Oxford scientists have provided a glimpse of how harmful your favorite foods are to the environment after creating “exposure assessments” for 57,000 food and drink products in the UK and Ireland.
This is bad news for meat lovers: beef and lamb top the list of the worst foods for the environment, and energy drinks are among the best. Nuts, dried fruit, coffee, cheese, fish, seafood, tea, pancakes, party food, jams, chocolate, and ready meals also have the worst environmental impact.
Zucchini, baked potatoes, onion rings, rice, juices, and olives had less of an effect, according to an international research team.
They compared the environmental impact of meat and meat alternatives such as vegan sausages or hamburgers and found that many meat alternatives have one-fifth to less than one-tenth the environmental impact of their meat equivalents.
The experts said their study represents a first step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policymakers to make informed decisions about the environmental impact of food and beverages.
Lead author Dr. Michael Clarke said: “By evaluating the environmental impact of food and beverages in a standardized way, we have taken an important first step towards providing information that can help make informed decisions. We still need to find the best ways to communicate this information effectively in order to change behavior towards more sustainable outcomes, but assessing the impact of products is an important step forward.”
A study earlier by the Food Standards Agency found that more than half of UK consumers want to make smarter decisions about the environmental impact of food, while food companies set ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But experts say detailed information about the environmental impact of food and drink is missing to enable consumers and businesses to make more sustainable choices.
A new study led by scientists from Oxford University’s Livestock, Environment, People and Public Health Program (LEAP) used publicly available information to calculate and estimate the environmental impact of 57,000 foods, which make up the majority of foods and foods nutrition drinks for sale in UK supermarkets.
They looked at greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water scarcity, and the possibility of eutrophication – when water bodies are enriched with nutrients, which often causes harmful algal blooms and ultimately kills other life.
For analysis, visualization, and communication purposes, the team combined these four scores into one estimated ECI score per 100g of product.
Professor Peter Scarborough, Professor of Population Health at Oxford, said: “This work is very exciting. For the first time, we have a transparent and comparable method for assessing the environmental impact of multi-ingredient processed foods. we make most of our shopping in supermarkets, but so far it has not been possible to directly compare their impact on the environment.”
He added: “This work can support tools that help consumers make more sustainable food purchasing decisions. Most importantly, it can push retailers and food manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their food supply, making it easier for all of us to have more. food systems.” health and sustainability.
Researchers studied the differences in the environmental impact of multi-ingredient foods and found that foods made with fruits, vegetables, sugar, and flour, such as soups, salads, bread, and many breakfast cereals, had low exposure levels and meat products, fish and cheese at the end of the scale.
By studying certain types of food, such as meat and meat substitutes, lasagne, biscuits, and pesto, the researchers found a wide variety of these types of food.
For these food types, low-impact foods often have between a half and one-tenth the environmental impact of high-impact foods.
The researchers hope that such information, if brought to the attention of consumers and retailers, will help change behavior towards more sustainable food without requiring major changes in dietary behavior, such as swapping beef for beans.
However, there are exceptions to this trend, such as sugary drinks, which have a little environmental impact but also score poorly in terms of nutritional value.
The researchers also reviewed 570 studies on food production’s environmental impact, including data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries.
The study was published in the journal PNAS.
Source: Daily Mail
