Indicators and Recommendations for Assessing Sustainable Healthy Diets.

Research coupling human nutrition and sustainability concerns is a rapidly developing field, which is essential to guide governments' policies. This critical and comprehensive review analyzes indicators and approaches to "sustainable healthy diets" published in the literature since this discipline's emergence a few years ago, identifying robust gauges and highlighting the flaws of the most commonly used models. The reviewed studies largely focus on one or two domains such as greenhouse gas emissions or water use, while overlooking potential impact shifts to other sectors or resources. The present study covers a comprehensive set of indicators from the health, environmental and socio-economic viewpoints. This assessment concludes that in order to identify the best food option in sustainability assessments and nutrition analysis of diets, some aspects such as the classification and disaggregation of food groups, the impacts of the rates of local food consumption and seasonality, preservation methods, agrobiodiversity and organic food and different production systems, together with consequences for low-income countries, require further analysis and consideration.

The Energy Mix Concentration Index (EMCI): Methodological considerations for implementation.

The Energy Mix Concentration Index (EMCI) is a quantitative indicator of concentration of the energy mix based upon the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. We use the EMCI to compare the evolution of the diversification (versus concentration) of energy mixes in the long-term in order to reveal the transformations of the energy structures which determine energy transitions. In this methodological paper we make explicit how to aggregate the energy sources in order to calculate the EMCI, including questions of detail such us the level of aggregation and the transformation of primary electricity to add it up to total consumption. We present alternative figures that illustrate some additional aspects of the relation of the EMCI to total consumption, consumption per capita and energy annual growth. We also show the sensitivity of the indicator to alternative specifications (with and without pre-modern energy sources) and alternative data sets, proving its robustness. •Indicate how to aggregate energy carriers in the calculation of a quantitative index of concentration of the energy mix.•Compare alternative specifications (with or without pre-modern energy carriers).•EMCI focus on the major energy sources in the energy systems.