Abstract
The global food system faces a dual challenge for the decades ahead: to (re)formulate foods capable to feed a growing population while reducing their environmental footprint. In this analysis, nutritional composition, recipe, and sourcing data were analyzed alongside five environmental indicators: climate change (CC), freshwater consumption scarcity (FWCS), abiotic resource depletion (ARD), land use impacts on biodiversity (LUIB), and impacts on ecosphere/ecosystems quality (IEEQ) to assess improvement after three reformulation cycles (2003, 2010, 2018) in three extruded breakfast cereals. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed using life cycle inventory (LCI) composed by both primary data from the manufacturer and secondary data from usual third-party LCI datasets. Reformulation led to improved nutritional quality for all three products. In terms of environmental impact, improvements were observed for the CC, ARD, and IEEQ indicators, with average reductions of 12%, 14%, and 2% between 2003 and 2018, respectively. Conversely, the FWCS and LUIB indicators were increased by 57% and 70%, respectively. For all indicators but ARD, ingredients contributed most to the environmental impact. This study highlights the need for further focus on the selection of less demanding ingredients and improvements in agricultural practices in order to achieve environmental and nutritional improvements.
Highlights
The global food system faces a dual challenge for the decades ahead: providing nutritious food to a growing population while reducing its environmental footprint [1,2,3]
This paper aims to expand existing literature on food sustainability by presenting three cases of food reformulation in extruded breakfast cereals—carried out with the purpose of improving their nutritional value—and its impact on the products’ environmental impacts
The reformulation cycle, together with the changes that occurred in the other stages of the supply chain, was associated with improvements of three environmental impact indicators out of the five assessed in this study; with increases observed for the land use impact on biodiversity and freshwater consumption scarcity
Summary
The global food system faces a dual challenge for the decades ahead: providing nutritious food to a growing population while reducing its environmental footprint [1,2,3]. Despite not being a new concept, the environmental sustainability of food is attracting renewed attention with the increased realization that sustainable food production will require extensive changes across the food system (e.g., agriculture, production, packaging, and consumption) [1], and that a healthy and sustainable diet, as proposed in the latest guidelines, is likely too expensive for 1.58 billion people globally [4]. While there is extensive evidence on the association between healthier and more environmentally friendly dietary choices overall [1,6], recent evidence suggests that dietary shifts alone, i.e., the first approach, may not suffice to fit the global food system within the ‘planetary boundaries’ [10]
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