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Nutritional health burden evaluation of selected foods in the US diet a, Nutritional composition of foods by risk component in g per serving. b, Nutritional health burden by dietary risk in minutes of healthy life per serving. Black diamonds represent the net HENI score per serving and black lines its 95% CI. Fibre is divided into fruit, vegetables, legumes and whole grains (f,v,l,w) and other sources. Omega-3 fatty acids are restricted to those that originate from seafood sources.
Source publication
To identify environmentally sustainable foods that promote health, we combined nutritional health-based and 18 environmental indicators to evaluate, classify and prioritize individual foods. Specifically for nutrition, we developed the Health Nutritional Index to quantify marginal health effects in minutes of healthy life gained or lost of 5,853 fo...
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Introduction
This paper studies and quantifies the environmental benefits of implementing a new telemedicine service for users of the public health system in a rural area of Alicante (Spain). The proposed telemedicine service is based on carrying out 20% of the follow-on consultations with a specialist virtually from the Reference Health Centres wi...
Citations
... The development of the Mediterranean diet will favor a decrease in carbon footprint [69], whereas a great diversity will probably persist among the countries concerned. The most important carbon footprint is reported for cereals and bovine meat [70]. Acting at this level, with international and local actions, therefore, seems essential. ...
Background: Climate change has consequences for farming, food diversity and availability, and diet habits. There is now evidence that the Mediterranean climate is rapidly spreading to the Northern European latitudes. Objective: This narrative review aims to identify relevant studies related to climate change that could favor the progression of the Mediterranean climate in the northern latitudes of Europe, mainly in France, and to predict what the consequences of these changes on the human diet could be, especially using the concept of the Mediterranean diet, with subsequent impacts on health, farming, and eating habits. Methods: This narrative review was realized by consulting the PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, and Google Scholar databases. Results: The key points developed in this review are as follows: investigating the Mediterranean diet as a healthy diet, with evidence supporting health benefits and perspectives; similarities with other places in the world at the same Mediterranean latitudes; climate change and the resulting consequences on plant growth, farming, and food habits; and perspectives on the need for societal adaptations of populations towards agriculture, food, and cooking changes. As climate change facilitates the development of new farming practices with more or fewer environmental impacts, the growth of Mediterranean plants in the highest latitudes of Europe, such as olive trees, pomegranates, and almonds, has already begun for economic reasons. Future perspectives: In the near future, besides economic interests, climate change will favor the consumption of several products associated with the Mediterranean diet in the Northern European latitudes. In this context, producers and consumers play major roles.
... Research has also highlighted the potential impact of individual dietary choices on global water resource management [30]. Recent literature indicates that consuming foods with a low water footprint, such as legumes and vegetables, as much as possible in the population's diet can significantly reduce global agricultural water use. ...
Water scarcity has emerged as a critical constraint on agricultural development and food security worldwide, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions such as Central Asia, Western Asia, and North Africa, which are part of the “Belt and Road” Initiative. This study, based on a global multi-regional input–output model, quantitatively analyzes the virtual water flows between China and countries along the “Belt and Road”. It focuses on water-scarce regions, examining the impact of virtual water trade on agricultural resource pressures and food security, as well as the transfer of water resources in trade patterns. The findings indicate that virtual water trade, as an innovative water resource management strategy, can redistribute water resources through international trade, thereby alleviating water stress and enhancing food security in water-scarce areas. Despite China’s status as a net importer in virtual water trade with “Belt and Road” countries, the majority of virtual water flows toward nations with relatively abundant water resources, rather than to the most water-deficient areas. This discovery reveals imbalances in virtual water trade patterns, suggesting that current trade models do not effectively alleviate water and food security pressures in water-scarce regions. The “Belt and Road” mechanism should provide new ideas for solving the huge gap between virtual water theory and reality. In response, this paper proposes optimizing trade structures, strengthening agricultural water resource management, promoting green virtual water trade, fostering regional cooperation, improving data quality and transparency, encouraging agricultural diversification, and increasing investment in water-saving agricultural technologies.
... Dietary behaviors and human health are inextricably linked [71]. For instance, excessive consumption of processed foods high in sugars, unhealthy fats, and sodium increases the risk of chronic diseases [49]. ...
Growing awareness of wellness has prompted people to consider whether their dietary patterns align with their health and fitness goals. In response, researchers have introduced various wearable dietary monitoring systems and dietary assessment approaches. However, these solutions are either limited to identifying foods with simple ingredients or insufficient in providing analysis of individual dietary behaviors with domain-specific knowledge. In this paper, we present DietGlance, a system that automatically monitors dietary in daily routines and delivers personalized analysis from knowledge sources. DietGlance first detects ingestive episodes from multimodal inputs using eyeglasses, capturing privacy-preserving meal images of various dishes being consumed. Based on the inferred food items and consumed quantities from these images, DietGlance further provides nutritional analysis and personalized dietary suggestions, empowered by the retrieval augmentation generation module on a reliable nutrition library. A short-term user study (N=33) and a four-week longitudinal study (N=16) demonstrate the usability and effectiveness of DietGlance.
... Overconsumption of food in general, and of unhealthy food in particular (e.g., energy-rich but nutrient-poor ultra-processed food products), is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic (Chaput, Klingenberg, Astrup, & Sjödin, 2011;Lane et al., 2021;Perkovic, Otterbring, Schärli, & Pachur, 2022) and has been liked to a wide array of adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and all-cause mortality (Pagliai et al., 2021;Stylianou, Fulgoni III, & Jolliet, 2021;Zech, van Dijk, & van Dillen, 2023). Such eating habits incur massive costs, not only to individual consumers but also to society at large. ...
Healthier eating is crucial to tackle the rapid rise of obesity and noncommunicable diseases worldwide. This research examined two nudging interventions intended to decrease food consumption: price display and serving utensils. Forecasting experiments showed that people predicted displaying the price of the food per kg (vs. hg) should decrease the amount of food purchased (Study 1A), but that using tongs (vs. spoon) would be ineffective (Study 1B). In contrast to these results, a high-powered preregistered field study (Study 2) at a university canteen revealed that price display had no notable effect; however, tongs (vs. spoon) reliably decreased the average amount of food purchased per meal by 14 g or 3.1%, also when compared to weeks when both types of serving utensils were available. Study 3 replicated the results regarding tongs (vs. spoon) for a particularly unhealthy category (candy), while highlighting a psychological mechanism driving the effect. Using tongs required more effort, which decreased satisfaction tied to using said serving utensils, thereby reducing people’s willingness to consume candy. Given the simplicity and cost effectiveness of swapping spoons with tongs, combined with the behavioral evidence underscoring its practical relevance, these findings might aid in steering consumers to healthier food decisions, ultimately benefiting public health.
... In addition, information gained by this product group-specific approach should be added by considering nutrients harmful to health in typical portions as has been previously stated (Saarinen et al. 2017;McLaren et al. 2021). This can be done by a specific nutrient index for those nutrients, so-called LIM index (Saarinen et al. 2017), or by assessing health impacts as an impact category (Stylianou et al. 2021), although more research should be done to develop these methodologies (McLaren et al. 2021). ...
Purpose
Nutritional aspects have recently been integrated into the life cycle assessment (LCA) of foods through the use of nutrient indices as functional units (nFU). In this study, we develop the nFU indices for each product group presented in the Spanish plate model, by adapting the approach introduced in our previous studies into a Spanish context.
Methods
The product grouping followed the Spanish plate model covering protein-rich foods, sources of carbohydrates, vegetables and fruits, and fats. For each group, separate nFUs were created by identifying the most important nutrients for each product group, based on the nutrients obtained from them in the current Spanish food consumption. Finally, the new nFUs were showcased by conducting cradle-to-plate nLCA for the selection of typical Spanish foods.
Results and discussion
Adapting the method to formulate the nFUs to different target population led to different selection of nutrients being included in the indices for each product group, highlighting the need to tailor the methodology depending on the population under study. The nLCA results demonstrated the importance of integrating nutritional aspects into comparative LCAs of foods in all the studied product groups, also including the new product group of fats, which was the first time used in nLCA in this study.
Conclusions
The results demonstrated that the product-group-specific approach is a systematic and reproducible method to formulate nFU indices and that it can be consistently adapted also to other target populations with relevant data available. For more extensive coverage of health aspects in LCA, the inclusion of non-nutrient compounds should be promoted.
... Les résultats de cette étude montrent par exemple que les pratiques alimentaires ont un impact bien plus prononcé sur l'environnement que la distance parcourue par les produits alimentaires. Cette conclusion est en accord avec les recherches antérieures qui préconisent l'adoption de régimes alimentaires centrés sur des produits végétaux, peu transformés et issus de l'agriculture biologique (Scarborough et al., 2014 ;Röös et al., 2015 ;Couturier et al., 2016 ;Billen et al., 2021 ;Poore & Nemecek, 2018 ;Poux et Aubert, 2018 ;Springmann et al., 2018 ;Mbow et al., 2019 ;Stylianou et al., 2021). Ce constat rejoint également de nombreux travaux sur l'efficacité environnementale des circuits courts (Rizet, 2017 ;Malak-Rawlikowska et al., 2019 ;Majewski et al., 2020). ...
Face à l’urgence de transformer les systèmes agri-alimentaires, leur reterritorialisation, via le développement des circuits courts et des gouvernances locales, émerge comme une alternative plus durable sur le plan environnemental. Pour quantifier ce potentiel, cet article évalue l’impact environnemental du Projet alimentaire Territorial (PAT) de la commune de Mouans-Sartoux en France. La méthodologie adopte une approche systémique étudiant l’évolution de l’impact de l’ensemble des acteurs territoriaux, des producteurs, commerçants et consommateurs, en s’appuyant sur l’analyse de cycle de vie. Les résultats révèlent une réduction substantielle des émissions de gaz à effet de serre et des énergies fossiles depuis la mise en place du PAT. Ils soulignent ainsi un rôle essentiel de l’alimentation dans la planification territoriale plus durable. Des travaux restent à mener pour confirmer ces résultats en prenant en compte les spécificités locales inhérentes à chaque territoire.
... HENI is ". . .a continuous single score that quantifies the net minutes of healthy life gained (+) or lost (−) from all-cause mortality and morbidity per reference amount of food (for example, a standard serving size)" [18] (p. 617). ...
... It covers both health benefits as well as negative health impacts. We calculated the HENI based on the oils' content of polyunsaturated fats, trans fats, calcium, and their respective dietary risk factors (DRFs) expressed in (micro) µDALYs/g (Supplementary Information of [18]). We also monetized these risk factors with a monetization factor amounting to USD 2022 125,000/DALY [42] (see Supplemental Materials S3 text for details). ...
... The results from the S-LCA using the SHDB were not assessed, nor the DRF on which the HENI calculations were performed. However, Stylianou et al. (Supplementary Information of [18]) provide upper and lower bounds for the DRFs. ...
True Cost Accounting (TCA) aims to assess positive and negative externalities in agri-food value chains by focusing on four capitals: produced, natural, human, and social. While produced capital is easily measured through market values, obtaining relevant data for measuring natural, human, and social capitals can be challenging. To address this challenge, this paper presents a case study around the production in Asia of three globally important edible plant oils: palm, rapeseed, and coconut. Results show that readily available methods and data from different types of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) can be integrated into the framework of TCA to quantify and monetize positive and negative externalities associated with the production and consumption of these oils and to analyze the tradeoffs involved in choosing among them. However, the use of LCA methods and data also entails significant assumptions and limitations that must be considered when evaluating their use in TCA. Specific results show that the environmental impacts of production are small in comparison to the potential nutritional health benefits of consuming one oil over another. This study provides a roadmap for conducting similar analyses, allowing for a greater understanding of often overlooked sustainability and nutritional issues of food items.
... focusing on plant-based products while reducing red meat and processed foods) can benefit neurocognitive functioning. Even small dietary changes have been shown to provide substantial gains for both human health and the environment [31]. For instance, reducing red meat intake is associated with better cognitive function [32,33]. ...
The climate crisis and the human brain are intricately connected. Climate change impacts neurocognitive health, while climate actions both shape and are shaped by the brain. However, research examining these connections remains scarce. This review highlights how neuroscience can deepen the understanding of the reciprocal relationship between climate action and the brain. First, we discuss how both individual and collective climate action can directly and indirectly benefit our brain health, mental health and cognitive functioning and how emphasising this holds the potential of harvesting self-interest as a driving force for change. Second, we explore the role of the brain’s emotional and decision-making systems in motivating climate action. We also highlight neuroscience’s potential to predict population- level behaviours and aid in the systematic development of interventions. By addressing current knowledge gaps, we identify the next steps for deepening our understanding of the interwoven connections between climate action and the brain.
... In this more global food system, the range of food choices is broad. Food choices impact human health [26]. Data about the nutritional value of food is available in food composition tables and databases. ...
We describe our work to integrate the FoodOn ontology with our knowledge base of food composition data, WikiFCD. WikiFCD is knowledge base of structured data related to food composition and food items. With a goal to reuse FoodOn identifiers for food items, we imported a subset of the FoodOn ontology into the WikiFCD knowledge base. We aligned the import via a shared use of NCBI taxon identifiers for the taxon names of the plants from which the food items are derived. Reusing FoodOn benefits WikiFCD by allowing us to leverage the food item groupings that FoodOn contains. This integration also has potential future benefits for the FoodOn community due to the fact that WikiFCD provides food composition data at the food item level, and that WikiFCD is mapped to Wikidata and contains a SPARQL endpoint that supports federated queries. Federated queries across WikiFCD and Wikidata allow us to ask questions about food items that benefit from the cross-domain information of Wikidata, greatly increasing the breadth of possible data combinations.
... The dietary transition should be performed step by step. Even a partial transition, in which as much as 10 % of caloric intake from beef and processed meat is replaced with plantbased foods and selected seafoods, would have significant environmental and nutritional benefits (Stylianou et al., 2021). In addition, since health concerns have been shown to have a stronger influence on environmentally sustainable diets than environmental concerns, emphasizing health benefits can lead to environmentally sustainable dietary habits (Wu et al., 2023b). ...
