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

Abstract

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.

Overconsumption of Energy and Excessive Discretionary Food Intake Inflates Dietary Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Australia

“…The calculation of carbon and other environmental footprints associated with dietary change and specific food products is still a work in progress with recent international studies highlighting the great diversity in results due to the use of different functional units and system boundaries [10,48]. According to a recent study of carbon footprints in Australian cities, the total per capita footprint for someone living in one of the main cities in Australia is around 15–25 t CO 2 e per capita [49].…”

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

“…Indeed, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and the different life cycle-based methodologies, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (ISO, 2006a,b), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), Social Life Cycle Assessment (sLCA) and the overall Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) may support a transition toward increasing the sustainability of current patterns of production and consumption. Given the importance of adopting a life cycle approach, literature on application of LCA to food system has been thriving (Notarnicola et al 2012a, van den Werf 2014, Notarnicola et al 2015, Nemecek 2016.…”

Framework for life cycle assessment of livestock production systems to account for the nutritional quality of final products

“…As discussed, it is increasingly recognized that mass‐based assessments of agrifood systems are often inadequate at capturing the complexities of both food production (Martínez‐Blanco, Antón, Rieradevall, Castellari, & Muñoz, 2011) and wider supply chains (Schau & Fet, 2008) and, as a result, nutrition is rapidly becoming a key aspect of food LCA studies (Nemecek, Jungbluth, i Canals, & Schenck, 2016). Sonesson et al.…”