Preference for specific food flavors-canonically smell and taste, but also texture and appearance- is a key factor that guides appetite towards specific food items and away from others. Those preferences are highly experience-dependent and change over the life course-yet, voluntary changes towards healthier or more sustainable diets are often experienced as difficult, and knowledge on how they can be facilitated remains limited. In recent years, flavor preference acquisition has been approached from various angles; this has resulted in an emerging mechanistic understanding that involves associative learning on the sensory and metabolic level, and brain systems involved in cognition, memory and reward. This symposium will bring together researchers representing these different perspectives to facilitate an integrated view on flavor preference acquisition.