The global nutrition can be greatly improved with diet optimization

Abstract

Malnutrition and nutritional imbalances resulting from a poor diet are common worldwide. Here, we present a diet structure optimization model aimed at improving the nutritional levels, while keeping the optimized diet affordable and acceptable. We optimized the current diet of 181 countries by incorporating ten major food groups. A simple diet adjustment could increase the nutritional levels by up to 11.9 % and significantly address the existing nutrient imbalances. The optimized diet is environmentally friendly, reducing the total land use and greenhouse gas emissions by 11.8 % and 8.3 %, respectively. Furthermore, compromising on some nutritional improvements could yield greater environmental benefits, which could result in 17.1 %, and 12.7 % reductions in total land use and greenhouse gas emissions, respectively. Moreover, a 28.4 % diet cost increase can lead to a maximum of 9.7 % greater nutritional improvement than the optimal increase of constant cost. We provide a global diet optimization strategy that improves both human nutrition and sustainability.