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Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet
Food consumption is one of the major causes of climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other kinds of environmental impact by modern households. According to evidence, a global change in dietary habits could be the single most effective and rapid intervention to reduce anthropi...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10001513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36900805 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20053797 |
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author | Filippin, Denise Sarni, Anna Rita Rizzo, Gianluca Baroni, Luciana |
author_facet | Filippin, Denise Sarni, Anna Rita Rizzo, Gianluca Baroni, Luciana |
author_sort | Filippin, Denise |
collection | PubMed |
description | Food consumption is one of the major causes of climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other kinds of environmental impact by modern households. According to evidence, a global change in dietary habits could be the single most effective and rapid intervention to reduce anthropic pressure on the planet, especially with respect to climate change. Our study applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the total environmental impact of two plant-based diets: the Mediterranean and the Vegan diets, according to relevant Italian nutritional recommendations. The two diets share the same macronutrient rates and cover all the nutritional recommendations. Calculations were made on the basis of a theoretical one-week 2000 kcal/day diet. According to our calculations, the Vegan diet showed about 44% less total environmental impact when compared to the Mediterranean diet, despite the fact that the content of animal products of the latter was low (with 10.6% of the total diet calories). This result clearly supports the concept that meat and dairy consumption plays a critical role, above all, in terms of damage to human health and ecosystems. Our study supports the thesis that even a minimal-to-moderate content of animal foods has a consistent impact on the environmental footprint of a diet, and their reduction can elicit significant ecological benefits. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10001513 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100015132023-03-11 Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet Filippin, Denise Sarni, Anna Rita Rizzo, Gianluca Baroni, Luciana Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Food consumption is one of the major causes of climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other kinds of environmental impact by modern households. According to evidence, a global change in dietary habits could be the single most effective and rapid intervention to reduce anthropic pressure on the planet, especially with respect to climate change. Our study applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the total environmental impact of two plant-based diets: the Mediterranean and the Vegan diets, according to relevant Italian nutritional recommendations. The two diets share the same macronutrient rates and cover all the nutritional recommendations. Calculations were made on the basis of a theoretical one-week 2000 kcal/day diet. According to our calculations, the Vegan diet showed about 44% less total environmental impact when compared to the Mediterranean diet, despite the fact that the content of animal products of the latter was low (with 10.6% of the total diet calories). This result clearly supports the concept that meat and dairy consumption plays a critical role, above all, in terms of damage to human health and ecosystems. Our study supports the thesis that even a minimal-to-moderate content of animal foods has a consistent impact on the environmental footprint of a diet, and their reduction can elicit significant ecological benefits. MDPI 2023-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10001513/ /pubmed/36900805 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20053797 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Filippin, Denise Sarni, Anna Rita Rizzo, Gianluca Baroni, Luciana Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title | Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title_full | Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title_fullStr | Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title_full_unstemmed | Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title_short | Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet |
title_sort | environmental impact of two plant-based, isocaloric and isoproteic diets: the vegan diet vs. the mediterranean diet |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10001513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36900805 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20053797 |
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