Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Tier 4 — Narrative / commentaryPeer-reviewed

Nutritional and environmental metrics of food

Hallström, E. et al.

2019

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Summary

This paper, published in the MDPI journal Sustainability, examines methodological approaches to measuring and combining nutritional and environmental performance of foods. It likely reviews or develops metrics that allow simultaneous evaluation of a food's contribution to dietary quality and its ecological footprint, addressing the methodological challenge of integrating these two distinct dimensions. The work contributes to the growing literature on sustainable diet assessment by critically examining how such dual metrics can inform food system decision-making.

UK applicability

Although the study appears to take an international or European framing, its methodological contributions to combined nutritional-environmental metrics are broadly applicable to UK food policy contexts, including the UK's National Food Strategy and dietary sustainability guidance from bodies such as the British Dietetic Association.

Key measures

Nutritional quality indices (e.g. nutrient density scores); environmental impact metrics (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water footprint); composite sustainability scores per food item or food group

Outcomes reported

The study likely assessed and compared multiple food products using composite indices that integrate nutritional quality indicators alongside environmental impact measures such as greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and water use. It probably explored trade-offs and synergies between nutritional value and environmental sustainability across food categories.

Theme
Measurement & metrics
Subject
Sustainable diet metrics & food system assessment
Study type
Narrative Review
Study design
Narrative review
Source type
Peer-reviewed study
Status
Published
Geography
International
System type
Food supply chain
Catalogue ID
XL0852

Topic tags

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