A four-pillar modeling approach to sustainable diets: The health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of shifting to U.S.-recommended dietary patterns
Document Type
Book
Files
Publication Date
Fall 9-17-2024
Description
Current dietary patterns are unsustainable and major gaps in diet sustainability assessments remain. There is substantial research assessing the role of dietary patterns within four pillars of sustainability: environment, health, economic, and social. While addressing each pillar is essential to achieve sustainability, to our knowledge, no one has assessed all pillars simultaneously when analyzing diet-outcome relationships. We aim to model the sustainability impacts of shifting from current diets to four dietary patterns recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), using a 4-pillar framework of sustainability. Current dietary intake for U.S. adults was estimated using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015–2016 and 2017–2018). Recommended food patterns came from the DGA 2020-2025 report. Cardiometabolic (CMD)- and cancer-specific health outcomes associated with intake of 18 food groups were calculated using a Comparative Risk Assessment approach. Environmental, economic, and social impacts were calculated using life cycle impact assessment, food cost, and forced labor risk datasets, respectively, and a Monte Carlo approach. Shifting to the four recommended patterns results in health benefits, with the greatest reduction in adverse health outcomes for the Healthy Vegetarian (VEG) pattern, followed by the Healthy Vegan (VEGN) pattern. Concurrently, shifting to each of the four patterns results in increased water scarcity. Adopting the Healthy-Mediterranean and Healthy-US Style patterns results in increased global warming potential (GWP), cumulative energy demand (CED), blue water consumption, food cost, and forced labor risk (FL). However, the VEG and VEGN patterns result in reduced GWP, CED, and blue water impacts, as well as reduced cost and FL. This analysis highlights the benefits and tradeoffs of transitioning from current diets to DGA-recommended diets based on a 4-pillar framework of sustainability.
City
Burlington, Vermont
Keywords
Dietary sustainability, 4-pillar framework, health outcomes, environmental impact, food system tradeoffs, Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA)
Recommended Citation
Nelson, Julia and Battaglia, Kyra, "A four-pillar modeling approach to sustainable diets: The health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of shifting to U.S.-recommended dietary patterns" (2024). Food Systems Summit 2024. 21.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fss2024/21
