Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products

Michael Clark* (Corresponding Author), Marco Springmann, Mike Rayner, Peter Scarborough, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Jennie Macdiarmid, Jessica Fanzo, Lauren Bandy, Richard A Harrington

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    93 Citations (Scopus)
    7 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems [El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, 456–464 (2018)]. While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef [Poore and Nemecek, Science 360, 987–992 (2018)], most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases [Poore and Nemecek Science 360, 987–992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360–365 (2021)] to derive estimates of a food product’s environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere2120584119
    Number of pages12
    JournalPNAS
    Volume119
    Issue number33
    Early online date8 Aug 2022
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 8 Aug 2022

    Bibliographical note

    Acknowledgments
    We thank Jessica Renzella, Kaitlin Kimmel, Joseph Poore, and E.J. Milner-Gulland for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This research was made possible through support from the Wellcome Trust, Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment and People [LEAP]), award no. 205212/Z/16/Z. P.S. and R.A.H. are supported by the National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at Oxford (IS-BRC-1215-20008). P.S. is funded by a British Heart Foundation fellowship (FS/15/34/31656). J.I.M. is supported by funding by from the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services, Scottish Government.

    Data Availability Statement

    The algorithm and associated data inputs are available at Oxford Research Archives (https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4ad0b594-3e81-4e61-aefc-5d869c799a87) (41). Due to legal constraints, the product-level data available at the above link is anonymized. A nonanonymized version of the product level data are available under license upon request from R.H. and P.S. To request a nonanonymized version of the product-level data used in the analyses for the purpose of replicating findings, please email foodDBaccess@ndph.ox.ac.uk.
    Anonymized (algorithm and associated data inputs, anonymized version of the product level data used in the analysis) data have been deposited in the Oxford University Research Archive. Some study data available (a nonanonymized version of the product-level data are available under license upon request from R.H. and P.S.; to request a nonanonymized version of the product-level data used in the analyses for the purpose of replicating findings, please email foodDBaccess@ndph.ox.ac.uk.).

    Keywords

    • food system sustainability
    • environmental impact of food
    • ecolabelling

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this