quired and consent identification. One main characteristic of the database is its transparency in reporting to enable individual assessment of data appropriateness and to support the plurality in methodological approaches. Outlook. Further work on the ecoinvent database may comprise work on the database content (new or more detailed datasets covering existing or new economic sectors), LCI (modelling) methodology, the structure and features of the database system (e.g. extension of Monte Carlo simulation to the impact assessment phase) or improvements in ecoinvent data supply and data query. Furthermore, the deepening and building up of international co-operations in LCI data collection and supply is in the focus of future activities.

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The goal of this research work was to assist consumers in considering environmental aspects of food consumption. A simplified, modular LCA approach has been used to evaluate the impacts from the consumers' point of view. Comparative LCA's have been calculated for five single aspects of decisions: type of agricultural practice, origin, packaging material, type of preservation, and consumption. The inventory for one module includes the environmental impacts related to one particular product characteristic. The modular LCA allows one to investigate the trade-offs among different decision parameters. It could be shown that most of the decision parameters might have an influence on the overall impact of a vegetable product. Greenhouse production and vegetables transported by air cause the highest surplus environmental impact. For meat products, the agricultural production determines the overall environmental impact. The total impact for vegetable or meat purchases may vary by a factor of eight or two-and-a-half. Different suggestions for consumers have been ranked according to the variation of average impacts, due to a marginal change of behaviour. Avoiding air-transported food products leads to the highest decrease of environmental impacts.

Purpose This article introduces the special issue "LCA of nutrition and food consumption" and 14 papers selected from the Ninth LCA Food Conference in San Francisco in October 2014. Literature overview The scientific literature in the field of food LCA has increased more than ten times during the last 15 years. Nutrition has a high contribution to the total environmental impacts of consumption. Agricultural production often dominates the impacts, but its importance depends on the type of product, its production mode, transport, and processing. Local or domestic products reduce transports, but this advantage can be lost if the impacts of the raw material production are substantially increased. Diets containing less meat tend to be more environmentally friendly. Several studies concluded that respecting the dietary recommendations for a healthy diet would reduce the overall environmental impacts in the developed countries, although this is not a universal conclusion. Contribution of this special issueEight papers analyze the environmental impacts of catering and in-house food consumption and impacts on sectoral and national levels; four papers presents tools and methods to better assess the impacts of nutrition and to implement the results in practical decisionmaking. Finally, two contributions analyze the impacts of food waste and reduction options. Communication of the environmental impact assessment results to stakeholders including policy-makers and consumers needs additional efforts. Research needs and outlook (i) Development of holistic approaches for the assessment of sustainable food systems, (ii) assessment of land use related impacts and inclusion of ecosystem services, (iii) exploration of LCA results for policy support and decision-making, (iv) investigation of food consumption patterns in developing and emerging countries, and (v) harmonization of databases.

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