Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Peer-reviewed

Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products

Michael Clark, Marco Springmann, Mike Rayner, Peter Scarborough, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Jennie I. Macdiarmid, Jessica Fanzo, Lauren Bandy, Richard Harrington

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022

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Summary

360, 987-992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360-365 (2021)] to derive estimates of a food product's environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and i

Subject
Climate & greenhouse gas mitigation
Source type
Peer-reviewed study
System type
Other
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2120584119
Catalogue ID
BFmom3864r-sy0r71
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