Environmental Impact Targets for Sustainable Foods Based on Their Nutritional Value

Abstract

Abstract Human activities create an immense strain on many ecological processes. Agriculture and the wider food supply sector is the source of much of this environmental damage. The traditional interpretation of environmental impacts provided by life cycle assessments (LCAs) does not provide any understanding of whether a product or process is sustainable or not. Recently, Planetary Boundaries have quantified sustainable limits to human activities at the global scale. Here we shall merge the analysis of LCA with the context provided by Planetary Boundaries to understand the sustainability of foods. The resulting metric, ‘Performance-weighted Environmental Sustainability’, was used to analyse the land use change, freshwater use, and climate change impacts of foods, and create a sustainable diet plan. The results of this analysis indicate that very few foods are truly sustainable. A case study on milk alternatives suggests no plant-based drinks are actually sustainable, although soymilk has the most preferable balance of high nutritional content and low environmental impacts. A sustainable daily meal plan was also designed and compared to typical dietary recommendations. Animal products could not be incorporated into the sustainable meal plan due to their high environmental impact. Conversely, bread is high in fibre and protein and has a relatively low environmental impact, making it the ideal basis for a sustainable vegan diet supplemented with vegetables, nuts, and soy products. Finally, an interactive tool has been provided to assist with the understanding of the ‘Performance-weighted Environmental Sustainability’ metric and encourage the design of healthy and sustainable meals. Information © The Author 2024