Hwalla Nahla, Jomaa Lamis, Hachem Fatima, Kharroubi Samer, Hamadeh Rena, Nasreddine Lara, Naja Farah
Nutrition and Food Sciences Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Nutrition and Food Systems Division, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.
Front Nutr. 2021 Jun 25;8:697225. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2021.697225. eCollection 2021.
Lebanon, a middle-income Eastern Mediterranean country, continues to face detrimental economic, health and socio-political challenges that are further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In parallel, the country has been experiencing a remarkable nutrition transition that has contributed to the burden of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases, all imposing serious repercussions on people's livelihoods, food security, and health. Such circumstances have prodded public demand for guidance on affordable, healthy, and sustainable dietary choices to alleviate the burden to this emerging unfortunate situation. The purpose of this study is to provide evidence-based sustainable and healthy dietary recommendations which balance the tradeoffs among the health, environmental footprint and cost dimensions of sustainability, while closely resembling the usual food consumption pattern. Data from the latest available national food consumption survey was used as the usual food consumption pattern of Lebanese adults. Optimized dietary patterns were calculated using the optimization model Optimeal which produced patterns most similar to the usual diet and simultaneously satisfying the three main sets of constraints: health, environmental footprints, and cost. The identified healthy and sustainable dietary options were vetted by multiple key stakeholders from the government, academia, international, and national non-governmental organizations. Compared to the usual intake, the optimized diet included higher intakes of whole grain bread, dark green vegetables, dairy products, and legumes, and lower intakes of refined bread, meat, poultry, added sugars, saturated fat, as compared to usual national mean consumption. The optimized dietary model resulted in a decrease in the associated environmental footprints: water use (-6%); and GHG (-22%) with no change in energy use. The cost of the optimized diet was not different from that of the usual intake. An evidence-based sustainable and healthy diet was developed for Lebanon providing the population and policy makers with some answers to a complex situation. Findings highlight the need for the development of sustainable food based dietary guidelines for Lebanon to promote diets that are healthy, sustainable, culturally acceptable, and affordable and that can alleviate food insecurity among the general population.
黎巴嫩是地中海东部的一个中等收入国家，仍面临着有害的经济、健康和社会政治挑战，而新冠疫情更是加剧了这些挑战。与此同时，该国经历了显著的营养转型，导致了营养不良和非传染性疾病负担加重，所有这些都对人们的生计、粮食安全和健康产生了严重影响。这种情况促使公众要求提供有关经济实惠、健康和可持续饮食选择的指导，以减轻这一新兴不幸状况带来的负担。本研究的目的是提供基于证据的可持续和健康饮食建议，在可持续性的健康、环境足迹和成本维度之间权衡取舍，同时与通常的食物消费模式密切相似。最新的全国食物消费调查数据被用作黎巴嫩成年人的通常食物消费模式。使用优化模型Optimeal计算优化饮食模式，该模型生成的模式与通常饮食最相似，同时满足三组主要约束条件：健康、环境足迹和成本。确定的健康和可持续饮食选择由来自政府、学术界、国际和国家非政府组织的多个关键利益相关者进行审查。与通常摄入量相比，优化后的饮食包括更多的全麦面包、深绿色蔬菜、乳制品和豆类摄入，与全国平均消费相比，精制面包、肉类、家禽、添加糖、饱和脂肪的摄入量较低。优化后的饮食模型减少了相关的环境足迹：用水量减少了6%；温室气体排放量减少了22%，能源使用量没有变化。优化饮食的成本与通常摄入量没有差异。为黎巴嫩制定了基于证据的可持续和健康饮食，为民众和政策制定者应对复杂情况提供了一些答案。研究结果凸显了为黎巴嫩制定基于可持续食物的饮食指南的必要性，以推广健康、可持续、文化上可接受且经济实惠的饮食，并减轻普通民众的粮食不安全状况。
