Nutrition and its footprints: Using environmental indicators to assess the nexus between sustainability and food

Abstract

Current food systems are associated with the unsustainable use of natural resources; therefore, rethinking current models is urgent and is part of a global agenda to reach sustainable development. Sustainable diets encompass health, society, economy, culture as well as the environment, in addition to considering all the stages that make up the food production chain. This study aimed to perform a review on the importance of using environmental footprints (EnF) as a way of assessing the environmental impacts of food systems. The most used EnF to assess impacts related to the food system was the carbon footprint, followed by the water footprint, and the land use footprint. These EnF usually measured the impacts mainly of the current diet and theoretical diets. Animal-source foods were the ones that most contribute to the environmental impact, with incentives to reduce consumption. However, changing dietary patterns should not be restricted to changing behavior only, but should also involve all stakeholders in the functioning of food systems. We conclude that EnF are excellent tools to evaluate and guide the adoption of more sustainable diets, and can be applied in different contexts of food systems, such as food consumption analysis, menu analysis, food waste, and inclusion of EnF information on food labels.

Trade-offs between water use and greenhouse gas emissions related to food systems: an optimization study in French adults

“…Although the literature has been growing recently on that topic (19), a lower number of studies have focused on WU in food systems compared to those on GHGs and the footprint indicators used were not consistent (blue, green, or blue and green). Thus, according to a recent review the carbon footprint has been studied twice as much than the water footprint (whatever the indicator used) (30) but the two indicators are rarely studied concomitantly. Furthermore, in diet modeling studies about environmental footprint reductions, environmental indicators were generally included as constraints and not as objectives/targets to be minimized (11), which makes not possible to assess the extent of their maximal improvements and their potential conflicts or alignments.…”

Exploring sustainable food choices among adults in the United Arab Emirates: a cross-sectional study

“…In a broad context, both the vegetarian diet and the non-vegetarian diet contribute to the GHG burden, however, the burden of the latter is more than 2.5 times greater (4.2 vs. 1.6 kgCO2eq/day; Rabès et al, 2020). In other words, the overall environmental impact of non-vegetarian diets is higher than vegetarian diets by about 60% (Rabès et al, 2020;Hatjiathanassiadou et al, 2023). In that sense, available evidence indicated that a change in global diet patterns could result in up to a 50% reduction in GHG emissions (Hallström et al, 2015).…”