Study Finds Adults Keep Leftovers Exactly 6.3 Days Until Throwing Them Out Becomes Food's Fault

MADISON, WI—Adults who save leftovers have no intention of eating them. They are instead waiting out a precise "moral transfer threshold" of 6.3 days, after which throwing the food away stops being wasteful and becomes the food's own fault, according to a study released Monday by the Halvorsen Institute for Domestic Food Behavior.

"Before day 6.3, the guilt belongs to the person who cooked too much," said lead researcher Dr. Ifeoma Varga-Lindqvist. "After day 6.3, it legally belongs to the casserole. Not legally. Emotionally. Our lawyers asked me to say emotionally."

The study tracked 412 households over 18 months using refrigerator-mounted cameras. Footage showed subjects opening the fridge door, making eye contact with the container and closing the door again an average of 14 times before disposal. Sixty-one percent sighed at the container, and 8 percent apologized to it. The study describes the confidence interval on the apologies as "wide." The press release describes it as "historic." Baffled reviewed both documents and found the press release to be the more thorough of the two, as it included a chart.

"I'm not going to force it," said Rosalind Ochoa, 47, of Tulsa, Okla., who has stored the same tray of lasagna since Tuesday. "I'm giving the lasagna every opportunity to make the right choice."

A follow-up survey found that 22 percent of respondents feel the lasagna let them down personally. Another 4 percent said they "expected more, given everything."

"I gave it the good shelf, the one by the light," said Teodoro Quan, 63, of Bangor, Maine. "And it just sat there."

The full findings appear in the institute's own journal, Containers & Conscience. The institute has since requested $2.1 million to determine, using a sample size of 412 lasagnas, whether the feeling is mutual.