Comparing life cycle environmental impacts of food access and consumption pre- and during COVID 19 in New York State's Capital Region

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced household food shopping, food consumption, and food waste generation. However, the dietary environmental impacts for different income groups during COVID-19 remain unknown. To analyze dietary environmental impacts for various income groups, a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted based on two electronic food access surveys implemented in the New York State's Capital Region during the COVID-19 pandemic and public and proprietary databases. We found that life cycle global warming potential, cumulative energy demand, acidification potential, and water resource depletion of per capital food consumption in the studied area tended to be lower during COVID-19 than pre-COVID-19. In contrast, life cycle eutrophication during COVID-19 was slightly higher than pre-COVID-19. The environmental impacts occurring at the food production stage were higher than those at the local transportation and waste disposal stages. The lowest income group had the lowest dietary environmental impacts due to their lowest food consumption of all the food categories. The second-highest income group had the highest dietary environmental impacts, since they consumed the most red meat which has a high impact intensity. This is the first study to our knowledge to investigate the differences in dietary environmental impacts among income groups during COVID-19.