodium deficient rats

Discrimination and preference tests have shown that 0.3 molar sodium chloride (NaCl) and 0.03 molar sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) appear to taste very similar to the normal rat. In this study, it is shown that when sodium deficiency is induced by formalin injection rats accept equal amounts of these solutions although the former contains 5 times as much sodium per unit volume as the latter. It is suggested that sodium depletion produces a palatability change for sodium salts and that the amount of the solution an animal will ingest is determined by the probability rather than by sodium repletion.