Summary
Clark et al. developed an approach to estimate the environmental footprint of individual food products by inferring ingredient composition from food labels and matching these against environmental life-cycle assessment databases. Applied to 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the analysis demonstrates substantial variation in environmental impact across food types and reveals that, whilst more nutritious products tend to be more environmentally sustainable, important exceptions exist and substitutable foods can have markedly different impacts. The methodology is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and sourcing, providing a foundation for more informed decision-making by consumers, retailers and policymakers.
UK applicability
The study was directly conducted on UK and Irish food products, making findings directly applicable to the UK food retail environment and consumer choices. Results could inform UK food labelling policy and retail sustainability initiatives, though sourcing decisions and supply chain geography may limit direct applicability to other regions.
Key measures
Greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, eutrophication potential; NutriScore for nutritional quality
Outcomes reported
The study developed and applied a novel methodology to estimate environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential) across 57,000 food products in the United Kingdom and Ireland by inferring ingredient composition from food labels and pairing with environmental databases. It found that product-level environmental impacts vary widely by food type, with sugary beverages, fruits and breads showing low impacts, whilst meat, fish and cheese products showed high impacts.
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