Integration of environment and nutrition in life cycle assessment of food items: opportunities and challenges

This report is the outcome of a consensus-building project to agree on best practices for environmental and nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methodology, and identify future research needs. The project involved 30 nutritional and environmental LCA researchers from 18 countries. It focused on the assessment of food items (as opposed to meals or diets).Best practice recommendations were developed to address the intended purpose of an LCA study and related modeling approach, choice of an appropriate functional unit, assessment of nutritional value, and reporting nLCA results. An nLCA study should report the quantities of as many essential nutrients as possible and aim to provide information on the nutritional quality and/or health impacts in addition to nutrient quantities. Outstanding issues requiring further research attention include: defining a minimum number of nutrients to be considered in an nLCA study; treatment of nutrients to limit; use of nutrient indexes; further development of Impact Assessment methods; representation of nutritional changes that may occur during subsequent distribution and food preparation in cradle-to-gate nLCA studies; and communication of data uncertainty and variability. More data are required for different regions (particularly developing countries); for the processing, distribution, retail, and consumption life cycle stages; and for food loss and waste. Finally, there is a need to extend nLCA methodology for the assessment of meals and diets, to consider further how to account for the multi-functionality of food in a sustainability framework, and to set nLCA studies within the context of environmental limits.These results provide a robust basis for improving nLCA methodology and applying it to identify solutions that minimize the trade-offs between nourishing populations and safeguarding the environment

Nutritional combined environmental impact assessment of global food systems

Food production and consumption are responsible for remarkable environmental burdens including greenhouse gas emissions, land expansion, water stress, and pollution due to the nutrient overflow of the fertilizer application. Meanwhile, current global food systems are unable to address hunger and malnutrition in different forms occurring in many regions and populations. The world needs a food system transformation to ensure that we operate within planetary limits and at the same time feed the growing population with healthy diets. Previous studies investigating food systems often focus on the impact of diets on a single environmental domain and consider limited nutritional factors like calorie, protein or a couple of other nutrients. Integrating multiple environmental and nutritional aspects into the assessment of country-specific food systems at a global scale is needed to examine the potential trade-offs and account for the heterogeneity of food consumption and production patterns across regions. Focusing on what is produced, eaten, and wasted, the thesis employs the nutritional combined environmental impact assessment approach with multiple indicators to explore the sustainability opportunities in the food systems of all countries at national and global scales. This thesis first reviewed the existing evidence on how the global dietary changes can contribute towards the progress on individual United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It showed the existing shortcomings and necessary dietary changes required in different world regions. This is followed by an analysis of Swiss dietary patterns and the implications on human health, nutrition quality, environmental sustainability, economic costs under different scenarios using multiple indicators. The thesis then examines the food waste in each country to explicitly present the embedded nutritional and environmental losses. Lastly, domestic food production profiles of world countries are analyzed to identify the gaps and surplus in terms of 25 nutritional indicators and highlight the gaps between production and requirement of different nutrients in each country that can guide nutrition- sensitive food production and supply chain policies. Results from the thesis show that strategies like shifting towards sustainable healthy diets meeting nutritional recommendations, addressing nutrient production inadequacy, and reducing waste can enable the food sector to contribute massively towards the global and national SDGs. This thesis provides relevant insights on dietary options, global hotspots of specific food groups and regions in terms of food wasting, and domestic nutrient-sensitive production priorities. Food waste reduction and more nutrition-sensitive food production can support the realization of a diet that meets the need for adequate nutrient intakes while ensuring the operation of food systems is within environmental planetary boundaries. Overall, this thesis attempts to capture the performance of food consumption and production and identify the improvement opportunities as well as the associated impacts for different countries. The results are expected to support different stakeholders in evidence-based decision-making and monitor the effect of interventions. Future efforts on filling the data gaps identified in this thesis and extending the proposed nutritional combined environmental impact assessment framework with more environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators are need of hour to improve our understanding of global food systems and achieve progress on SDGs

Nutrient Adequacy of Global Food Production

A major challenge for countries around the world is to provide a nutritionally adequate diet to their population with limited available resources. A comprehensive analysis that reflects the adequacy of domestic food production for meeting national nutritional needs in different countries is lacking. Here we combined national crop, livestock, aquaculture, and fishery production statistics for 191 countries with food composition databases and accounted for food loss and waste occurring at various stages to calculate the amounts of calories and 24 essential nutrients destined for human consumption. We then compared the domestic production quantities of all nutrients with their population-level requirements estimated from age- and sex-specific intake recommendations to assess the nutrient adequacy of the national food production. Our results show inadequate production of seven out of 25 nutrients (choline, calcium, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin E, folate, and iron) in most countries, despite the overall adequacy of the total global production. High-income countries produce adequate amounts of dietary nutrients in general, while the foods produced in low-income countries mainly comprising roots and cereal products often lack in important micronutrients such as choline, calcium, and vitamin B12. South Asian food production barely fulfills half of the required vitamin A. Our study identifies target nutrients for each country whose domestic production should be encouraged for improving nutritional adequacy through interventions such as increasing the production of foods or fortified foods that are rich in these inadequate nutrients while not undermining the local environment. This assessment can serve as an evidence base for nutrition-sensitive policies facilitating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger and good health and well-being

Nutritional and environmental losses embedded in global food waste

Reducing food waste can contribute positively towards multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs) but the differences in the food waste across countries in terms of embedded nutrients and environmental impacts is not well-known. Here we assess the value of daily per capita food waste of 151 countries using two recent indicators for embedded nutrition losses (wasted nutrient days and wasted daily diets) and five indicators for environmental impacts. Globally, on average, 65 kg of food is wasted per year by one person of which 25% is through wasted vegetables, 24% through cereals and 12% through fruits. Daily wasted amounts of vitamin C, K, Zinc, Copper, Manganese and Selenium are especially high representing 25-50% of their daily dietary recommended intake (DRI) value. Cereals, fruits and vegetables are the three major food groups contributing the most to wasted nutrients followed by meat, dairy and eggs that contribute substantially to the wasted calcium, choline, riboflavin, zinc, and vitamin B12. Global average amount of food waste per capita per year contains 18 healthy diets meaning it can fulfil the DRIs of 25 nutrients for one person for 18 days. The embedded environmental footprints in average person's daily food waste are: 124 g CO2 eq., 58 Litre freshwater use, 0.36 m2 cropland use, 2.90 g nitrogen and 0.48 g phosphorus use. Cereals, meat, and sugar are major food groups contributing to environmental impacts. Our results show that different countries have widely varying nutrients and environmental footprints embedded in their food waste entailing country-specific waste reduction interventions.ISSN:0921-3449ISSN:1879-065

Dietary Change and Global Sustainable Development Goals

Food production for human consumption is a leading cause of environmental damage in the world and yet over two billion people suffer from malnutrition. Several studies have presented evidence that changes in dietary patterns across the world can lead to win-win outcomes for environmental and social sustainability and can complement ongoing technological and policy efforts to improve the efficiency of agricultural production. However, the existing evidence have been compiled in ‘silos’ by a large range of researchers across several disciplines using different indicators. The aim of this quantitative review is to bring together the existing knowledge on heterogeneity of current dietary patterns across the world and how a transition towards healthy diets in different countries can aid in progress towards multiple global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We first summarize the nutritional quality, economic cost, and environmental footprint of current diets of over 150 countries using multiple indicators. Next, we review which shifts in dietary patterns across different world regions can help towards achievement of SDG2 (Zero hunger), SDG3 (Good health and well-being), SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG13 (Climate action), SDG14 (Life below water), and SDG15 (Life on land). Finally, we briefly discuss how to enable the shift towards sustainable dietary patterns and identify the research and data gaps that need to be filled through future efforts. Our analysis reveals that dietary change is necessary in all countries as each one has unique priorities and action items. For regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, increased intake of nutrient dense foods is needed to address deficiency of essential nutrients like folate, potassium, and vitamin A. For North America and Europe, shifting towards more plant-based diets would be healthier and simultaneously reduce the per capita environmental footprints. The results can be useful for policymakers in designing country-specific strategies for adoption of sustainable dietary behaviours and for food industry to ensure the supply of sustainable food items customized with regions’ need.ISSN:2571-581

Dietary Change Scenarios and Implications for Environmental, Nutrition, Human Health and Economic Dimensions of Food Sustainability

Demand side interventions, such as dietary change, can significantly contribute towards the achievement of 2030 national sustainable development goals. However, most previous studies analysing the consequences of dietary change focus on a single dimension of sustainability (e.g., environment) using a limited number of indicators and dietary scenarios. A multi-dimension and multi-indicator analysis can identify the potential trade-offs. Here, starting from the current food consumption data (year 2011), we first designed nine alternative dietary scenarios (healthy Swiss diet, healthy global diet, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, flexitarian, protein-oriented and meat-oriented diets and a food greenhouse gas tax diet). Next we calculated three nutritional quality (nutrient balance score, disqualifying nutrient score, percent population with adequate nutrition), five environmental (greenhouse gas, water, land, nitrogen and phosphorus use), one economic (daily food expenditure) and one human health indicator (DALYs) for current and alternative diets. We found that transition towards a healthy diet following the guidelines of Swiss society of nutrition is the most sustainable option and is projected to result in 36% lesser environmental footprint, 33% lesser expenditure and 2.67% lower adverse health outcome (DALYs) compared with the current diet. On the other extreme, transition towards a meat or protein oriented diet can lead to large increases in diet related adverse health outcomes, environmental footprint, daily food expenditure and a reduction in intakes of essential nutrients (for Vitamin C, Fibre, Potassium and Calcium). We found that shifting to the vegetarian and vegan diet scenarios might lead to a reduction in intakes of certain micronutrients currently supplied primarily by animal-sourced foods (Vitamin B12, Choline and Calcium). Results show that achieving a sustainable diet would entail a high reduction in the intake of meat and vegetable oils and a moderate reduction in cereals, roots and fish products and at the same time increased intake of legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. We identify several current data and research gaps that need to be filled in order to get more accurate results. Overall, our analysis underscores the need to consider multiple indicators while assessing the dietary sustainability and provides a template to conduct such studies in other countries and settings. Future efforts should focus on assessing the potential of different interventions and policies that can help transition the population from current to sustainable dietary patterns

Dietary Change Scenarios and Implications for Environmental, Nutrition, Human Health and Economic Dimensions of Food Sustainability

Demand side interventions, such as dietary change, can significantly contribute towards the achievement of 2030 national sustainable development goals. However, most previous studies analysing the consequences of dietary change focus on a single dimension of sustainability (e.g., environment) using a limited number of indicators and dietary scenarios. A multi-dimension and multi-indicator analysis can identify the potential trade-offs. Here, starting from the current food consumption data (year 2011), we first designed nine alternative dietary scenarios (healthy Swiss diet, healthy global diet, vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, flexitarian, protein-oriented and meat-oriented diets and a food greenhouse gas tax diet). Next we calculated three nutritional quality (nutrient balance score, disqualifying nutrient score, percent population with adequate nutrition), five environmental (greenhouse gas, water, land, nitrogen and phosphorus use), one economic (daily food expenditure) and one human health indicator (DALYs) for current and alternative diets. We found that transition towards a healthy diet following the guidelines of Swiss society of nutrition is the most sustainable option and is projected to result in 36% lesser environmental footprint, 33% lesser expenditure and 2.67% lower adverse health outcome (DALYs) compared with the current diet. On the other extreme, transition towards a meat or protein oriented diet can lead to large increases in diet related adverse health outcomes, environmental footprint, daily food expenditure and a reduction in intakes of essential nutrients (for Vitamin C, Fibre, Potassium and Calcium). We found that shifting to the vegetarian and vegan diet scenarios might lead to a reduction in intakes of certain micronutrients currently supplied primarily by animal-sourced foods (Vitamin B12, Choline and Calcium). Results show that achieving a sustainable diet would entail a high reduction in the intake of meat and vegetable oils and a moderate reduction in cereals, roots and fish products and at the same time increased intake of legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. We identify several current data and research gaps that need to be filled in order to get more accurate results. Overall, our analysis underscores the need to consider multiple indicators while assessing the dietary sustainability and provides a template to conduct such studies in other countries and settings. Future efforts should focus on assessing the potential of different interventions and policies that can help transition the population from current to sustainable dietary patterns

The role of alternative proteins and future foods in sustainable and contextually-adapted flexitarian diets

Background Devising contextually adapted and sustainable flexitarian diets that integrate alternative proteins and future foods can support sustainable food systems. Scope and approach In this commentary, we critically evaluate the role of alternative proteins and future foods (i.e., microalgae, insects, fungi, cultured meat, and plant-based meat) with respect to tradeoffs between animal- and plant-sourced foods in future flexitarian diets. We focus on four key sustainability dimensions: environmental impacts, nutrition/health, animal welfare, and antibiotic use. We further explore the differentiated role of meat products (e.g., chicken vs. beef), in addition to production practices that simultaneously increase nutrient contents while decreasing environmental impacts. Finally, we illustrate why and how context-specific conditions, namely, environmental, nutritional/health, access, culture, and knowledge boundaries, should be considered when developing these diets. Key findings and conclusions The role of alternative proteins in sustainable flexitarian diets is highly variable depending on the food item and production method (e.g., feed substrate, processing technology). Furthermore, environmental tradeoffs exist (e.g., low land use but high energy demand) as well as nutritional gaps including a lack of certainty regarding nutritional equivalency claims from future foods when compared to their contemporary counterparts. Moreover, strong uncertainties regarding nutrient absorption (e.g., bioavailability) and activity in the body exist. Animal welfare and antibiotic use concerns have the potential to be strongly mitigated with the introduction of alternative proteins. Finally, more standardized and robust sustainability assessments are needed. Overall, future foods hold promise to support sustainable and contextually-adapted flexitarian diets, but significant work and understanding are still needed.ISSN:0924-2244ISSN:0968-002