Environmental impact of Norwegian self-selected diets: comparing current intake with national dietary guidelines and EAT-Lancet targets.

OBJECTIVES: Dietary environmental impact in a Norwegian adult population was estimated for six environmental impact categories. Moreover, environmental benefits of scenario diets complying with the Norwegian Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG) and the EAT-Lancet reference diet were assessed. DESIGN: The current diet of Norwegian adults was estimated according to 24-h dietary recall data from a national dietary surveillance survey (Norkost 3). Scenario diets were modelled to represent the Norwegian FBDG and the EAT-Lancet healthy reference diet. Dietary environmental impact in terms of global warming potential, freshwater and marine eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, water use and transformation and use of land was estimated for the current and scenario diets using environmental impact data representative of the Norwegian market. Significant associations between impact and gender/educational attainment were assessed at P < 0·05. SETTING: Norway. PARTICIPANTS: Adults (n=1787) aged 18-70 years who participated in the Norkost 3 survey (2010-2011). RESULTS: Environmental impact varied significantly by gender and educational attainment. The food groups contributing most to environmental impact of Norwegian diets were meat, dairy, beverages, grains and composite dishes. Compared with the current Norwegian diet, the FBDG scenario reduced impacts from 2 % (freshwater eutrophication) to 32 % (water use), while the EAT-Lancet scenario reduced impacts from 7 % (marine eutrophication) to 61 % (land use). The EAT-Lancet scenario resulted in 3-48 % larger reductions in impact than the FBDG scenario. CONCLUSIONS: The Norwegian FBDG, while not as environmentally friendly as the EAT-Lancet reference diet, can still be an important tool in lessening environmental burden of Norwegian diets.

Environmental impacts of animal-based food supply chains with market characteristics.

Animal-based food supply chains lead to significant environmental impacts, which can be influenced by production systems, distribution networks and consumption patterns. To develop strategy aimed at reducing the environmental impact of animal-based food supply chains, the common environmental hotspots among different types of food, the role of transport logistics and the consequence of end market need to be better understood. Life cycle assessment was adopted to model three types of animal-based food chains (beef, butter and salmon), with specific technologies, high spatial-resolution logistics and typical consumption patterns for three markets: local, regional (intra-European) and international. The results confirmed that the farm production stage usually had the greatest environmental impact, except when air transport was used for distribution. Potentially, the role of end market also can significantly influence the environmental impacts. To understand more, three improvement options were examined in detail with regard to hotspots for climate change: novel feed ingredients (farm production stage), sustainable aviation fuel (transport and logistics stage) and reduction of wasted food (consumption and end of life stage). Significant reduction was achieved in the salmon system by sustainable aviation fuel (64%) and novel feed (15%). Minimizing food waste drove the greatest reduction in the beef supply chain (23%) and the international butter supply chain can reduce 50% of GHG mission by adopting sustainable aviation fuel. Combined interventions could reduce GHG emission of animal-based food supply chains by 15% to 82%, depending on market, transport and food waste behaviour. The results show that eco-efficiency information of animal-based foods should include the full supply chain. The effective mitigation strategy to achieve the greatest reduction should not only consider the impacts on-farm, but also detail of the downstream impacts, such as food distribution network and consumption patterns.