Abstract
The world-wide rise in obesity parallels growing concerns of global warming and depleting natural resources. These issues are often considered separately but there may be considerable benefit to raising awareness of the impact of dietary behaviours and practices on the food supply. Australians have diets inconsistent with recommendations, typically low in fruit and vegetables and high in energy-dense nutrient-poor foods and beverages (EDNP). These EDNP foods are often highly processed and packaged, negatively influencing both health and the environment. This paper describes a proposed dietary assessment method to measure healthy and sustainable dietary behaviours using 4-days of food and beverage images from the mobile food record (mFR) application. The mFR images will be assessed for serves of fruit and vegetables (including seasonality), dairy, eggs and red meat, poultry and fish, ultra-processed EDNP foods, individually packaged foods, and plate waste. A prediction model for a Healthy and Sustainable Diet Index will be developed and tested for validity and reliability. The use of the mFR to assess adherence to a healthy and sustainable diet is a novel and innovative approach to dietary assessment and will have application in population monitoring, guiding intervention development, educating consumers, health professionals and policy makers, and influencing dietary recommendations.
Highlights
Recent evidence would suggest that eating a diet that increases environmental sustainability has the potential to benefit health [1,2,3,4]
This paper describes the protocol and methodology for a proposed novel dietary assessment method to measure indicators of an individual’s healthy and sustainable diet not typically measured in traditional methods
The Healthy and Sustainable Diet Index will be unique in two ways; firstly it will combine the assessment of eating behaviours that influence health outcomes (e.g., energy-dense nutrient-poor foods and beverages (EDNP) foods and beverages) and dietary behaviours that significantly burden the environment
Summary
Recent evidence would suggest that eating a diet that increases environmental sustainability has the potential to benefit health [1,2,3,4]. There may be considerable health and environmental benefits in assessing the impact of dietary behaviours and practices on the food supply [8,9]. Researchers have identified the need to identify dietary patterns that provide adequate nutrition at a low environmental cost [14], but methods to do so have focused on the assessment of typical diets and food choices at a population level [2,13] rather than individual dietary behaviours. There is limited evidence on whether current individual dietary patterns align with a sustainable diet
Published Version (
Free)
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have