Association between diet-related greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient intake adequacy among Japanese adults

Abstract

Objectives A growing number of Western studies have been exploring sustainable and healthy dietary patterns that target to reduce diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and to achieve nutritional needs. However, research is limited among Asian populations, where food sources for diet-related GHGE differ from those in Western populations. This study aimed to investigate associations between diet-related GHGE and the prevalence of inadequate nutritional intake. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out among 392 healthy Japanese volunteers aged 20–69 years. Dietary intake was assessed by four-non-consecutive day diet record. Diet-related GHGE was estimated using the Global Link Input-Output model and adjusted for energy intake by residual method. Prevalence of inadequacy was defined as a percentage of participants with nutrient intake outside the Tentative Dietary Goal for Preventing Lifestyle-Related Disease or below the Estimated Average Requirement defined by the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for Japanese. The association between diet-related GHGE and the prevalence of inadequacy of the usual intake of each nutrient was examined using logistic regression models. Results Participants with higher diet-related GHGE had overall better adherence to the DRIs. Intakes of all selected nutrients were positively associated with diet-related GHGE, except for carbohydrate, total fat, and saturated fat. With increasing quartile of diet-related GHGE, the prevalence of inadequacy decreased for protein, dietary fiber, potassium, vitamins A, B-6, and C, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc, while that for sodium increased. Conclusions Diets with lower diet-related GHGE did not have better adherence to the DRIs compared to diets with higher diet-related GHGE among Japanese adults. Drastic dietary change or other strategies such as improving the food system would be needed to achieve a sustainable and healthy diet among Japanese.

Nutritional quality and carbon footprint of university students’ diets: results from the EHU12/24 study

“…Nevertheless, the second food group in terms of contribution to diet-related GHGE was fruits and vegetables, and high-GHGE diets contained greater percentage contributions from this food group to total GHGE than did low-GHGE diets. This last result regarding vegetable intake is consistent with findings of Sugimoto et al (105) and confirms that intake of certain plant-based foods can also be associated with high GHGE, depending on the amount and type of products selected (106) .…”

Usual Nutrient Intake Distribution and Prevalence of Nutrient Intake Inadequacy among Japanese Children and Adults: A Nationwide Study Based on 8-Day Dietary Records

“…Macronutrient inadequacy has been documented in Japan [26][27][28] and in many other countries [7,15,18,19,21,24]. Our results similarly indicated that the percentage of energy intake from energy-providing nutrients (i.e., protein, carbohydrates, and total and saturated fats) was inadequate for most age groups in both sexes.…”

“…Insufficient dietary fibre intake has been reported worldwide [1,12,15,19,26,27,49]. Our investigation found that adolescents and adults did not consume enough dietary fibre.…”

Impact of the change in household dietary patterns on CO2 emissions in Japan

“…Food production is a cause of GHG emissions, and the shift in dietary patterns affects both environment and health (Aleksandrowicz et al, 2016). The food industry creates 20-30% of total GHG emissions and livestock meat production plays a large role in the industry (Sugimoto et al, 2021). Given that meat production is driven by consumer demand, there is a need to change dietary patterns (Lucas and Horton, 2019).…”