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Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet
At present, as we face climate change and natural resource scarcity, one of the major challenges linking humans and the environment is to ensure sufficient, nutritious, safe, and affordable food for a rapidly growing world population. In a nutshell, “feed the world without destroying it”. The water...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181431/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37432353 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu15092204 |
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author | Bordoni, Alessandra |
author_facet | Bordoni, Alessandra |
author_sort | Bordoni, Alessandra |
collection | PubMed |
description | At present, as we face climate change and natural resource scarcity, one of the major challenges linking humans and the environment is to ensure sufficient, nutritious, safe, and affordable food for a rapidly growing world population. In a nutshell, “feed the world without destroying it”. The water footprint (WF), i.e., the withdrawals of fresh water necessary to produce one kilogram of food product, is one of the key indicators of the environmental impact of diets. In this work, the WF of the food patterns suggested by the Italian Food Based Dietary Guidelines, considered a model of the Mediterranean Diet, was evaluated for the first time. The data reported here clearly demonstrate that the suggested Italian dietary patterns have a low WF, the reduction of which by replacing animal foods with plant foods is limited because the suggested consumption of meat is already low. Consumer choice in the consumption of specific products within a food group could further reduce the WF of the diet, underlining the need to provide correct information not only to consumers but also to farmers and producers to encourage them to make water-saving choices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10181431 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101814312023-05-13 Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet Bordoni, Alessandra Nutrients Article At present, as we face climate change and natural resource scarcity, one of the major challenges linking humans and the environment is to ensure sufficient, nutritious, safe, and affordable food for a rapidly growing world population. In a nutshell, “feed the world without destroying it”. The water footprint (WF), i.e., the withdrawals of fresh water necessary to produce one kilogram of food product, is one of the key indicators of the environmental impact of diets. In this work, the WF of the food patterns suggested by the Italian Food Based Dietary Guidelines, considered a model of the Mediterranean Diet, was evaluated for the first time. The data reported here clearly demonstrate that the suggested Italian dietary patterns have a low WF, the reduction of which by replacing animal foods with plant foods is limited because the suggested consumption of meat is already low. Consumer choice in the consumption of specific products within a food group could further reduce the WF of the diet, underlining the need to provide correct information not only to consumers but also to farmers and producers to encourage them to make water-saving choices. MDPI 2023-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC10181431/ /pubmed/37432353 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu15092204 Text en © 2023 by the author. 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 Bordoni, Alessandra Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title | Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title_full | Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title_fullStr | Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title_full_unstemmed | Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title_short | Insight into the Sustainability of the Mediterranean Diet: The Water Footprint of the Recommended Italian Diet |
title_sort | insight into the sustainability of the mediterranean diet: the water footprint of the recommended italian diet |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10181431/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37432353 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu15092204 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT bordonialessandra insightintothesustainabilityofthemediterraneandietthewaterfootprintoftherecommendeditaliandiet |