Abstract
Research coupling human nutrition and sustainability concerns is a rapidly developing field, which is essential to guide governments’ policies. This critical and comprehensive review analyzes indicators and approaches to “sustainable healthy diets” published in the literature since this discipline’s emergence a few years ago, identifying robust gauges and highlighting the flaws of the most commonly used models. The reviewed studies largely focus on one or two domains such as greenhouse gas emissions or water use, while overlooking potential impact shifts to other sectors or resources. The present study covers a comprehensive set of indicators from the health, environmental and socio-economic viewpoints. This assessment concludes that in order to identify the best food option in sustainability assessments and nutrition analysis of diets, some aspects such as the classification and disaggregation of food groups, the impacts of the rates of local food consumption and seasonality, preservation methods, agrobiodiversity and organic food and different production systems, together with consequences for low-income countries, require further analysis and consideration.
Highlights
Environmental degradation and malnutrition, in all its forms, are both occurring at an accelerated pace around the world
The global food system is the largest freshwater user: agriculture alone accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawn in the world [2]
Agriculture is responsible for 21–37% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [3] and covers approximately 49–51% of global ice-free land surface, with grazing land representing 37% and croplands representing approximately 12–14% [4]
Summary
Environmental degradation and malnutrition, in all its forms, are both occurring at an accelerated pace around the world. The papers published in the literature generally focus on specific aspects of health, environmental or socioeconomic sustainability, sometimes leaving out one or two of the three components. There has been an increase in the number of systematic reviews focused on sustainable and healthy diets, most of which have a specific scope. The current critical review paper aims to identify a comprehensive set of indicators for assessing sustainable healthy diets, analyzing the most common shortcomings from a health, environmental and socio-economic perspective. A comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary indicators is provided, proposing, among other actions, further research on the classification of food groups, impacts of different production systems and consequences for low-income countries to develop a complete understanding for decision-making
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