Learning to Eat vitamins and Minerals How do animal select a diet that provide all of the vitamins and minerals they need? To answer this question, researchers have studied how dietary deficiencies influence diet selection. Two patterns of results have emerged: one for sodium and one for the other essential vitamins and minerals. When an animal is deficient in sodium. it develops an immediate and compelling preference for the taste of sodium salt. In contrast, an animal that is deficient in some vitamin or mineral other than sodium must learn to consume foods that are rich in the missing nutrient by experiencing their positive effects; this is because vitamin and minerals other than sodium normally have no detectable taste in food. For example, rats maintained on a diet deficient in thiamine (vitamin B) develop an aversion to the taste of that diet and if they are offered two new diets, one deficient in thiamine and one rich in thiamine, they often develop a preference for the the taste of the thiamine-rich diet over the ensuing days