Locating calories: Does the high-calorie bias in human spatial memory influence how we navigate the modern food environment?

Human memory appears to be adaptively “biased” towards remembering the locations of (fitness-relevant) high-calorie nutritional resources. It remains to be investigated whether this high-calorie bias in human spatial memory influences how individuals navigate the modern food environment, and whether it is proximally associated with attentional processes. 60 individuals completed computer-based food eye-tracking and spatial memory tasks in a lab setting, as well as a food search and covert food choice task in an unfamiliar supermarket. The high-calorie spatial memory bias was replicated, as individuals more accurately recalled locations of high-calorie relative to low-calorie foods, regardless of hedonic evaluations or familiarity with foods. Although individuals were faster at (re)locating high-calorie (versus low-calorie) items in the supermarket, the bias did not predict a lower search time for high-calorie foods, or a higher proportion of high-calorie food choice. Rather, an enhanced memory for high-calorie food locations was associated with a lower perceived difficulty (i.e. greater ease) of finding high-calorie items in the supermarket, which may potentiate later choice of a high-calorie food. The high-calorie spatial memory bias was also found to be expressed independently of the amount of visual attention individuals allocated to high-calorie versus low-calorie foods. Findings further substantiate the notion that human spatial memory shows sensitivity to the caloric content of a potential resource and automatically prioritizes those with greater energy payoffs. Such a spatial mechanism that was adaptive for energy-efficient foraging within fluctuating ancestral food environments could presently yield maladaptive “obesogenic” consequences, through altering perceptions of food search convenience.