As “comfort foods” become increasingly available in an environment, as it has over the last half century, one expectation is that those with depression will increasingly seek out those foods for comfort, or to improve mood. Consumption of the comfort foods, often high in fat and sugar, can lead to improved emotional states, and yet intake of these foods in response to emotions has been linked to the rising rates in obesity. As expected, those with the least self-control for choosing comfort foods would thus be at the greatest risk for both disorders. Consistent with this expectation, our findings show that those who are obese and severely depressed had the least self-control for choosing a dessert and fried food, as measured by a delay discounting task. Given that food choice and food intake are related,Anacetrapib the findings presented here provide one possible explanation for the bi-directional relationship between obesity and depression—both are associated with reduced self-control for foods that simultaneously contribute most to obesity, and can have the effect of making a person feel better when depressed. Interestingly, the analysis for statistical significance showed that for all food types, atypical symptoms of depression were predictive of delay discounting, with greater atypical symptoms being associated with less self-control or more impulsive food choices for the dessert, fried food, fruit, and vegetable. A national survey of 43,093 adults found that the prevalence of major depression with atypical features was about 40% higher than that of depression without atypical features. In this study, variables that predicted atypical depression appear to mirror the growth of obesity and over eating in our society as a whole highlighting the potential role of brain-environment interactions. In addition,Dexrazoxane hydrochloride recent evidence suggests an association between preference for sweet taste and depression in obese patients, and other evidence suggests that the hedonic response to sweet taste is associated with elevated sensitivity to the mood altering effects of sweet-tasting foods. The findings presented here suggest further that depression is associated with reduced self-control for these types of foods that taste sweet, such as a fruit. Traditionally, choosing the smaller immediate reward is interpreted as the impulsive choice; choosing the larger delayed reward is the self-controlled choice. Using food types as the target choice, it could be argued that choosing an immediate smaller food portion is instead the more self-controlled choice; choosing the delayed larger portion is the impulsive choice. This could explain the paradoxical finding that among those without depression, lean participants showed greater impulsivity for the dessert food than those who were overweight or obese. However, this paradoxical finding was the only anomaly in the data that would be consistent with such an explanation across all food types. For all other food types, self-control showed no significance across BMI categories that would be expected based on this alternate interpretation. Instead, with “comfort foods” as the target choice, the results for those with severe depression are most consistent with the standard interpretation that the immediate reward is the impulsive choice, and the larger delayed reward is the self-controlled choice.