The Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima Fatty (OLETF) rat, an outbred strain of Long Evans Tokushima Otsuka rat (LETO) that lacks CCK-1 receptor expression, is hyperphagic and develops obesity and type-2 diabetes. The present study sought to assess how OLETF rats alter intake, preference, and conditioned preference of palatable solutions after acute food deprivation. Our results show that after 24 hr chow restriction LETO rats increase both sucrose intake and two-bottle sucrose preference relative to their free-fed baseline, whereas OLETF rats do not increase sucrose intake (0.3M or 1.0M sucrose) or preference (1.0M vs. 0.3M sucrose) when food-deprived. In contrast, OLETF rats exhibit a higher conditioned flavor preference when sucrose is used as unconditioned stimulus (US) relative to LETO rats, whether overnight food-restricted (81% vs. 71% for OLETF and LETO rats, respectively) or free-fed (82% vs. 54% for OLETF and LETO rats, respectively) on test. When a non-caloric saccharin solution is used as US, OLETF rats show a higher preference for the saccharin-associated flavor relative to LETO rats when non-deprived (76% vs. 58% for OLETF and LETO rats, respectively), however neither strain shows differential conditioned flavor preference for saccharin in the deprivation state on test. These findings suggest that OLETF rats fail to integrate post-absorptive and orosensory effects of sucrose in a conditioning setting to influence intake. Thus, it appears that OLETF rats form preferences for sucrose based largely on orosensory and hedonic properties of the solution, rather than caloric value.