The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus

This study aims to assess the carbon footprint associated with vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus for primary school lunches in Italy. For this purpose, healthy and acceptable menus with minimal greenhouse gas emissions have been designed by a binary linear programming model. The results show t...

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Autores principales: Benvenuti, Luca, De Santis, Alberto, Ferrari, Marika, Martone, Deborah, Rossi, Laura
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Nutrition
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9470960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36118761
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.854049
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author Benvenuti, Luca
De Santis, Alberto
Ferrari, Marika
Martone, Deborah
Rossi, Laura
author_facet Benvenuti, Luca
De Santis, Alberto
Ferrari, Marika
Martone, Deborah
Rossi, Laura
author_sort Benvenuti, Luca
collection PubMed
description This study aims to assess the carbon footprint associated with vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus for primary school lunches in Italy. For this purpose, healthy and acceptable menus with minimal greenhouse gas emissions have been designed by a binary linear programming model. The results show that the adoption of a specific diet may help in reducing the carbon footprint of menus, but it is the optimal selection of dishes that ultimately makes the difference. Interestingly enough, the optimal choice of dishes and the restriction of meat consumption in omnivorous menus can lead up to a 40% emission reduction compared to the current school lunch menu of the municipality of Rome. Moreover, the optimal choice of dishes in vegan menus provides the menu with the lowest carbon footprint among all kinds of diets.
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spelling pubmed-94709602022-09-15 The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus Benvenuti, Luca De Santis, Alberto Ferrari, Marika Martone, Deborah Rossi, Laura Front Nutr Nutrition This study aims to assess the carbon footprint associated with vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus for primary school lunches in Italy. For this purpose, healthy and acceptable menus with minimal greenhouse gas emissions have been designed by a binary linear programming model. The results show that the adoption of a specific diet may help in reducing the carbon footprint of menus, but it is the optimal selection of dishes that ultimately makes the difference. Interestingly enough, the optimal choice of dishes and the restriction of meat consumption in omnivorous menus can lead up to a 40% emission reduction compared to the current school lunch menu of the municipality of Rome. Moreover, the optimal choice of dishes in vegan menus provides the menu with the lowest carbon footprint among all kinds of diets. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9470960/ /pubmed/36118761 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.854049 Text en Copyright © 2022 Benvenuti, De Santis, Ferrari, Martone and Rossi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Nutrition
Benvenuti, Luca
De Santis, Alberto
Ferrari, Marika
Martone, Deborah
Rossi, Laura
The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title_full The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title_fullStr The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title_full_unstemmed The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title_short The carbon footprint of Italian schools meals: An optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
title_sort carbon footprint of italian schools meals: an optimal choice of dishes in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous menus
topic Nutrition
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9470960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36118761
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.854049
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