Association between diet-related greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient intake adequacy among Japanese adults.

Minami Sugimoto,Satoshi Sasaki,Kentaro Murakami,Aya Fujiwara,Shizuko Masayasu,Keiko Asakura,Nicoletta Righini

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240803

Abstract

A growing number of Western studies have been exploring sustainable and healthy dietary patterns that target to reduce diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and to achieve nutritional needs. However, research is limited among Asian populations, where food sources for diet-related GHGE differ from those in Western populations. This study aimed to investigate associations between diet-related GHGE and the prevalence of inadequate nutritional intake. A cross-sectional study was carried out among 392 healthy Japanese volunteers aged 20-69 years. Dietary intake was assessed by four-non-consecutive day diet record. Diet-related GHGE was estimated using the Global Link Input-Output model and adjusted for energy intake by residual method. Prevalence of inadequacy was defined as a percentage of participants with nutrient intake outside the Tentative Dietary Goal for Preventing Lifestyle-Related Disease or below the Estimated Average Requirement defined by the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for Japanese. The association between diet-related GHGE and the prevalence of inadequacy of the usual intake of each nutrient was examined using logistic regression models. Participants with higher diet-related GHGE had overall better adherence to the DRIs. Intakes of all selected nutrients were positively associated with diet-related GHGE, except for carbohydrate, total fat, and saturated fat. With increasing quartile of diet-related GHGE, the prevalence of inadequacy decreased for protein, dietary fiber, potassium, vitamins A, B-6, and C, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc, while that for sodium increased. Diets with lower diet-related GHGE did not have better adherence to the DRIs compared to diets with higher diet-related GHGE among Japanese adults. Drastic dietary change or other strategies such as improving the food system would be needed to achieve a sustainable and healthy diet among Japanese.

Highlights

IntroductionIn the context of growing interest for sustainable healthy diets [1] and climate change, many epidemiological studies have been focused on individual dietary choice and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) related to the diet [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
Intakes of all selected nutrients were positively associated with diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), except for carbohydrate, total fat, and saturated fat
With increasing quartile of diet-related GHGE, the prevalence of inadequacy decreased for protein, dietary fiber, potassium, vitamins A, B

Summary

Introduction

In the context of growing interest for sustainable healthy diets [1] and climate change, many epidemiological studies have been focused on individual dietary choice and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) related to the diet [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. A series of scenario studies have shown that modeled healthy diets meeting dietary guidelines did not always improve dietrelated GHGE [10,11,12] These previous studies mainly come from Western countries [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18], while research is limited among Asian countries including Japan, where meat intake is lower than Western countries [19,20,21]

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