Sustainability benefits of transitioning from current diets to plant-based alternatives or whole-food diets in Sweden.

Plant-based alternatives (PBAs) are increasingly becoming part of diets. Here, we investigate the environmental, nutritional, and economic implications of replacing animal-source foods (ASFs) with PBAs or whole foods (WFs) in the Swedish diet. Utilising two functional units (mass and energy), we model vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian scenarios, each based on PBAs or WFs. Our results demonstrate that PBA-rich diets substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions (30-52%), land use (20-45%), and freshwater use (14-27%), with the vegan diet showing the highest reduction potential. We observe comparable environmental benefits when ASFs are replaced with WFs, underscoring the need to reduce ASF consumption. PBA scenarios meet most Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, except for vitamin B12, vitamin D and selenium, while enhancing iron, magnesium, folate, and fibre supply and decreasing saturated fat. Daily food expenditure slightly increases in the PBA scenarios (3-5%) and decreases in the WF scenarios (4-17%), with PBA diets being 10-20% more expensive than WF diets. Here we show, that replacing ASFs with PBAs can reduce the environmental impact of current Swedish diets while meeting most nutritional recommendations, but slightly increases food expenditure. We recommend prioritising ASF reduction and diversifying WFs and healthier PBAs to accommodate diverse consumer preferences during dietary transitions.

Population-level salt intake in the WHO European Region in 2022: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: The WHO recommends that adults consume less than 5 g of salt per day to reduce the risk of CVD. This study aims to examine the average population daily salt intake in the fifty-three Member States of the WHO European Region. DESIGN: A systematic review was conducted to examine the most up-to-date salt intake data for adults published between 2000 and 2022. Data were obtained from peer-reviewed and grey literature, WHO surveys and studies, as well as from national and global experts. SETTING: The fifty-three Member States of the WHO European Region. PARTICIPANTS: People aged 12 years or more. RESULTS: We identified fifty studies published between 2010 and 2021. Most countries in the WHO European Region (n 52, 98 %) reported salt intake above WHO recommended maximum levels. In almost all countries (n 52, 98 %), men consume more salt than women, ranging between 5·39 and 18·51 g for men and 4·27 and 16·14 g for women. Generally, Western and Northern European countries have the lowest average salt intake, whilst Eastern European and Central Asian countries have the highest average. Forty-two percentage of the fifty-three countries (n 22) measured salt intake using 24 h urinary collection, considered the gold standard method. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that salt intakes in the WHO European Region are significantly above WHO recommended levels. Most Member States of the Region have conducted some form of population salt intake. However, methodologies to estimate salt intake are highly disparate and underestimations are very likely.

Insights Into a Planetary Health Journey in Germany.

This article describes innovative approaches to empower students and people beyond the academic world to engage for planetary health, with promising results from the use of student advocates and the development of a global network to achieve greater outreach. It provides glimpses of the challenges we face, and ideas for collectively transforming various spheres to preserve the health of the planet.

Sustainable food profiling models to inform the development of food labels that account for nutrition and the environment: a systematic review.

Sustainable food profiling models (SFPMs) are the scientific basis for the labelling of food products according to their environmental and nutritional impact, allowing consumers to make informed choices. We identified ten SFPMs that score individual foods according to at least two environmental indicators, with the most common being greenhouse gas emissions (n=10) and water use (n=8). Six models additionally assessed the nutritional quality of foods and presented different methods to combine nutritional and environmental indicators. Key advantages of identified models include a wide range in system boundaries, reference units, approaches for defining cutoff values, design proposals for food labelling schemes, and the comprehensive geographical scope of the lifecycle inventory databases used in the development phase of the model. Key disadvantages of identified models include inconsistent methods for food classification and poor replicability due to unclear methods, unavailable code for environmental and nutritional impact calculation, and unclear cutoff values. We found that few SFPMs to date account for at least two environmental impact factors, and even fewer include nutritional values or other dimensions of sustainability. This systematic review highlights the need to use consistent components and to develop national and international reference values for the classification of sustainable food to enable standardised food labelling.

A Snapshot of European Children's Eating Habits: Results from the Fourth Round of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI).

Consuming a healthy diet in childhood helps to protect against malnutrition and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). This cross-sectional study described the diets of 132,489 children aged six to nine years from 23 countries participating in round four (2015-2017) of the WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI). Children's parents or caregivers were asked to complete a questionnaire that contained indicators of energy-balance-related behaviors (including diet). For each country, we calculated the percentage of children who consumed breakfast, fruit, vegetables, sweet snacks or soft drinks "every day", "most days (four to six days per week)", "some days (one to three days per week)", or "never or less than once a week". We reported these results stratified by country, sex, and region. On a daily basis, most children (78.5%) consumed breakfast, fewer than half (42.5%) consumed fruit, fewer than a quarter (22.6%) consumed fresh vegetables, and around one in ten consumed sweet snacks or soft drinks (10.3% and 9.4%, respectively); however, there were large between-country differences. This paper highlights an urgent need to create healthier food and drink environments, reinforce health systems to promote healthy diets, and continue to support child nutrition and obesity surveillance.