A life cycle assessment framework combining nutritional and environmental health impacts of diet: a case study on milk

Stylianou, Katerina S.; Heller, Martin; Fulgoni, Victor L; Ernstoff, Alexi; Keoleian, Gregory A.

doi:10.1007/s11367-015-0961-0

Cited by 84 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…As indicated by Heller et al (2013) and by Smedman et al (2010), environmental assessment of a diet cannot consider only the daily intake food or its fat, energy or protein content, but must also comprise other more qualitative aspects of a diet. LCA of dietary aspects and health issues must consider more particularised and inclusive nutrition-based functional units (Stylianou et al 2016). …”

Section: Role Of Changes In Dietmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of life cycle assessment in supporting sustainable agri-food systems: A review of the challenges

Notarnicola

Sala

Antón

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

489

273

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Life cycle thinking is increasingly seen as a key concept for ensuring a transition towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns. As food production systems and consumption patterns are among the leading drivers of impacts on the environment, it is important to assess and improve food-related supply chains as much as possible. Over the years, life cycle assessment has been used extensively to assess agricultural systems and food processing and manufacturing activities, and compare alternatives "from field to fork" and through to food waste management. Notwithstanding the efforts, several methodological aspects of life cycle assessment still need further improvement in order to ensure adequate and robust support for decision making in both business and policy development contexts. This paper discusses the challenges for life cycle assessment arising from the complexity of food systems, and recommends research priorities for both scientific development and improvements in practical implementation. In summary, the intrinsic variability of food production systems requires dedicated modelling approaches, including addressing issues related to: the distinction between technosphere and ecosphere; the most appropriate functional unit; the multi-functionality of biological systems; and the modelling of the emissions and how this links with life cycle impact assessment. Also, data availability and interpretation of the results are two issues requiring further attention, including how to account for consumer behaviour.

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Section: Role Of Changes In Dietmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of life cycle assessment in supporting sustainable agri-food systems: A review of the challenges

Notarnicola

Sala

Antón

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

489

273

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Intake fractions and characterization factors for human toxicity according to the USETOX method were made available for 875 active ingredients and six crops. Stylianou et al (2015) developed a novel Combined Nutritional and Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (CONE-LCA) framework that evaluates and compares in parallel the environmental and nutritional effects of food items or diets. Beneficial and detrimental impacts of the nutrition on health were included in the assessment of human health impacts (measured in disability adjusted life years, DALYs).…”

Section: Methodology Data and Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

Nemecek

Jungbluth

Canals³

et al. 2016

Int J Life Cycle Assess

164

106

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Purpose This article introduces the special issue "LCA of nutrition and food consumption" and 14 papers selected from the Ninth LCA Food Conference in San Francisco in October 2014. Literature overview The scientific literature in the field of food LCA has increased more than ten times during the last 15 years. Nutrition has a high contribution to the total environmental impacts of consumption. Agricultural production often dominates the impacts, but its importance depends on the type of product, its production mode, transport, and processing. Local or domestic products reduce transports, but this advantage can be lost if the impacts of the raw material production are substantially increased. Diets containing less meat tend to be more environmentally friendly. Several studies concluded that respecting the dietary recommendations for a healthy diet would reduce the overall environmental impacts in the developed countries, although this is not a universal conclusion. Contribution of this special issueEight papers analyze the environmental impacts of catering and in-house food consumption and impacts on sectoral and national levels; four papers presents tools and methods to better assess the impacts of nutrition and to implement the results in practical decisionmaking. Finally, two contributions analyze the impacts of food waste and reduction options. Communication of the environmental impact assessment results to stakeholders including policy-makers and consumers needs additional efforts. Research needs and outlook (i) Development of holistic approaches for the assessment of sustainable food systems, (ii) assessment of land use related impacts and inclusion of ecosystem services, (iii) exploration of LCA results for policy support and decision-making, (iv) investigation of food consumption patterns in developing and emerging countries, and (v) harmonization of databases.

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“…Nauta et al Trends in Food Science & Technology 76 (2018) 90-100 Also, environmental sustainability can be taken into account, for example by the use of life cycle assessment (LCA), a product-oriented environmental assessment tool that provides a systematic way to quantify the environmental effects of individual products or services (Hermansen & Nguyen, 2012). A methodology is being developed to include nutritional health impacts in LCA (Stylianou et al, 2016), which could clearly contribute to the development of RBAs with a scope beyond immediate health effects of food intakes.…”

Section: The Scope Of Risk-benefit Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting the challenges in the development of risk-benefit assessment of foods

Nauta

Andersen

Pilegaard

et al. 2018

Trends in Food Science & Technology

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A B S T R A C TBackground: Risk-benefit assessment (RBA) of foods aims to assess the combined negative and positive health effects associated with food intake. RBAs integrate chemical and microbiological risk assessment with risk and benefit assessment in nutrition. Scope and Approach: Based on the past experiences and the methodological differences between the underlying research disciplines, this paper aims to describe the recent progress in RBAs, identifying the key challenges that need to be addressed for further development, and making suggestions for meeting these challenges. Key Findings and Conclusions: Ten specific challenges are identified and discussed. They include the variety of different definitions and terminologies used in the underlying research disciplines, the differences between the "bottom-up" and the "top-down" approaches and the need for clear risk-benefit questions. The frequent lack of data and knowledge with their consequential uncertainties is considered, as well as the imbalance in the level of scientific evidence associated with health risks and benefits. The challenges that are consequential to the need of considering substitution issues are discussed, as are those related to the inclusion of microbiological hazards. Further challenges include the choice of the integrative health metrics and the potential scope of RBAs, which may go beyond the health effect. Finally, the need for more practical applications of RBA is stressed. Suggestions for meeting the identified challenges include an increased interdisciplinary consensus, reconsideration of methodological approaches and health metrics based on a categorisation of risk-benefit questions, and the performance of case studies to experience the feasibility of the proposed approaches.

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A life cycle assessment framework combining nutritional and environmental health impacts of diet: a case study on milk

Cited by 84 publications

References 33 publications

The role of life cycle assessment in supporting sustainable agri-food systems: A review of the challenges

The role of life cycle assessment in supporting sustainable agri-food systems: A review of the challenges

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

Meeting the challenges in the development of risk-benefit assessment of foods

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