Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products
Abstract
One barrier to enabling transitions to more environmentally sustainable food systems is the lack of detailed environmental impact information. We provide an initial approach to overcome this barrier using publicly available information to derive first estimates of the environmental impact of >57,000 food products across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Pairing it with a measure of nutrition shows a tendency for more nutritious foods to be more environmentally sustainable, and that like-for-like substitutes can have highly variable environmental and nutritional impacts. By estimating the environmental impacts of food products in a standardized way, our approach provides a step to enable informed decision making by end users such as consumers and policy makers.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- August 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.2120584119
- Bibcode:
- 2022PNAS..11920584C