Nutrient-sensitive approach for sustainability assessment of different dietary patterns in Australia

Abstract

Abstract Background Understanding the relationship between sustainability and nutrients is important in devising healthy and sustainable diets. However, there are no prevailing methodologies to assess sustainability at the nutrient level. Objectives To examine and demonstrate the potential of integrating input-output analysis with nutritional geometry to link environmental, economic, and health associations of dietary scenarios in Australia with macronutrients. Methods One-day dietary recalls of 9341 adult respondents (age 18 and above) of the latest available cross-sectional, National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey-2011/12 of Australia were integrated with the input-output data obtained from the Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory to calculate the environmental and economic impacts of dietary intakes in Australia. Australian adults’ dietary intakes were classified into three dietary scenarios: “vegan” , “pescatarian” , and “omnivorous” . Then, the relationships between nutritional, economic, and environmental characteristics of the three dietary scenarios were demonstrated with diets’ macronutrient composition in a multi-dimension nutritional geometry representation to link the sustainability indicators with macronutrients. Results Nutrient density, economic and environmental indicators increased as the percentage of energy from proteins increased and decreased as the percentage of energy from fats increased for the three dietary scenarios, except for the nutrient density and water use of the “vegan” dietary scenario. Energy density increased as the percentage of energy from fats increased and decreased as the percentage of energy from proteins increased for “pescatarian” and “omnivorous” dietary scenarios. In the “vegan” dietary scenario, nutrient density and water use increased as the percentage of energy from proteins increased, however, decreased as the percentage of energy from carbohydrates increased, instead of fats. Conclusions The study presents a new approach to analyzing the relationships between sustainability indicators, foods, and macronutrients and establishes that proteins, irrespective of the source of protein, are driving dietary environmental and economic impacts.