Cancer and its treatments cause metabolic alterations and side effects that affect patients' nutritional status and food acceptability. This study evaluated acceptance of culinary preparations and its association with symptoms caused by cancer treatments in patients from a clinic specialized in oncologic treatment. This is a transversal, descriptive and quantitative study. Patients had their clinical data collected and evaluated three culinary preparations using the five-point hedonic scale. Preparations were considered as accepted when at least 60% of responses were ≥4 (liked and liked very much). For the analysis of acceptance and relation between variables, the analysis of variance and Tukey's tests were used, considering p<0.05. Twenty-three patients participated in the study, 87.0% were female and 65.2% were overweight. Breast (56.5%) and lung (17.4%) cancers were the most prevalent diagnosis. Most participants were under chemotherapy treatment (52.2%) and reported gastrointestinal discomfort (61.0%). There was statistically significant association between chemotherapy and dysgeusia (p<0.01), early satiety and global evaluation of ginger cake with flaxseed (p=0.049), xerostomia and texture of Chocolícia cream (p=0.050) and dysgeusia and global evaluation of the same preparation (p=0.045). All the recipes developed were well accepted, and dysgeusia was the symptom that interfered the most in its acceptance.
neoplasms; drug therapy; nutritional status; diet