Life cycle assessment of food styles
This study compares the environmental impact of food consumption scenarios, per person and year. Different food consumption scenarios (average, vegan, vegetarian, protein, etc.) are analysed in a life cycle assessment. The analysis includes the full life cycle of the food products until they are purchased in the supermarket. The study was commissioned by the WWF Switzerland to provide guidance to consumers. The starting point is the amount of food produced for the Swiss market in 2012. The estimation is based on studies for dietary recommendations and pre-defined values by the commissioner. Additionally, the FOODprints® scenario refers to recommendations for a sustainable diet. The vegan diet scenario and the FOODprints®-scenario cause the lowest environmental impacts. The highest impacts are calculated for the scenarios “protein junkie” and “meat junkie”. The results manifest the important role of meat and fish consumption concerning the environmental impact of diets in Switzerland. In contrary, vegetable proteins in the meat-reduced diets do not cause such a high environmental impact. This is even true for the vegan diet scenario, which is characterised by an increased amount of consumed vegetable proteins in order to substitute meat, fish and other animal products such as milk and eggs. The impact of animal products is to be highlighted as well when addressing environmental impact reduction potentials. After meat and fish, this food product group is the second most important source for the environmental impact of diets.
Publications
Nadia Malinverno, Maresa Bussa, Niels Jungbluth (2020) The environmental impact of vegan creams compared to dairy creams. Practical training project at ESU-services Ltd.
Eggenberger S., Meili, C., Jungbluth N. and Keller R. (2016) Environmental impacts of scenarios for food provision in Switzerland. In proceedings from: The 10th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment of Food (LCA Food 2016), University College Dublin (UCD), Dublin, Ireland, 19th – 21st October 2016. Presentation / Paper
