Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany; Institute for Hygiene and Public Health, University Hospital Bonn (UKB), Venusberg-Campus 1, 53127 Bonn, Germany.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Mar 10;811:151437. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151437. Epub 2021 Nov 6.
Western diets are associated with multiple environmental impacts and risks to human health. European countries are gradually taking action towards the Farm to Fork Strategy, embracing a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective to promote the sustainability of food production and consumption. Although LCA enables the comprehensive assessment of environmental impacts, diet-related human health and animal welfare impacts are often underrepresented. This study proposes integrating additional indicators into LCA to evaluate the sustainability of diets under the One Health (OH) approach, which holistically considers interlinked complex health issues between humans, animals and the environment. Human health loss is estimated according to risk factors for non-communicable diseases; while animal welfare is measured as animal life years suffered, loss of animal lives and loss of morally-adjusted animal lives. The extended LCA framework is applied to men and women's reference diets in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW); compared to three optimized dietary scenarios under nutritional constraints: 1) the national dietary guidelines, 2) a vegan diet (VD) and 3) a Mediterranean diet (MD). Men's reference diet causes greater impacts than women's across OH dimensions due to the higher food consumption, especially of ready-to-eat meals, sausages, meat, and sweetened and alcoholic beverages. Both reference diets are associated with risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, stroke and neoplasms. Besides meat, consumption of honey, fish and seafood has the greatest impact on animal welfare, because of the high number of individuals involved. Alternative diets improve the sustainability of food consumption in NRW, although trade-offs arise: MD worsens animal suffering due to the higher fish intake; water use increases in both VD and MD due the higher intake of nuts and vegetables. Results highlight the importance of including animal welfare and human health indicators in LCA to better elucidate the potential impacts of diets characterized by the high intake of animal products, from a OH perspective.
西方饮食与多种环境影响和人类健康风险有关。欧洲国家正逐步采取行动实施从农场到餐桌战略，采用生命周期评估（LCA）的视角来促进食品生产和消费的可持续性。尽管 LCA 能够全面评估环境影响，但与饮食相关的人类健康和动物福利影响往往被低估。本研究提出在 LCA 中纳入其他指标，以根据“同一健康”（OH）方法评估饮食的可持续性，该方法全面考虑了人类、动物和环境之间相互关联的复杂健康问题。根据非传染性疾病的风险因素估算人类健康损失；而动物福利则衡量为动物遭受的生命年损失、动物生命损失和道德调整后的动物生命损失。扩展后的 LCA 框架应用于德国北莱茵-威斯特法伦州（NRW）男性和女性的参考饮食；与三种受营养限制的优化饮食方案相比：1）国家饮食指南、2）素食饮食（VD）和 3）地中海饮食（MD）。由于男性的食物摄入量较高，尤其是即食餐、香肠、肉类和加糖及酒精饮料，因此男性参考饮食在 OH 维度上造成的影响大于女性。两种参考饮食都与心血管疾病、糖尿病、中风和肿瘤的风险因素有关。除了肉类，由于涉及的个体数量较多，蜂蜜、鱼类和海鲜的消费对动物福利的影响最大。替代饮食改善了 NRW 的食品消费可持续性，尽管存在权衡取舍：由于鱼类摄入量较高，MD 会加剧动物的痛苦；VD 和 MD 中的用水量都增加了，因为坚果和蔬菜的摄入量较高。结果强调了在 LCA 中纳入动物福利和人类健康指标的重要性，以便从 OH 角度更好地阐明高动物产品摄入饮食的潜在影响。
