Sustainable Diets in the UK—Developing a Systematic Framework to Assess the Environmental Impact, Cost and Nutritional Quality of Household Food Purchases (original) (raw)
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Public Health Nutrition, 2019
ObjectiveTo model dietary changes required to shift the UK population to diets that meet dietary recommendations for health, have lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and are affordable for different income groups.DesignLinear programming was used to create diets that meet dietary requirements for health and reduced GHGE (57 and 80 % targets) by income quintile, taking account of food budgets and foods currently purchased, thereby keeping dietary change to a minimum.Setting/ParticipantsNutrient composition, GHGE and price data were mapped to 101 food groups in household food purchase data (UK Living Cost and Food Survey (2013), 5144 households).ResultsCurrent diets of all income quintiles had similar total GHGE, but the source of GHGE differed by types of meat and amount of fruit and vegetables. It was possible to create diets with a 57 % reduction in GHGE that met dietary and cost restraints in all income groups. In the optimised diets, the food sources of GHGE differed by income ...
A catalogue of UK household datasets to monitor transitions to sustainable diets
Global Food Security, 2020
There is growing international consensus that current patterns of food consumption are not sustainable and global change is needed. Understanding the mechanisms for a transition towards more sustainable diets requires systematic temporal monitoring at the individual or household level. Whilst many countries collect panel data on food expenditure and dietary intake, these datasets are often not designed to monitor progress towards dietary sustainability, therefore using them to understand how or why diets are becoming more or less sustainable can prove challenging. What is also lacking is a curated dataset catalogue or a library where all relevant data could be easily accessible to enable such evaluation. Our aim was to identify, classify and describe existing food expenditure and diet datasets available in the UK and to assess the extent to which they can be used to monitor transitions to sustainable diets. We found that despite the large number of datasets tracking UK individual or household food purchases and consumption over time, these datasets are not suited to understand how and why individuals are transitioning to sustainable diets. With the exception of proprietary datasets, most datasets only collect data annually, making it challenging to understand fine-scale behavioural change over shorter timeframes. There is an opportunity to design and implement an open-access UK sustainable diets data collection effort at the individual and household level. These efforts can be complemented with recent innovations in data science methods and digital technologiessuch as dietary intake trackersthat, along with supporting individuals in their dietary behaviour change, may enable the collection of high-quality datasets.
Healthcare
Climate change can have economic consequences, affecting the nutritional intake of populations and increasing food insecurity, as it negatively affects diet quality parameters. One way to mitigate these consequences is to change the way we produce and consume our food. A healthy and sustainable diet aims to promote and achieve the physical, mental, and social well-being of the populations at all life stages, while protecting and safeguarding the resources of the planet and preserving biodiversity. Over the past few years, several indexes have been developed to evaluate dietary sustainability, most of them based on the EAT-Lancet reference diet. The present review explains the problems that arise in human nutrition as a result of climate change and presents currently available diet sustainability indexes and their applications and limitations, in an effort to aid researchers and policy actors in identifying aspects that need improvement in the development of relevant indexes. Overall...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2019
The underlying values and priorities that drive policy responses depend largely on the constructs that researchers and decision makers select to measure and the metrics used. Despite much recent attention being given to sustainable diets and food systems and to the importance of clearly measuring sustainability to meet targets, to achieve goals, and to appraise dietary and environmental policies, it is not commonly agreed how the different indicators of sustainable diets are assessed. The evidence base for assessment of these indicators are frequently weak, fragmented, and arbitrary. The aim of this paper was to compare a range of published methods and indicators for assessing sustainable diets and food systems in order to harmonise them. Keyword and reference searches were performed in PubMed, Scopus, CAB s, and Web of Knowledge. Fifty-two studies (21 proposed methods and 31 used methods) that combined environment, nutrition and health, and socioeconomic aspects of sustainable diet...
Public Health Nutrition
Objective: To model dietary changes required to shift the UK population to diets that meet dietary recommendations for health, have lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and are affordable for different income groups. Design: Linear programming was used to create diets that meet dietary requirements for health and reduced GHGE (57% and 80% targets) by income quintile, taking into account food budgets and foods currently purchased, thereby keeping dietary change to a minimum. Subjects: Nutrient composition, GHGE and price data were mapped to 101 food groups in household food purchase data (UK Living Cost and Food Survey (2013), n=5144 households). Results: Current diets of all income quintiles had similar total GHGE, but the source of GHGE differed by types of meat, and amount of fruit and vegetables. It was possible to create diets with a 57% reduction in GHGE that met dietary and cost restraints in all income groups. In the optimised diets, the food sources of GHGE differed by income group due to the cost and keeping the level of deviation from current diets to a minimum. Broadly, the changes needed were similar across all groups; reducing animal-based products and increasing plant-based foods but varied by specific foods. Conclusions: Healthy and lower GHGE diets could be created in all income quintiles but tailoring changes to income groups to minimise deviation may make dietary changes more achievable. Specific attention must be given to interventions and policies to be appropriate for all income groups.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2012
Background: Food systems account for 18-20% of UK annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs). Recommendations for improving food choices to reduce GHGEs must be balanced against dietary requirements for health. Objective: We assessed whether a reduction in GHGEs can be achieved while meeting dietary requirements for health. Design: A database was created that linked nutrient composition and GHGE data for 82 food groups. Linear programming was used iteratively to produce a diet that met the dietary requirements of an adult woman (19-50 y old) while minimizing GHGEs. Acceptability constraints were added to the model to include foods commonly consumed in the United Kingdom in sensible quantities. A sample menu was created to ensure that the quantities and types of food generated from the model could be combined into a realistic 7-d diet. Reductions in GHGEs of the diets were set against 1990 emission values. Results: The first model, without any acceptability constraints, produced a 90% reduction in GHGEs but included only 7 food items, all in unrealistic quantities. The addition of acceptability constraints gave a more realistic diet with 52 foods but reduced GHGEs by a lesser amount of 36%. This diet included meat products but in smaller amounts than in the current diet. The retail cost of the diet was comparable to the average UK expenditure on food. Conclusion: A sustainable diet that meets dietary requirements for health with lower GHGEs can be achieved without eliminating meat or dairy products or increasing the cost to the consumer.
Nutrients
Dietary changes are required to mitigate the climatic impact of food consumption. Food consumption databases can support the development of sustainable food based dietary guidelines (SFBDG) when linked to environmental indicators. An improved knowledge base is crucial to the transition to sustainable diets, and multiple environmental indicators should be considered to ensure this transition is evidence based and accounts for trade-offs. The current study aimed to quantify the environmental impact of daily diets across population groups in Ireland. Nationally representative food consumption surveys for Irish children (NCFSII; 2017–2018), teenagers (NTFSII; 2019–2020), and adults (NANS; 2008–2010) were used in this analysis. Blue water use (L) and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe; kgCO2eq) were assigned at food level to all surveys. Cropland (m2), nitrogen (kgN/t), and phosphorous use (kgP/t) were assigned at the agricultural level for adults. Multiple linear regressions, Spearman corre...
Indicators and Recommendations for Assessing Sustainable Healthy Diets
Foods
Research coupling human nutrition and sustainability concerns is a rapidly developing field, which is essential to guide governments’ policies. This critical and comprehensive review analyzes indicators and approaches to “sustainable healthy diets” published in the literature since this discipline’s emergence a few years ago, identifying robust gauges and highlighting the flaws of the most commonly used models. The reviewed studies largely focus on one or two domains such as greenhouse gas emissions or water use, while overlooking potential impact shifts to other sectors or resources. The present study covers a comprehensive set of indicators from the health, environmental and socio-economic viewpoints. This assessment concludes that in order to identify the best food option in sustainability assessments and nutrition analysis of diets, some aspects such as the classification and disaggregation of food groups, the impacts of the rates of local food consumption and seasonality, prese...
Public Health Nutrition, 2016
ObjectiveTo assess the compatibility between reduction of diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and nutritional adequacy, acceptability and affordability dimensions of diet sustainability.DesignDietary intake, nutritional composition, GHGE and prices were combined for 402 foods selected among those most consumed by participants of the Individual National Study on Food Consumption. Linear programming was used to model diets with stepwise GHGE reductions, minimized departure from observed diet and three scenarios of nutritional constraints: none (FREE), on macronutrients (MACRO) and for all nutrient recommendations (ADEQ). Nutritional quality was assessed using the mean adequacy ratio (MAR) and solid energy density (SED).SettingFrance.SubjectsAdults (n1899).ResultsIn FREE and MACRO scenarios, imposing up to 30 % GHGE reduction did not affect the MAR, SED and food group pattern of the observed diet, but required substitutions within food groups; higher GHGE reductions decreased ...
Ecological Economics, 2013
Monitoring of the environmental impacts of consumption is necessary for the evaluation of current performance and to support the understanding of how initiatives for change can be implemented. We discuss design issues and methodology for an Environmentally Sensitive Shopper (ESS) index to measure the environmental sustainability of food consumption at the household level. The ESS index is based on revealed consumer preferences and uses scanner data provided by the largest UK food retailer. As a pilot illustration of the methodology we use the index to identify environmentally critical periods during the calendar year. An environmental index to measure progress towards more sustainable household food consumption using supermarket data, Ecological Economics 94: 44-55.