What is the carbon footprint of fad diets?

Global warming and climate change are concerned about its consequences, which are already palpable throughout the world. Thus, for some time now, particular emphasis has been placed on the importance for everyone of minimizing their carbon footprint, ie the quantity of gas emitted as a result of their consumption and activities.

In this sense, a new study of the tulane universityfrom New Orleans, USA, compared the most popular diets in terms of nutritional quality and environmental impact and found that the keto (ketogenic) and paleo diets, as achieved by American adults, were among the highest in carbon emissions. Moreover, they had the lowest scores in terms of overall nutritional quality.

For example, it was estimated that the ketogenic dietwhich prioritizes high amounts of fat and low amounts of carbohydrates, generates almost three kilos of carbon dioxide per 1,000 calories consumed, while that known as paleo dietwhich eschews grains in favor of meat, nuts and vegetables, received the second-lowest food quality score and also has a high carbon footprint, with 2.6 kilos of carbon dioxide per 1000 calories.

“Climate change continues to be a growing threat to the health and sustainability of global populations. The current food system contributes substantially to these environmental problems — the researchers stated in the publication of the work in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition—. Of particular interest is how changes in these food systems could contribute to both health of the population as the environmental sustainability going forward, with food choices being a key determinant.

And after assuring that “consumer demand, demonstrated by what people choose to buy and eat, has the potential to change the production trends“, they emphasized that “identifying the types of diets that support individual health and environmental sustainability is the first step in developing education and communication strategies to change consumer behaviors to support this” .

Para el estudio, los investigators compiled puntajes de calidad de la dieta utilizando datos de más de 16,000 dietas de adultos compiled por la Encuesta Nacional de Examination de Salud y Nutrición de los Centros para el Control y Prévención de Enfermedades (CDC, por sus siglas en English). Individual diets were given point values ​​based on the federal healthy eating index and mean scores for those consuming each type of diet were calculated.

“We suspected the negative impacts on the climate because they are centered on meatbut no one had really compared all of these diets, as they are chosen by individuals, rather than prescribed by experts, against each other using a common framework,” said the study’s lead author, Diego Rose, professor and program director Nutrition from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine on the findings of what was the first study to measure the carbon footprint of each dietas consumed by US adults, and in comparison to other common diets.

At the other extreme, the researchers found that a vegan diet have the less impact on the climate, generating 0.7 kilos of carbon dioxide for every 1,000 calories consumed, which is less than a quarter of the impact of the ketogenic diet. With regard to the environmental impact, the the vegan diet was followed by vegetarian and pescatarian diets.

With regard to nutritional quality, the pescatarian dietunderstood as a food that excludes meat as a food of animal origin, but not fish – obtained the highest score among the diets analyzed, followed by vegetarian and vegan diets.

There omnivorous diet it was the one tracked by 86% of survey participants, and it fell squarely halfway between quality and durability. According to the results, if one-third of people on an omnivorous diet started eating a vegetarian diet, on average for any given day, that would be equivalent to eliminating 340 million passenger vehicle miles.

Remarkably, however, when those on an omnivorous diet opted for versions of the the DASH diet by limiting fatty or Mediterranean meats plus vegetables, carbon footprints and nutritional quality scores improved.

“Climate change is perhaps one of the most pressing issues of our time.and a lot of people are interested in switching to a plant-based diet,” acknowledged Rose, who, according to the results of her work, “it would reduce their footprint and be healthy in general”. “Our research shows also that There is a way to improve health and carbon footprint without completely giving up meat.” added.

Looking ahead, Rose still has questions about how to encourage eating habits that are better for people and the planet.

A study supported by the United Nations in 2021 had found that 34% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system. Most of these emissions come from food production, including beef it is listed as responsible for eight to ten times more emissions than chicken production and over 20 times more emissions than nut and pulse production.

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