Trade-off between human health and environmental health in global diets

Abstract

Dietary pattern not only links human health by affecting hunger and chronic noncommunicable diseases, but also impacts environmental health such as climate change and water depletion. Trade-off or synergy exists between human health and environmental health in diets. This study developed an assessment model to investigate the human health and environmental health scores of global diets at the country level. The inter-country comparison results show that there is a strong trade-off between human health and environmental health. The inter-temporal analysis shows that, from 1961 to 2018, most countries have experienced a diet transition towards providing more benefits to human health, while posing greater environmental pressures. China had the most significant transition. This study also performed the coupling analysis between human health and environmental health in the changing global diets. Results reveal that most countries have shown trade-off effects in the past decades, while some developed countries in Northern America, Northern Europe, and Western Europe have shown synergy effects in the recent decade.