Chapter 11 - Mediterranean food and environmental impacts

Abstract

The current agrofood system holds much of the responsibility for environment degradation (e.g., biodiversity loss, water resources depletion and/or pollution, land degradation, and climate change). Therefore there is a need for a genuine transition toward sustainability in which sustainable diets can play a key role. The Mediterranean diet is widely considered as a sustainable diet model. Many studies show that adherence to the Mediterranean diet can bring about environmental, social, and economic benefits besides health-nutrition benefits. This chapter provides an overview on the environmental benefits of the Mediterranean diet with a particular reference to environmental footprints (e.g., water footprint, ecological footprint, and carbon footprint). It shows that, in general, the better is adherence to the Mediterranean diet, the lower is the water, land, and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. It also highlights that the Mediterranean diet can play an important role in biodiversity conservation, food wastage reduction, and climate change mitigation.