Integrating nutrient bioavailability and co-production links when identifying sustainable diets: How low should we reduce meat consumption?

BACKGROUND: Reducing the consumption of meat and other animal-based products is widely advocated to improve the sustainability of diets in high-income countries. However, such reduction may impair nutritional adequacy, since the bioavailability of key nutrients is higher when they come from animal- vs plant-based foods. Meat reduction may also affect the balance between foods co-produced within the same animal production system. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to assess the impact of introducing nutrient bioavailability and co-production links considerations on the dietary changes needed − especially regarding meat ‒ to improve diet sustainability. METHODS: Diet optimization with linear and non-linear programming was used to design, for each gender, three modeled diets departing the least from the mean observed French diet (OBS) while reducing by at least 30% the diet-related environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, acidification): i) in the nutrition-environment (NE) model, the fulfillment of recommended dietary allowances for all nutrients was imposed; ii) in the NE-bioavailability (NEB) model, nutritional adequacy was further ensured by accounting for iron, zinc, protein and provitamin A bioavailability; iii) in the NEB-co-production (NEB-CP) model, two links between co-produced animal foods (milk–beef and blood sausage–pork) were additionally included into the models by proportionally co-constraining their respective quantities. The price and environmental impacts of individual foods were assumed to be constant. RESULTS: ‘Fruit and vegetables’ and ‘Starches’ quantities increased in all modeled diets compared to OBS. In parallel, total meat and ruminant meat quantities decreased. Starting from 110g/d women’s OBS diet (168g/d for men), total meat quantity decreased by 78%, 67% and 32% for women (68%, 66% and 62% for men) in NE, NEB and NEB-CP diets, respectively. Starting from 36g/d women’s OBS diet (54g/d for men), ruminant meat quantity dropped severely by 84% and 87% in NE and NEB diets for women (80% and 78% for men), whereas it only decreased by 27% in NEB-CP diets (38% for men). The share of energy and proteins of animal origin was similar for the 3 modeled diets (approximately 1/5 of total energy, and 1/2 of protein) and lower than in OBS diet (approximately 1/3 of total energy, and 2/3 of protein). CONCLUSIONS: Decreasing meat content was strictly needed to achieve more sustainable diets for French adults, but the reduction was less severe when nutrient bioavailability and co-production links were taken into account.