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Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products

Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems [El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, 456–464 (2018)]. While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wh...

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Autores principales: Clark, Michael, Springmann, Marco, Rayner, Mike, Scarborough, Peter, Hill, Jason, Tilman, David, Macdiarmid, Jennie I., Fanzo, Jessica, Bandy, Lauren, Harrington, Richard A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388151/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35939701
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120584119
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author Clark, Michael
Springmann, Marco
Rayner, Mike
Scarborough, Peter
Hill, Jason
Tilman, David
Macdiarmid, Jennie I.
Fanzo, Jessica
Bandy, Lauren
Harrington, Richard A.
author_facet Clark, Michael
Springmann, Marco
Rayner, Mike
Scarborough, Peter
Hill, Jason
Tilman, David
Macdiarmid, Jennie I.
Fanzo, Jessica
Bandy, Lauren
Harrington, Richard A.
author_sort Clark, Michael
collection PubMed
description Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems [El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, 456–464 (2018)]. While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef [Poore and Nemecek, Science 360, 987–992 (2018)], most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases [Poore and Nemecek Science 360, 987–992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360–365 (2021)] to derive estimates of a food product’s environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products.
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spelling pubmed-93881512022-08-19 Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products Clark, Michael Springmann, Marco Rayner, Mike Scarborough, Peter Hill, Jason Tilman, David Macdiarmid, Jennie I. Fanzo, Jessica Bandy, Lauren Harrington, Richard A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems [El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, 456–464 (2018)]. While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef [Poore and Nemecek, Science 360, 987–992 (2018)], most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases [Poore and Nemecek Science 360, 987–992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360–365 (2021)] to derive estimates of a food product’s environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products. National Academy of Sciences 2022-08-08 2022-08-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9388151/ /pubmed/35939701 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120584119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Clark, Michael
Springmann, Marco
Rayner, Mike
Scarborough, Peter
Hill, Jason
Tilman, David
Macdiarmid, Jennie I.
Fanzo, Jessica
Bandy, Lauren
Harrington, Richard A.
Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title_full Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title_fullStr Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title_full_unstemmed Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title_short Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
title_sort estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388151/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35939701
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120584119
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