An analysis on how switching to a more balanced and naturally improved milk would affect consumer health and the environment

Roibás, Laura; Martínez, Ismael; Goris, Alfonso; Barreiro, Rocío; Hospido, Almudena

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.05.141

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Milk powder impacts are mainly associated with cattle rearing, thus possible improvement options could include the modification of the diet of cattle to reduce methane emissions from enteric fermentation [42]. Roibas et al [43] considered the effect of modified cow diet through the inclusion of high-quality forages (linseeds) on the emission of GHGs and found that the GWP of milk was reduced by 10%. Increasing the efficiency of energy use in ingredients production and chocolate manufacturing through implementation of integrated energy management systems or more advanced and innovative technologies such as trigeneration systems could potentially reduce emissions from LPG and hydroelectricity [17].…”

Section: Improvement Options For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Performance of Chocolate Produced in Ghana Using Life Cycle Assessment

Boakye-Yiadom¹,

Duca²,

Pedretti³

et al. 2021

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ghana is an important cocoa producer and exporter and this production is of high economic importance. Increasing interest in the sustainable productions of cocoa/chocolate necessitated the need to assess the environmental impacts associated with the production of different chocolate variants (extra dark (EDC), dark (DC), milk (MC) and flavoured milk (FMC) in Ghana, including the identification of environmental hotspots for improvement. The life cycle assessment tool was used following the CML_IA and CED impact assessment methods. EDC had the lowest scores for most of the impact categories while FMC was most impactful. For Global Warming Potential (GWP), EDC and FMC were estimated to be 1.61 kg CO2 eq. and 4.21 kg CO2 eq., respectively. CED ranged from 1.44 × 102 to 1.50 × 102 MJ-eq. Chocolate manufacturing phase was generally more impactful than cocoa cultivation due to high emissions from milk and sugar production. The impact scores for 100 g packaged chocolate bar were the lowest in comparison to 300 g chocolate pouches and 12.5 g packaged chocolate strips. GWP for 100 g and 12.5 g were 0.20 kg CO2 eq. and 0.39 kg CO2 eq., respectively. Comparing different destination points for the manufactured chocolate, impact scores for the international destination were similar to those recorded for local destinations. Improvement options are suggested for all phases to ensure more sustainable chocolate production and distribution.

show abstract

Section: Improvement Options For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Performance of Chocolate Produced in Ghana Using Life Cycle Assessment

Boakye-Yiadom¹,

Duca²,

Pedretti³

et al. 2021

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A further improvement option that could be considered is to modify the cows' diet to reduce methane emissions from enteric fermentation. For example, Roibas et al (2016) considered the effect on the emissions of the addition of linseeds to the feed and found that the GWP of milk was reduced by 10%. Applying this potential reduction to the milk production in this study would reduce the overall GWP of chocolates by 5%-7%.…”

Section: Improvement Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of chocolate production and consumption in the UK

Konstantas

Jeswani

Stamford

et al. 2018

Food Research International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study evaluates life cycle environmental impacts associated with chocolate products made and consumed in the UK. The paper focuses on three representative chocolate products occupying 90% of the market: 'moulded chocolate', 'chocolate countlines' and 'chocolates in bag'. The impacts were estimated using life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool and following the ReCiPe impact assessment method. The water footprint was also considered. For example, the global warming potential ranges between 2.91 and 4.15 kg CO eq., primary energy demand from 30 to 41 MJ and the water footprint, including water stress, from 31 to 63 l per kilogram of chocolate. The raw materials are the major hotspot across all impact categories for all three product types, followed by the chocolate production process and packaging. The raw material impacts are mainly due to milk powder, cocoa derivatives, sugar and palm oil. The sensitivity analysis shows that the results for global warming potential are sensitive to land-use change (LUC) associated with cocoa production, increasing the impact of the chocolate products by three to four times if LUC is involved. The improvement opportunities targeting the key contributing stages suggest that GWP of chocolates could be reduced by 14%-19%. Chocolate countlines have the highest contribution to the total impacts at the UK level (37%-43%), followed by chocolates in bag (28%-33%). Moulded chocolates and other chocolate confectionary make up the rest of the impacts, with a roughly equal share each. Chocolate consumption in the UK contributes 4.7% to the primary energy consumption and 2.4% to the GHG emissions from the whole food and drink sector. The results of this work will be of interest to policy makers, chocolate producers and consumers, helping them to make more informed decisions towards sustainable production and consumption of chocolate products.

show abstract

“…In a comparison between conventional ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk and a nutritionally enhanced UHT milk in Spain, Roibás et al (2016) used the LCA framework to consider carbon and water footprints of both production methods in combination with health effects. The authors used a cradleto-gate system boundary with a baseline functional unit set as 1 l of packaged UHT milk leaving the dairy factory; nutritional values of the final products were calculated externally to the LCA framework.…”

Section: Tier 1 Approach: Single-issue Functional Unitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the authors stopped short of including the causal effects brought about by different farming systems on nutritional quality of the final product. Roibás et al (2016) explored the environmental impacts of various UHT milk products and directly accounted for product quality in terms of both long-chain and short-chain fatty acids contents from each system. Even though the authors opted not to calculate NDS for each of the products, they did consider individual nutrients which Western populations tend to be deficient in (i.e.…”

Section: Effects Of Farm Management On Commodity-level Nutritionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applications of nutritional functional units in commodity-level life cycle assessment (LCA) of agri-food systems

McAuliffe

Takahashi

Lee

2019

Int J Life Cycle Assess

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The nutritional quality of final products is attracting an increased level of attention within life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of agri-food systems. The majority of these studies, however, are based on comparisons at the dietary level and, therefore, are unable to offer immediate implications for farmers as to how best to produce food. This article evaluates recent literature examining the nutrition-environment nexus at the commodity level, with the aim to identify potential pathways towards sustainability analysis that can inform both consumers and producers. Methods A systematic search of literature was carried out to produce a shortlist of studies, and strict exclusion criteria were applied to them afterwards to eliminate irrelevant material. The studies thus selected were classified into one of three tiers based on the level of complexity with regard to their functional units: (1) based on single nutrients, (2) based on composite indicators derived from multiple nutrients and (3) based on commodity-level analysis in a dietary context. Results and discussion Sixteen papers were identified for inclusion in the review. All of them accounted for climate change either directly or indirectly, whilst only five addressed different impact categories at the same time. Nine studies estimated environmental impacts under functional units associated with nutrient density scores, and the others utilised alternative approaches to account for nutritional value such as linear programming and end-point modelling combined with epidemiological data. A recently developed method to calculate the marginal contribution of a commodity to the overall nutritional value of a specific diet was considered to be a successful first step in bridging the aforementioned knowledge gap. Conclusions The LCA community should continue the ongoing effort to link farm management decisions to diet-level environmental impacts through an enhanced focus on human nutrition across the entire value chain. Future research comparing environmental performances of multiple food groups or multiple production systems should acknowledge differences in nutritional composition and bioavailability between the final products and, ideally, the effects of these nutrients on overall dietary quality.

show abstract

An analysis on how switching to a more balanced and naturally improved milk would affect consumer health and the environment

Cited by 14 publications

References 45 publications

Environmental Performance of Chocolate Produced in Ghana Using Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental Performance of Chocolate Produced in Ghana Using Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental impacts of chocolate production and consumption in the UK

Applications of nutritional functional units in commodity-level life cycle assessment (LCA) of agri-food systems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About