Review of Diet Quality Indices that can be Applied to the Environmental Assessment of Foods and Diets.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The aim was to identify indices of diet quality and health that could be applied to the environmental assessment of foods in order to provide metrics that collectively assess nutritional, health and environmental dimensions. RECENT FINDINGS: The review identified five major groups of indices: nutrient-food quantity-based; guideline-based; diversity-based; nutrient quality-based; health-based. Nutrient-food quantity-based and guideline type indices were the most frequently used to evaluate diet quality. Scaled assessment using a nutritional functional unit is the most common integration of diet quality with the environmental analysis of foods. There are fewer indices that measure the heath impacts of foods, but epidemiological dietary risk factors seem a promising approach to integrate diet and health impacts into the environmental assessment of foods. Five groups of nutritional and health indices were identified that can be applied when performing an environmental assessment of foods. This review proposes different methodological insights when doing such assessments to ensure transparency and comparability of the results.

Environmental assessment of diets: overview and guidance on indicator choice.

Comprehensive but interpretable assessment of the environmental performance of diets involves choosing a set of appropriate indicators. Current knowledge and data gaps on the origin of dietary foodstuffs restrict use of indicators relying on site-specific information. This Personal View summarises commonly used indicators for assessing the environmental performance of diets, briefly outlines their benefits and drawbacks, and provides recommendations on indicator choices for actors across multiple fields involved in activities that include the environmental assessment of diets. We then provide recommendations on indicator choices for actors across multiple fields involved in activities that use environmental assessments, such as health and nutrition experts, policy makers, decision makers, and private-sector and public-sector sustainability officers. We recommend that environmental assessment of diets should include indicators for at least the five following areas: climate change, biosphere integrity, blue water consumption, novel entities, and impacts on natural resources (especially wild fish stocks), to capture important environmental trade-offs. If more indicators can be handled in the assessment, indicators to capture impacts related to land use quantity and quality and green water consumption should be used. For ambitious assessments, indicators related to biogeochemical flows, stratospheric ozone depletion, and energy use can be added.

Integrated farming with intercropping increases food production while reducing environmental footprint.

Food security has been a significant issue for the livelihood of smallholder family farms in highly populated regions and countries. Industrialized farming in more developed countries has increased global food supply to meet the demand, but the excessive use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides has negative environmental impacts. Finding sustainable ways to grow more food with a smaller environmental footprint is critical. We developed an integrated cropping system that incorporates four key components: 1) intensified cropping through relay planting or intercropping, 2) within-field strip rotation, 3) soil mulching with available means, such as crop straw, and 4) no-till or reduced tillage. Sixteen field experiments, conducted with a wide range of crop inputs over 12 consecutive years (2006 to 2017), showed that the integrated system with intercropping generates significant synergies-increasing annual crop yields by 15.6 to 49.9% and farm net returns by 39.2% and decreasing the environmental footprint by 17.3%-when compared with traditional monoculture cropping. We conclude that smallholder farmers can achieve the dual goals of growing more food and lowering the environmental footprint by adopting integrated farming systems.

Organic and conservation agriculture promote ecosystem multifunctionality.

Ecosystems provide multiple services to humans. However, agricultural systems are usually evaluated on their productivity and economic performance, and a systematic and quantitative assessment of the multifunctionality of agroecosystems including environmental services is missing. Using a long-term farming system experiment, we evaluated and compared the agronomic, economic, and ecological performance of the most widespread arable cropping systems in Europe: organic, conservation, and conventional agriculture. We analyzed 43 agroecosystem properties and determined overall agroecosystem multifunctionality. We show that organic and conservation agriculture promoted ecosystem multifunctionality, especially by enhancing regulating and supporting services, including biodiversity preservation, soil and water quality, and climate mitigation. In contrast, conventional cropping showed reduced multifunctionality but delivered highest yield. Organic production resulted in higher economic performance, thanks to higher product prices and additional support payments. Our results demonstrate that different cropping systems provide opposing services, enforcing the productivity-environmental protection dilemma for agroecosystem functioning.

The Environmental Impact of the Athlete's Plate Nutrition Education Tool.

Periodized nutrition is necessary to optimize training and enhance performance through the season. The Athlete's Plate (AP) is a nutrition education tool developed to teach athletes how to design their plates depending on training load (e.g., volume × intensity), from easy (E), moderate (M) to hard (H). The AP was validated, confirming its recommendations according to international sports nutrition guidelines. However, the AP had significantly higher protein content than recommended (up to 2.9 ± 0.5 g·kg-1·d-1; p < 0.001 for H male). The aim of this study was to quantify the environmental impact (EnvI) of the AP and to evaluate the influence of meal type, training load, sex and registered dietitian (RD). The nutritional contents of 216 APs created by 12 sport RDs were evaluated using Computrition Software (Hospitality Suite, v. 18.1, Chatsworth, CA, USA). The EnvI of the AP was analyzed by life cycle assessment (LCA) expressed by the total amount of food on the AP, kg, and kcal, according to the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) methodology. Higher EnvI is directly associated with higher training load when the total amount of food on the plate is considered for E (5.7 ± 2.9 kg CO2 eq/day); M (6.4 ± 1.5 kg CO2 eq/day); and H (8.0 ± 2.1 kg CO2 eq/day). Global warming potential, exergy and eutrophication are driven by animal protein and mainly beef, while ecotoxicity is influenced by vegetable content on the AP. The EnvI is influenced by the amount of food, training load and sex. This study is the first to report the degree of EnvI in sports nutrition. These results not only raise the need for sustainability education in sports nutrition in general, but also the urgency to modify the AP nutrition education tool to ensure sports nutrition recommendations are met, while not compromising the environment.

Sustainable Diets for Athletes.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Sustainable production and healthy consumption have been the topic of recent publications. Due to the high environmental impact of the current food system, significant changes in how food is produced, distributed, and consumed are needed in all sectors and groups. While most research in sustainable diets has focused on the general population, limited work has involved athletes. The purpose of this review is to summarize the current knowledge on food and sustainability in athletes. RECENT FINDINGS: Meeting but not exceeding protein requirements through flexitarian and plant-based approaches, reducing packaged foods and food waste, and prioritizing seasonal produce were identified as possible mitigation options in athletes. There is urgency for more research on plant-centric, whole food-based strategies for post-exercise skeletal muscle and training adaptation, the effect of sustainable diets on health and performance, and behaviors to reduce packaging and food waste in athletes.

Environmental life cycle assessment of grain maize production: An analysis of factors causing variability.

To meet the growing demand, high yielding, but environmentally sustainable agricultural plant production systems are desired. Today, life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used to assess the environmental impact of these agricultural systems. However, the impact results are very diverse due to management decisions or local natural conditions. The impact of grain maize is often generalized and an average is taken. Therefore, we studied variation in production systems. Four types of drivers for variability are distinguished: policy, farm management, year-to-year weather variation and innovation. For each driver, scenarios are elaborated using ReCiPe and CEENE (Cumulative Exergy Extraction from the Natural Environment) to assess the environmental footprint. Policy limits fertilisation levels in a soil-specific way. The resource consumption is lower for non-sandy soils than for sandy soils, but entails however more eutrophication. Farm management seems to have less influence on the environmental impact when considering the CEENE only. But farm management choices such as fertiliser type have a large effect on emission-related problems (e.g. eutrophication and acidification). In contrast, year-to-year weather variation results in large differences in the environmental footprint. The difference in impact results between favourable and poor environmental conditions amounts to 19% and 17% in terms of resources and emissions respectively, and irrigation clearly is an unfavourable environmental process. The best environmental performance is obtained by innovation as plant breeding results in a steadily increasing yield over 25 years. Finally, a comparison is made between grain maize production in Flanders and a generically applied dataset, based on Swiss practices. These very different results endorse the importance of using local data to conduct LCA of plant production systems. The results of this study show decision makers and farmers how they can improve the environmental performance of agricultural systems, and LCA practitioners are alerted to challenges due to variation.