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Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The role of diet in health is well established and, in the past decade, more attention has been given to the role of food choices in the environment. The agricultural sector produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), and meat production, especially beef...

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Autores principales: Willits-Smith, Amelia, Aranda, Rodrigo, Heller, Martin C, Rose, Donald
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7232940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32220679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30055-3
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author Willits-Smith, Amelia
Aranda, Rodrigo
Heller, Martin C
Rose, Donald
author_facet Willits-Smith, Amelia
Aranda, Rodrigo
Heller, Martin C
Rose, Donald
author_sort Willits-Smith, Amelia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The role of diet in health is well established and, in the past decade, more attention has been given to the role of food choices in the environment. The agricultural sector produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), and meat production, especially beef, is an important contributor to global GHGE. Our study aimed to address a fundamental gap in the diet-climate literature: identifying consumers who are receptive to making dietary changes, and the effect of their potential changes on GHGE, diet healthfulness, and diet costs. METHODS: Dietary data on US individuals from a nationally representative survey were linked to food-related GHGE. We identified individuals receptive to changing their diets (potential changers) as those who reported trying US dietary guidance and were likely to agree that humans contribute to climate change. We assessed GHGE, diet healthfulness measured by the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), and diet costs before and after hypothetical changes replacing either beef or meats with poultry or plant-protein foods. FINDINGS: Our sample comprised 7188 individuals, of whom 16% were potential changers. These were disproportionately women, highly educated, or had higher income compared with individuals deemed not likely to change. Replacing 100% of beef intake in potential changers with poultry reduced mean dietary GHGE by 1·38 kg CO(2)-equivalents per person per day (95% CI 1·19–1·58), a 35·7% decrease. This replacement also increased mean HEI by 1·7% and reduced mean diet costs by 1·7%. We observed the largest changes when replacing all beef, pork, or poultry intake with plant-protein foods (GHGE decreased by 49·6%, mean HEI increased by 8·7%, and dietary costs decreased by 10·5%). Hypothetical replacements in the potential changers alone resulted in whole population reductions in 1-day dietary GHGE of 1·2% to 6·7%, equivalent to 22–126 million fewer passenger vehicle km. INTERPRETATION: Individual-level diet studies that include a variation in response by consumers can improve our understanding of the effects of climate policies such as those that include sustainability information in national dietary guidance. In our study, we found that changes by a small percentage of motivated individuals can modestly reduce the national dietary GHGE. Moreover, these substitutions can modestly improve diet healthfulness and reduce diet costs for individuals who make these changes. FUNDING: Wellcome Trust.
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spelling pubmed-72329402020-05-22 Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study Willits-Smith, Amelia Aranda, Rodrigo Heller, Martin C Rose, Donald Lancet Planet Health Article BACKGROUND: The role of diet in health is well established and, in the past decade, more attention has been given to the role of food choices in the environment. The agricultural sector produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), and meat production, especially beef, is an important contributor to global GHGE. Our study aimed to address a fundamental gap in the diet-climate literature: identifying consumers who are receptive to making dietary changes, and the effect of their potential changes on GHGE, diet healthfulness, and diet costs. METHODS: Dietary data on US individuals from a nationally representative survey were linked to food-related GHGE. We identified individuals receptive to changing their diets (potential changers) as those who reported trying US dietary guidance and were likely to agree that humans contribute to climate change. We assessed GHGE, diet healthfulness measured by the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), and diet costs before and after hypothetical changes replacing either beef or meats with poultry or plant-protein foods. FINDINGS: Our sample comprised 7188 individuals, of whom 16% were potential changers. These were disproportionately women, highly educated, or had higher income compared with individuals deemed not likely to change. Replacing 100% of beef intake in potential changers with poultry reduced mean dietary GHGE by 1·38 kg CO(2)-equivalents per person per day (95% CI 1·19–1·58), a 35·7% decrease. This replacement also increased mean HEI by 1·7% and reduced mean diet costs by 1·7%. We observed the largest changes when replacing all beef, pork, or poultry intake with plant-protein foods (GHGE decreased by 49·6%, mean HEI increased by 8·7%, and dietary costs decreased by 10·5%). Hypothetical replacements in the potential changers alone resulted in whole population reductions in 1-day dietary GHGE of 1·2% to 6·7%, equivalent to 22–126 million fewer passenger vehicle km. INTERPRETATION: Individual-level diet studies that include a variation in response by consumers can improve our understanding of the effects of climate policies such as those that include sustainability information in national dietary guidance. In our study, we found that changes by a small percentage of motivated individuals can modestly reduce the national dietary GHGE. Moreover, these substitutions can modestly improve diet healthfulness and reduce diet costs for individuals who make these changes. FUNDING: Wellcome Trust. Elsevier B.V 2020-03-25 /pmc/articles/PMC7232940/ /pubmed/32220679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30055-3 Text en © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Willits-Smith, Amelia
Aranda, Rodrigo
Heller, Martin C
Rose, Donald
Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title_full Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title_short Addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study
title_sort addressing the carbon footprint, healthfulness, and costs of self-selected diets in the usa: a population-based cross-sectional study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7232940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32220679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30055-3
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