The yuck factor of leftovers – How disgust shapes our food waste behaviours

Leftovers fall into the grey zone of “not being considered as food anymore” and thus are more likely to be discarded. Some campaigns to reduce food waste regard leftover management as a probable way to reduce food waste. In this context, different levels and sources of leftovers are defined. However, there is no evidence that leftovers are viewed equally by consumers. In this context, the role of affect over cognitive factors of food waste deserves attention to shed light on what makes people discard their leftovers. We investigate the role of food disgust sensitivity in shaping the rejection of leftovers in an online sample representative of the German population in terms of age and gender (n = 319 participants included in the analysis). Food disgust sensitivity is highly associated with disgust for leftovers. We showed how specific leftover characteristics differently elicit disgust and identified three predictive factors of disgust for leftovers. Leftovers of others were found more disgusting than the own plate leftovers, as well as leftovers that were mixed in the plates. These characteristics also negatively influence the intention to eat the leftovers. We found that individuals with higher disgust sensitivity are less likely to adopt leftover-friendly management behaviours and show intention to use leftovers for a meal. Disgust for stored leftovers was associated with less daily food waste, reported with food waste diaries over two times seven days (n = 113). This is a significant insight with regard to marketing and campaign work: rather than pre-cooking, the recommendation is to eat up.