Sustainable Diet Optimization Targeting Dietary Water Footprint Reduction—A Country-Specific Study

Abstract

Food production creates 70% of the total anthropogenic water footprint, and it is the main cause of water pollution. Thus, more sustainable diets could contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. A linear programming-based stepwise optimization was designed to create dietary water footprint-reduced, culturally acceptable, and healthier diets in the case of Hungary based on a representative dietary survey. Optimization resulted in a considerable total dietary water footprint reduction (women: 18%; men: 28%) with a moderate dietary shift (~32%). Milk and dairies (observed: ~31.5%, optimized: ~20.5%) and meats and meat products (observed: ~28.0%, optimized: 28.9%) contributed the most to the dietary water footprint. In the water footprint–healthiness synergy, the vegetables, eggs, poultries, and fermented dairies were the most beneficial, increasing in amount, while fatty dairies, foods high in added sugar, and meat products were the most non-beneficial food sub-groups, decreasing in amount in the optimized diets. The problematic nutrients to fulfill in the optimized diets were energy, dietary fibers, sodium, vitamin D, zinc, vitamin B12, calcium, iron, and potassium at the maximum water footprint reduction. The study provides supporting evidence about the dietary water footprint–healthiness synergy for the further improvement of the national food-based dietary guideline.

Shifting towards optimized healthy and sustainable Dutch diets: impact on protein quality

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“…Furthermore, in food item-based models, uncertainties in the data can have a large influence on the outcome. Therefore, several studies based their optimization on linear combinations of food groups instead of food items [ 49 , 50 ]. However, food grouping reduces the detail of the data and remains an arbitrary process.…”

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

“…In contrast, a diet modeling study that aimed at minimizing WU (in the first step of a hierarchical optimization approach) in food systems was conducted using Hungarian data (32). This study documented a maximum reduction in diet-related water footprint of 19.5% for women and 28.2% for men, these effect sizes being much lower than those we found herein.…”

Good Government Governance as a Moderator in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia

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“…Meanwhile, according to Kartiasih and Pribadi [21] the Environmental Quality Index is a score that can be interpreted into numerous areas and indicates how effectively a country is at implementing environmental laws or the success of environmental policies. According to Tompa et al [22] the Environmental Quality Index indicators comprise 3 (three) indicators: water quality index, air quality index, and land cover quality index. Environmental Quality Index values can be classified into the following ranges (see Table 1).…”