A model for composing meat replacers: Reducing the environmental impact of our food consumption pattern while retaining its nutritional value

Abstract

Current food consumption patterns have a substantial impact on our environment and are thus considered unsustainable. In the context of global warming and a rising world population, shifting from meat towards more plant-based products holds potential to reduce the environmental impact of our food consumption. Replacing meat in the diet, however, requires compensation through other products that are able to provide the important nutrients present in meat (protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B12). This study applies linear programming techniques with the aim to compose meat replacers, with equivalent nutritional value to meat (using chicken and beef as a reference), minimizing the environmental impact with regards to climate change, land use, water use and fossil fuel depletion. A life cycle approach was used to quantify the environmental impacts. Particular attention was given to protein quality and the relative quantities of essential amino acids. The results show that soy is a preferred ingredient due to its favorable amino acid profile. Among the different scenarios investigated, the vegan replacers, with reductions of up to 87%, have the largest potential for impact reduction for all indicators except water use. Insect-based replacers have the largest potential for water use reduction (up to 47%), but show relatively high fossil fuel depletion values. The smallest improvement potential is observed with regards to fossil fuel depletion, with some values even 45% higher than the values for meat. Furthermore, it is not possible to obtain equivalent nutritional values to beef without using fortifications.

The next protein transition

“…Although their current market share is very small, meat and dairy analogues are strongly on the rise (Geijer, 2017;Schmidinger, 2012). Yet, their environmental impact reduction is limited compared to consumption reduction, and further improvement of their environmental performance is clearly required (Smetana, Mathys, Knoch, & Heinz, 2015;Van Mierlo, Rohmer, & Gerdessen, 2017). Another point is that food choices may be influenced by fads and fashions.…”

Best compromise nutritional menus for childhood obesity

“…Constraints (12) and (13) ensure the proper daily and weekly intake of different food groups, as suggested by experts. Constraints (14), (15), (16) and (17) specify the appropriate menus. Thus, constraint (14) requires that all dishes served at different meal times on different days have an assigned food.…”

“…Model testing. Different indicators (due to Talbi [17]) are used to complete the analysis of the results generated with the methods. The notation || � || indicates the Euclidian distance in the objective space, and | � | indicates the cardinality of a set.…”

“…Donati et al [16] presented a multiobjective model to generate diets at the lowest cost while minimizing the environmental effect of its production, which was measured as equivalent carbon dioxide emissions and land and water use. Van Mierlo, Rohmer and Gerdessen [17] studied a similar situation that minimized fossil fuel depletion instead of cost minimization. The authors found that the existing models for MO-NMPP are focused on general issues that are valid for an obese individual.…”

Best-compromise nutritional menus for childhood obesity

“…Donati et al [16] presented a multiobjective model to generate diets at the lowest cost while minimizing the environmental effect of its production, measured as equivalent carbon dioxide emissions and land and water use. Van Mierlo, Rohmer and Gerdessen [17] studied a similar situation that minimized fossil fuel depletion instead of cost minimization.…”