Designing Nutritionally Adequate and Climate-Friendly Diets for Omnivorous, Pescatarian, Vegetarian and Vegan Adolescents in Sweden Using Linear Optimization.

Patricia Eustachio Colombo,Liselotte Schäfer Elinder,Alexandr Parlesak,Anna Karin Lindroos

doi:10.3390/nu13082507

Abstract

Low-carbon diets can counteract climate change and promote health if they are nutritionally adequate, affordable and culturally acceptable. This study aimed at developing sustainable diets and to compare these with the EAT-Lancet diet. The Swedish national dietary survey Riksmaten Adolescents 2016–2017 was used as the baseline. Diets were optimized using linear programming for four dietary patterns: omnivores, pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans. The deviation from the baseline Riksmaten diet was minimized for all optimized diets while fulfilling nutrient and climate footprint constraints. Constraining the diet-related carbon dioxide equivalents of omnivores to 1.57 kg/day resulted in a diet associated with a reduction of meat, dairy products, and processed foods and an increase in potatoes, pulses, eggs and seafood. Climate-friendly, nutritionally adequate diets for pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans contained fewer foods and included considerable amounts of fortified dairy and meat substitutes. The optimized diets did not align very well with the food-group pattern of the EAT-Lancet diet. These findings suggest how to design future diets that are climate-friendly, nutritionally adequate, affordable, and culturally acceptable for Swedish adolescents with different dietary patterns. The discrepancies with the EAT diet indicate that the cultural dietary context is likely to play an important role in characterizing sustainable diets for specific populations.

Highlights

All regions around the world are facing severe consequences of global warming [1], resulting in adverse effects on human health and the economy [2]
We demonstrated that nutritionally adequate diets, which align with the maximum tolerable diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) limit defined to keep the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5 ◦ C above pre-industrial levels, can be achieved for four different dietary patterns
The results of this study show that an affordable, nutritionally adequate diet with a considerably reduced GHGE can be achieved for omnivorous, pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan Swedish adolescents

Summary

Introduction

All regions around the world are facing severe consequences of global warming [1], resulting in adverse effects on human health and the economy [2]. Have ratified the Paris Agreement, which commits governments to pursue actions to keep the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5 ◦ C above pre-industrial levels and prevent dramatic climate change [3]. To reach this goal, environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainability have to be considered. Consumer demand is one of the most relevant ways to achieve these changes [5] Such changes would require a shift towards more plant-based diets, which are generally less GHGE intensive [6,7,8,9,10]. According to the Swedish Youth Barometer, about a third of all young people are currently consuming more plant-based diets for environmental reasons [13]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion