• Energy Research

AbstractIt is not known whether dietary guidelines proposing a limited intake of animal protein are compatible with the adoption of circular food systems. Using a resource-allocation model, we compared the effects of circularity on the supply of animal-source nutrients in Europe with the nutritional requirements of the EAT-Lancet reference diet. We found the two to be compatible in terms of total animal-source proteins but not specific animal-source foods; in particular, the EAT-Lancet guidelines recommend larger quantities of poultry meat over beef and pork, while a circular food system produces mainly milk, dairy-beef and pork. Compared with the EAT-Lancet reference diet, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by up to 31% and arable land use reduced by up to 42%. Careful consideration of the feasible substitutability between animal-source foods is needed to define potential roles of animal products in circular human diets.

AbstractFood systems have increasingly strong impacts on the environment, and they influence our human well‐being. In Switzerland, food consumption accounts for one‐third of the environmental impact caused by total final consumption. At the same time, non‐communicable diseases have been linked to a number of dietary aspects. In Switzerland, all non‐communicable diseases together are responsible for 80% of total public health care costs annually. Current assessments that link environmental sustainability and human health‐oriented diets for Switzerland lack a transparent representation of the dynamic effects caused by large‐scale conversions of the food system. In this study, therefore, a system dynamics model is employed to investigate intended and unintended changes on the food system structure and on environmental impacts. Several human health‐oriented scenarios are implemented and tested with different production‐ and consumption‐side intervention strategies. Because all scenarios assuming an increase in the consumption of plant‐based products also involve higher consumption of dairy products, consequences for bovine meat need to be considered. The biological link between milk and bovine meat production leads to an unintended increase in bovine meat production as milk production increases. Intervention strategies at the consumption level thus need to be accompanied by intervention strategies at the agricultural production level. Similarly, intervention strategies that aim at improving health outcomes at the production level need to be accompanied by strategies that affect diets and thus consumption preferences. Avoiding instances of policy resistance requires integrated policy design and implementation across agriculture, the environment and human health. This integration is a challenge for farmers, the food industry and consumers alike.

While the production of food causes major environmental impacts and poses social risks, consumption of healthy and nutritious food is essential for human wellbeing. Against this background, action to make current diets more sustainable is needed, which in turn requires knowledge on possibilities for improvement. In this study, we investigated how sociodemographic and lifestyle factors relate to different sustainability impacts of diets in Switzerland using recent dietary recall data (n = 2057). Of each dietary recall, we assessed six impacts: global warming potential, cropland and grassland occupation, social risks, diet quality, and diet cost. We investigated the association between sociodemographic and lifestyle factors and food choices as well as between sociodemographic and lifestyle factors and environmental and socio-economic impacts, and combined these results in a qualitative approach. The median impacts of Swiss dietary recalls were 3.25 kg CO2eq for global warming potential, 4.92 m2 for cropland occupation, and 1.43 m2 for grassland occupation. Further, the median score for social risks was 1.64 e+08 points (Social Hotspots Index), for diet quality 43.65 points (Alternate Healthy Eating Index), and 9.27 CHF for diet cost. Moreover, our results showed that any action on food groups, be it for health, social, or environmental reasons, potentially affects societal groups differently. Nationalities, language regions, age groups, and smoking status seemed particularly distinctive, while income or educational groups seemed hardly relevant. Further, reductions of some food groups, especially different types of meat, offer large potentials for synergies on multiple impact categories. Others, such as fruits and vegetables as well as fish and seafood, result in trade-offs. On the one hand, these food groups contribute to an improved diet quality. On the other hand, these food groups are costly, and the production of fruits and vegetables additionally poses social risks. Our results contribute to target measures to support environmentally-friendly, healthy, and social diets more effectively. Journal of Cleaner Production, 300 ISSN:0959-6526

Much scientific literature proposes reduction of animal-source foods to reduce environmental impacts of the food system. However, these dietary solutions differ regarding level and type of animal-source foods. We review this literature and our results show that these differences relate to differences in employed methodological approaches. Approaches that consider systemic consequences throughout the food system propose to limit livestock to low-opportunity-cost feed, where feed availability drives level and type of animal-source foods, resulting in poultry and pork being reduced most. Approaches with fixed impacts propose to reduce animal-source foods depending on current impact intensities, suggesting largest reductions for beef. By linking differences in dietary solutions to methodological approaches, our results contribute to informed choices of researchers, policy makers, and consumers. Global Food Security, 24 ISSN:2211-9124

Background: To improve the sustainability performance of food systems, both consumption- and production-side changes are needed. Objectives: To this end, we assessed multiple sustainability impacts of 6 consumer strategies together with production-side aspects such as organic and circularity principles for Switzerland. Methods: Two strategies encompassed dietary changes: following a pescetarian diet and adhering to the national dietary guidelines. Two strategies employed alternative farming systems: increasing the share of organic production and, in addition, applying the circularity principle of avoiding feed-food competition by limiting livestock feed to low-opportunity-cost biomass. A fifth strategy reduced food waste. The sixth strategy increased the share of domestic produce. For all strategies, we assessed greenhouse gas emissions, land use, nitrogen surplus, social risks, diet quality, and diet costs. Results: The strategies revealed trade-offs between impact categories, unless combined in a synergistic way. Whereas dietary changes towards more plant-based diets reduced environmental impacts (≤51%) and increased diet quality (≤57%), they increased social risks due to increased sourcing from contexts with potentially bad labor conditions (≤19%). Further, when the share of organic produce was increased, land use and dietary costs were increased (≤33% and ≤42%, respectively). The effect on land use could, however, be reversed when circularity principles were introduced in addition to the organic production standard, resulting in reductions for all environmental indicators (≤75%). Reducing food waste and increasing the share of domestic produce led to better sustainability performance as well, but at lower orders of magnitude. Conclusions: Combining all proposed strategies could lead to substantial favorable changes on all impact categories assessed, but would require a thorough transformation of the current food system. However, the sum of individual consumers each following only 1 of the strategies proposed would make an important contribution towards improving the sustainability performance of the Swiss food system. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 115 (4) ISSN:0002-9165 ISSN:1938-3207

Agroecology has been proposed as a strategy to improve food system sustainability, but has also been criticised for using land inefficiently. We compared five explorative storylines, developed in a stakeholder process, for future food systems in the EU to 2050. We modelled a range of biophysical (e.g., land use and food production), environmental (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions) and social indicators, and potential for regional food self-sufficiency, and investigated the economic policy needed to reach these futures by 2050. Two contrasting storylines for upscaling agroecological practices emerged. In one, agroecology was implemented to produce high-value products serving high-income consumers through trade but, despite 40% of agricultural area being under organic management, only two out of eight EU environmental policy targets were met. As diets followed current trends in this storyline, there were few improvements in environmental indicators compared with the current situation, despite large-scale implementation of agroecological farming practices. This suggests that large-scale implementation of agroecological practices without concurrent changes on the demand side could aggravate existing environmental pressures. However, our second agroecological storyline showed that if large-scale diffusion of agroecological farming practices were implemented alongside drastic dietary change and waste reductions, major improvements on environmental indicators could be achieved and all relevant EU policy targets met. An alternative storyline comprising sustainable intensification in combination with dietary change and waste reductions was efficient in meeting targets related to climate, biodiversity, ammonia emissions, and use of antibiotics, but did not meet targets for reductions in pesticide and fertiliser use. These results confirm the importance of dietary change for food system climate change mitigation. Economic modelling showed a need for drastic changes in consumer preferences towards more plant-based, agroecological and local foods, and for improvements in technology, for these storylines to be realised, as very high taxes and tariffs would otherwise be needed.