Methodology and optimization tool for a personalized low environmental impact and healthful diet specific to country and season

Abstract

To remain within the limits of the planetary boundaries and address increasing disease rates due to poor eating habits, there needs to be a major shift in dietary patterns. The composition of an optimal diet changes depending on location, season, and personalized dietary needs. We develop a methodology to build a 500+ food item, nutrient, and environmental impact database specific to a given country and month, which includes several life cycle stages of a food item and calculates impacts depending on from where the item is sourced. This database is then used to develop a detailed and personalized, healthful, low impact diet by using linear optimization. We applied this methodology to several case studies to compare what low impact diets would look like depending on country (Switzerland vs. Spain), season (August vs. February), sex, the inclusion of dietary supplements, and for different diet types and impact categories (climate change and biodiversity loss). Results indicate that, although optimized diets are similar, there are marked differences in the detailed composition depending on country, season, and impact considered, especially regarding legume choice. The lowest impact diet contained local and imported foods as well as fish. Vegan diets had the lowest impact only when incorporating a supplement to meet nutrient needs. We developed a tool to be used for personalized diet composition assessments for any global geographical location and season. We anticipate this work to be useful for developing countryand season-specific dietary guidelines and for consumers hoping to reduce their own personal impacts. K E Y W O R D Sbiodiversity loss, climate change, diet and health, environmental impact, industrial ecology, optimization INTRODUCTIONFood systems are directly linked to current or future exceedances of many of the planetary boundaries . Combined with changing food demands toward higher meat intake, impacts will increase rather than decrease to the necessary levels to remain within the boundaries.These challenges are compounded by the fact that current consumption patterns are also leading to higher rates of diet related diseases Popkin et al., 2006;Kearney, 2010), with the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) estimating that one in five deaths globally are associated with a poor diet (Afshin et al., 2019). Efforts to link and ultimately reduce both environmental impacts and dietary related disease risk have

Use of Edible, Medicinal, and Aromatic Plants in Various Health Disorders: A Cross-Sectional Evaluation among Inhabitants in the Area of Thrace, North-Eastern Greece

“…At this step of evaluation, the participants' classification regarding habits such as: smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, and BMI did not reveal any essential differences with respect to the common or therapeutic use of MAPs. (4) No 402 (77.0%) 302 (76.8%) Yes 120 (23.0%) 91 (23.2%) (1) : The groups of "Married" and "In relationship/cohabitation" were merged against all other groups; (2) : the groups of "University graduate" and higher were merged against all other groups; (3) : the groups of "Unemployed" and "Retired/Household" were merged against all other groups, and the group of "Students" was excluded; (4) : the income groups were divided into two smaller subgroups: less than EUR 25,000 and more than EUR 25,000/annually.…”

“…The World Health Organization (WHO) European Region Action Plan 2015-2020 conveys a clear message about the importance of nutrition, and well-advised food choices in all stages of life [1]. However, the way toward tailored and comprehensive nutrition policies within the framework of public health and the implementation of resilient and efficient evaluation and monitoring systems is more than a linear path [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Dietary habits are directly related to several diseases, while malnutrition and increased weight status are included in the short list of behavioral factors responsible for more than 750,000 deaths per year [8,9].…”

Winners of the 2021 Graedel Prizes: The Journal of Industrial Ecology Best Paper Prizes

“…Other Research and Analysis papers were: a life cycle assessment of lithium‐ion battery recycling using pyrometallurgical technologies (Rajaeifar et al., 2021); a review of critiques of the circular economy (Corvellec et al., 2021); and a study of gender in industrial ecology research (Khalikova et al., 2021). The two other nominated papers were in the category of Methods, Tools, Data and Software ; these described the construction of global physical input–output tables in a virtual laboratory (Wieland et al., 2021); and development of methodology and a personalized tool for minimizing environmental impacts while achieving a healthy diet and nutritional preferences (Walker et al., 2021).…”

“…Walker and colleagues (2021) built a country‐ and season‐specific database of the environmental impacts of over five hundred food items. They then used the database in a tool they developed to allow individuals to minimize their climate change and biodiversity impacts through healthy dietary choices.…”

Diet problem and the method linear programming

“…It took him until 1947 to produce the proper mathematical conclusion, and he was the first to do it. Dantzig put his approach to the test on his diet, compiling a database of 50 items [21][22][23][24]. This diet, according to Buttriss et al, should be made up of 77 US items whose prices and nutritional content have been determined: "Stigler was unable to develop an accurate solution to this problem, which proved to be extremely difficult.…”