The present study was designed to investigate the representation of calorie levels in space. Previously an association between numerical magnitude and space has been established, namely, the
Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. The spatial-numerical association
reveals representation of smaller and larger numbers by the left and right sides, respectively. In addition, previous studies showed that spatial arrangement of foods in space affects the food selection behavior. In three experiments, the presence of an association between calorie magnitude and
space was tested to understand how it could potentially affect food selection behavior. Reaction
times were recorded to investigate the speed of information processing. In Experiment 1, locations
of low and high calorie food stimuli were (in)congruent in terms of the space-calorie association. In
Experiment 2, endogenous spatial cues were used to bias attention to investigate if this bias would
lead to formation of the space-calorie association. Finally, Experiment 3 investigated whether green
and red colors evoke approach or avoidance behavior and prevent formation of the space-calorie
association. In all experiments, results revealed lack of an association between space and calorie,
that is, presenting low/high calorie items on the left/right hemispace, respectively, did not modulate the processing speed