Analysis of environmental impacts for Swiss dietary recommendations
Nutrition has an impact on human health and the natural environment. Its share of the total environmental impact of Swiss final consumption is about 20-25%, depending on the assessment method. This environmental damage in turn also affects human health. For example, periods of heat in summer lead to deaths due to the climate crisis.
If nutritional recommendations are only focusing on one of the two aspects, both, human health and the environment suffer. Therefore, this report tries to merge both aspects of nutrition, to ensure sustainability in a healthy and environmentally friendly way.
The Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FVSO) initiated in 2020 a revision of the Swiss dietary recommendations. ESU-services was commissioned for the lead of the “sustainability” in work package number 4 of the project “Dietary recommendations for the Swiss population” and conducted the Analysis of food and environmental impacts as a scientific basis for Swiss dietary recommendations. During the project, there turned out to be different opinions about the prioritization of health and sustainability aspects and the cooperation with ESU-services was terminated by the commissioner CHUV without payment for the planned report.
For ESU-services, life cycle assessment research on environmentally friendly nutrition has been an important concern for 25 years. A full report on this theme was therefore compiled from ESU-services’ own resources based on this long-term experience.
Key questions
The report provides a scientific basis for the dietary recommendations in Switzerland. The following key questions are answered:
- What is the environmental impact of different foods and which ones have particularly high environmental impacts?
- What synergies or conflicting goals exist between health and environmental sustainability in terms of nutrition? How can the conflicting goals be solved?
- Which results regarding synergies and conflicting goals are of importance for Switzerland and should be considered in the revision of the nutritional recommendations?
To evaluate the environmental impact of food (consumption), a life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed on a list of food items. The impact assessment is conducted using the ecological scarcity 2021 method. The LCA includes the production, processing, transport, storage, and distribution up to and including the supermarket.
To assess the environmental impact of the food items, different functional units are chosen to cover the different nutritional functions of the studied food items. Environmental impacts are calculated per 100 g, per 100 kcal and per nutritional value of the food.
When using mass as the functional unit, animal products and oil products lead to the highest environmental impacts of the considered food items. Concerning their calorific value, especially meat products and fish lead to high impact compared to the other food groups.
For each nutritional value, specific types of food are pointed out which can cover the recommended daily intake in a relatively environmentally friendly way. The daily demand of proteins for example can be covered by grains without causing the high environmental impacts of meat consumption.
With the results from the impact assessment of the food items, conflicts and synergies between health and environmental sustainability are described for different food items covered in this study. Most of the conflicts between health and environment can be solved by using alternative products. Concerning for example animal products, they can be replaced with meat substitutes or other plant products to cover a certain nutritional function.
The environmental impact strongly depends on the way of production, processing, transportation, storage etc., even for similar food products. To increase the understanding on how these aspects influence environmental impact, the results from the LCA are supported by a discussion on the distinct phases of the life cycle of the food products. The relevance matrix shows that for most product groups. The agricultural production has the highest impact throughout the life cycle of food products.
From the results of the LCA on food items and the discussion on its life cycle phases, improvement potentials for the production and consumption of food are pointed out. On the production side, reduction of environmental impact can be achieved by the adaption of production processes in an environmental friendlier way. Either this is implemented through policy measures or through a change in consumption behaviour of the consumer. Reducing the consumption of animal products shows the highest reduction potential. To ensure sufficient provision of nutrients, their daily recommended intake can be covered with meat substitutes or other plant-based products. For plant-based products, consuming seasonal and local products, and reducing energy intensive processing steps and packaging help to prevent environmental damage. Minimizing food waste is the last point in the life cycle of food where reduction potential for environmental impact is contained without conflicting health aspects. Finally, reducing overconsumption is an effective measure to reduce environmental impact and improve human health.
Conclusions
As a conclusion, the report provides an adapted version of the Swiss nutritional recommendations containing the sustainability aspects which were elaborated by ESU-services in this study. The proposed revisions for the Swiss recommendations according to this report are shown in the following table.
While working on these recommendations, we also recognized that it might be necessary to better address different target groups in the population with different nutritional demands. Especially for the single nutrients, daily recommended intakes seem to be partly higher than what can be achieved with a normal diet. Thus, these recommendations need further revisions and adaptation to the needs of e.g. Childs, women, men, elderly, active, or other groups of population.
Publications and discussion
We see sustainable development as an ongoing and discursive process. Therefore, we are happy to receive comments and suggestions for improvement for a possible revision of this report.
Niels Jungbluth, Catarina Rocha (2023) Life cycle assessment of novel plant products compared to animal products. EcoSystem meeting on the 4th of April, Life Cycle Assessments (LCA’s) – The holy grail to foster change and convince consumers? Online
Niels Jungbluth, Samuel Solin (2022) Life cycle assessment of novel plant products compared to animal products. Parallel Session XV (Sustainable Farming Systems III – Livestock), 13.10.2022, 13th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment of foods (LCA foods 2022), Lima, Peru
Niels Jungbluth, Martin Ulrich, Karen Muir, Christoph Meili, Maresa Bussa, Samuel Solin (2022) Analysis of food and environmental impacts as a scientific basis for Swiss dietary recommendations. ESU-services GmbH, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Jungbluth, N. & Frischknecht, R. 2000: Household Food Consumption Patterns: Part B – Evaluation methodologies and indicators. Sustainable consumption: Sector case study series No. ENV/EPOC/GEEI(2000)9/ANN1, ESU-services for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Environment Directorate, Project on Sustainable Consumption, 49 Seiten, Paris.