Recently, economists have revived these notions and reemphasized the importance of impatience as a contributor to obesity (Komlos, Smith, & Bogin, 2004). The modern theory of impatience applied to obesity is not dissimilar to some modern economic theories of drug and alcohol dependence, inasmuch as it emphasizes a description of reinforcers and choice behavior over molecular or neurophysiological explanations. In this view, the preference of the obese (or substance-dependent) patient for shorter time intervals is a simple manifestation of delay discounting wherein greater value is assigned to immediate versus delayed reinforcers.
