State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China; University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, China.
State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Jul 20;779:146497. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146497. Epub 2021 Mar 17.
The transition to a healthier diet recommended by national dietary guidelines in China may not achieve sufficient environmental benefits. This study assesses China's potential of transforming into a sustainable diet and the trade-offs among reducing food-related environmental impacts, improving nutritional quality and respecting eating habits. We used multi-objective optimization to build optimized scenarios, with the lowest environmental footprint and greatest acceptability (i.e., with the minimum departure from the currently observed diet) as optimization goals, and adequate macro- and micronutrient intake levels as constraints. In doing so, we assessed the actual benefits and synergies of reducing carbon footprint (CF), water footprint (WF), and ecological footprint (EF) and improving health and respecting dietary acceptance under the corresponding scenarios. The results show that CF, WF and EF can be reduced by up to 19%, 15% and 30% respectively, while satisfying nutritional constraints and achieving the minimum deviation from the current food combination. The greatest synergistic benefits for CF, WF and EF are achieved when the minimum CF is the optimization goal; the maximum synergistic benefits for the environment, health and acceptability are achieved when the CF is reduced by 10%. Our findings identify the trade-offs and synergies dietary changes considering nutritional benefits, environmental sustainability and acceptability, and reveal the challenges and opportunities for achieving such synergies.
向中国国家膳食指南推荐的更健康饮食的转变可能无法带来足够的环境效益。本研究评估了中国向可持续饮食转变的潜力，以及减少与食物相关的环境影响、改善营养质量和尊重饮食习惯之间的权衡取舍。我们使用多目标优化来构建优化方案，以最低的环境足迹和最大的可接受性（即最小程度偏离当前观察到的饮食）为优化目标，并以充足的宏量和微量营养素摄入水平为约束条件。在这样做的过程中，我们评估了在相应方案下减少碳足迹（CF）、水足迹（WF）和生态足迹（EF）以及改善健康和尊重饮食接受程度的实际效益和协同作用。结果表明，CF、WF 和 EF 可分别减少 19%、15%和 30%，同时满足营养约束条件并实现与当前食物组合的最小偏差。当以最小 CF 为优化目标时，CF、WF 和 EF 的协同效益最大；当减少 10%的 CF 时，对环境、健康和可接受性的协同效益最大。我们的研究结果确定了在考虑营养效益、环境可持续性和可接受性的情况下饮食变化的权衡取舍，揭示了实现这些协同效益的挑战和机遇。
