Taking nutrition into account within the life cycle assessment of food products

Saarinen, Merja; Fogelholm, Mikael; Tahvonen, Raija; Kurppa, Sirpa

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.062

Cited by 83 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…One way to address this issue is through the use of a nutrient index, a scalar value to combine information on multiple nutrients, both beneficial and detrimental to human health. For the present analysis, four variants of the formulae originally developed by Saarinen, Fogelholm, Tahvonen, and Kurppa (2017) for protein‐rich foods in Finland were adopted and applied to the same seven livestock systems as above: UKNI prot 7 and UKNI prot 10 based on FNI prot 7 , and UKNI prot 7‐2 and UKNI prot 10‐2 based on FNI prot 7‐2 . The first group simply rewards foodstuffs with higher contents of desirable nutrients (protein, MUFA, EPA + DHA, calcium, iron, riboflavin, folate and, additionally for UKNI prot 10 , vitamin B12, selenium, zinc), while the second group also penalizes those with higher contents of undesirable nutrients (SFA and sodium).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…GWP estimates were also taken from the first case study and, contrary to Saarinen et al. (2017), excluded the cooking process to match nutritional data. Based on best available evidence, it was assumed that protein and micronutrient contents were comparable between production systems for the same species (Scollan et al., 2006).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…RDI and RDA values were sourced from the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF, 2016) as averages between female and male. Where UK-specific recommendations were unknown or unspecified, as was the case with MUFA, values from Saarinen et al (2017) were directly adopted. Nutritional compositions of (uncooked) meats were sourced from McCance and Widdowson (2015), except for fatty acid profiles carried over from the first case study (Table 1).…”

Section: Nutrient Index Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

McAuliffe

Takahashi

Lee

2018

Food and Energy Security

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely regarded as a useful tool for comparing the environmental impacts of multiple livestock production systems. While LCA results are typically communicated in the form of environmental burdens per mass unit of the end product, it is increasingly becoming recognized that the product quality also needs to be accounted for to truly understand the value of a farming system to society. To date, a number of studies have examined environmental consequences of different food consumption patterns at the diet level; however, few have addressed nutritional variations of a single commodity attributable to production systems, leaving limited insight into how on‐farm practices can be improved to better balance environment and human nutrition. Using data from seven livestock production systems encompassing cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, this paper proposes a novel framework to incorporate nutritional value of meat products into livestock LCA. The results of quantitative case studies demonstrate that relative emissions intensities associated with different systems can be dramatically altered when the nutrient content of meat replaces the mass of meat as the functional unit, with cattle systems outperforming pig and poultry systems in some cases. This finding suggests that the performance of livestock systems should be evaluated under a whole supply chain approach, whereby end products originating from different farm management strategies are treated as competing but separate commodities.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Nutrient Index Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

McAuliffe

Takahashi

Lee

2018

Food and Energy Security

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“…For example, kg CO2-eq/kg of protein, kg CO2-eq/1000 calories, kg CO2-eq/mg B12 vitamin, and kg CO2-eq/mg calcium etc (Meija et al, 2017;Saarinen et al, 2017;Sonesson et al, 2017).…”

Section: Comparison Of Functional Unitsunclassified

“…The aim is to understand the changes in total environmental impact and how this may affect communication strategies for the wider public. Compared to Meija et al (2017), Saarinen et al (2017) and Sonesson et al (2017), three new FU are also considered; serving size, 1 g of fat, and 1 g of sugar.…”

Section: Comparison Of Functional Unitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental management of confectionery products: Life cycle impacts and improvement strategies

Miah

Griffiths

McNeill³

et al. 2018

Journal of Cleaner Production

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a b s t r a c tThis paper presents the first environmental life cycle analysis for a range of different confectionery products. A proposed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was developed to characterise and identify the environmental profiles and hotspots for five different confectionery products; milk chocolate, dark chocolate, sugar, milk chocolate biscuit and milk-based products. The environmental impact categories are based on Nestle's EcodEX LCA tool which includes Global Warming Potential (GWP), Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), ecosystems quality, and two new indicators previously not considered such as land use and water depletion. Overall, it was found that sugar confectionery had the lowest aggregated environmental impact compared to dark chocolate confectionery which had the highest, primarily due to ingredients. As such, nine key ingredients were identified across the five confectionery products which are recommended for confectionery manufacturers to prioritise e.g. sugar, glucose, starch, milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk liquid, wheat flour and palm oil. Furthermore, the general environmental hotspots were found to occur at the following life cycle stages: raw materials, factory, and packaging. An analysis of five improvement strategies (e.g. alternative raw materials, packaging materials, renewable energy, product reformulations, and zero waste to landfill) showed both positive and negative environmental impact reduction is possible from cradle-to-grave, especially renewable energy. Surprisingly, the role of product reformulations was found to achieve moderate-to-low environmental reductions with waste reductions having low impacts. The majority of reductions was found to be achieved by focusing on sourcing raw materials with lower environmental impacts, product reformulations, and reducing waste generating an aggregated environmental reduction of 46%. Overall, this research provides many insights of the environmental impacts for a range of different confectionery products, especially how actors across the confectionery supply chain can improve the environmental sustainability performance. It is expected the findings from this research will serve as a base for future improvements, research and policies for confectionery manufacturers, supply chain actors, policy makers, and research institutes towards an environmentally sustainable confectionery industry.

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A commentary on key methodological developments related to nutritional life cycle assessment (nLCA) generated throughout a 6‐year strategic scientific programme

McAuliffe,

Takahashi,

Lee

et al. 2023

Food and Energy Security

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Rothamsted Research (RRes) is the world's oldest agricultural research centre, notable for the development of the first synthetic fertilizer (superphosphate) and long‐term farming experiments (LTEs) spanning over 170 years. In 2015, RRes recruited several life cycle assessment (LCA) experts and began adopting the method to utilize high resolution agronomical data covering livestock (primarily ruminants), grassland/forage productivity and quality, and arable systems established on its North Wyke Farm Platform (NWFP) and the LTEs. The NWFP is a UK ‘National Bioscience Research Infrastructure’ (NBRI) developed for informing and testing systems science utilising high‐resolution data to determine whether it is possible to produce nutritious food sustainably. Thanks largely to the multidisciplinary knowledge at RRes, and its collaborators, its LCA Team has been at the forefront of methodological advances during a 6‐year Institute Strategic Programme (ISP) ‘Soil‐to‐Nutrition’ (S2N). While S2N investigated the co‐benefits and trade‐offs of new mechanistic understanding of efficient nutrient use across scales from pot to landscape, this commentary specifically synthesizes progress in incorporating human nutrition in the context of environmental footprinting, known as ‘nutritional LCA’ (nLCA). We conclude our commentary with a brief discussion on future pathways of exploration and methodological developments covering various activities along entire agri‐food supply‐chains.

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Taking nutrition into account within the life cycle assessment of food products

Cited by 83 publications

References 25 publications

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

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

Environmental management of confectionery products: Life cycle impacts and improvement strategies

A commentary on key methodological developments related to nutritional life cycle assessment (nLCA) generated throughout a 6‐year strategic scientific programme

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