Speaker
Description
Keywords: dietary transition, agri-food systems, food justice, food consumption.
1.Introduction
Agri-food systems are important contributors to global socio-environmental impacts directly affecting human health (Gaupp et al., 2021). A transition towards responsible production and consumption patterns is required to ensure climate change adaptation and mitigation. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) have commonly served as the predominant methodology for estimating the environmental impact of food products (Ambikapathi et al., 2022; Batlle-Bayer et al., 2020; Cambeses-Franco et al., 2022; González-García et al., 2020). However, its application has primarily centred on evaluating individual products, often overlooking crucial aspects such as production systems and socioeconomic characteristics of the population (Toniolo et al., 2021).
2.Objectives
This study aims to gather and interpret consumption data in Spain to assess the sustainability of food consumption patterns with LCAs considering socioeconomic aspects. Specifically, we aim to reduce the agri-food footprint by (a) analysing Spanish consumption patterns considering different socioeconomic strata; (b) examining existing relations between class-related consumption habits, type of food, and territorial productivity (c) outlining transition scenarios based on differentiated results from the survey data and production methods.
3.Methods
3.1 Spanish dietary habits
The Baseline Diet (BD) was obtained from the 2022 Household Average Consumption Survey of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food (MAPA, 2022). Answering the necessity of bringing into the equation differences in consumption habits based on socio-economic status, four other BDs were considered: high, medium, medium-low, and low socioeconomic households’ BDs (MAPA, 2005).
3.2 EAT-Lancet Recommendations
Scenarios of dietary transitions were designed in conformity with the EAT-Lancet planetary diet. EAT-Lancet recommends nutritional and weight-based intakes of eight groups of food and subgroups. For comparison purposes, the same categories were created for each BD.
3.3 Spanish production systems
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach was used to thoroughly collect the carbon footprint of each product in terms of GWP (measured in kg CO2eq). In this stage, case studies in Spain were prioritized over studies carried out elsewhere. Data obtained through the literature review was complemented with the SuEatable Database (Petersson et al., 2021) Moreover, we gathered LCA information about different production systems - i.e., conventional vs organic, intensive vs extensive, and long-distance vs km0. The average GWP of each product was then used to estimate the carbon footprint (CF) of the baseline diets.
4.Findings
4.1 Spanish consumption patterns and socioeconomic strata
The EAT-Lancet Diet recommends a daily intake for adults of 1,312 g per person per day. In Spain, the average consumption is 1,233 g per person per day, showing a deficit of 79 g per person per day. Similar results are shown for all the analysed BDs except for the high-class BD, which reports an excess in food consumption.
Comparisons between the average BD and the planetary diet show a significant deficit of grain, plant-sourced proteins, and vegetables daily intake (-128, -107, and -162 g person-1 day-1, respectively), and an excess of animal-sourced proteins, added sugars, starchy vegetables, and dairy foods (+80, +20, +22, and +27 g person-1 day-1, respectively). These results are in line with the literature (Broekema et al., 2020; Cambeses-Franco et al., 2022; Gaupp et al., 2021), and indicate that a shift towards a diet richer in plant-based products is required in Spain (Batlle-Bayer et al., 2019).
Although our data display a generalized deficit in food consumption compared with the recommendations, it is important to notice that official consumption data often underestimate the real amount of food ingested. To this account, Cerrillo et al. (2023) highlight how official consumption data do not include extra-domestic consumption, touristic flows, and food losses and waste, and calculate an increase in real consumption, especially in cereals and meat.
On the one hand, this consideration softens the analysis related to the deficit of per capita daily intake; on the other hand, it displays an even more alarming condition for high classes and a generalized excessive consumption of animal-based products.
4.2 Type of foods and socioeconomic status
The proportion of food groups between classes does not show any significant divergence. On the contrary, dissimilarities are present when taking into account the quality of food items: high and medium-class BD reveal higher percentages of certified and bovine meat, Iberian ham, fresh and blue fish, and extra virgin olive oil, while medium- and low-class BD show higher relative consumptions of chicken and pork meat, frozen meat, white and frozen fish, and sunflower oil. Moreover, results show that the average consumption of high-class BD accounts for almost one-third of the total average amount of meat consumed (29%).
4.3 Transition scenarios
Due to their CF and class-depending consumption, animal-based proteins show a higher degree of improvement. We thus identify three preliminary transition scenarios:
(i) Boost a reduction in the consumption of animal-based products, focusing on high- and middle-class consumption. This scenario aims at evening the CF between high- and low-strata BDs, decreasing consumption by 120-45 g per person-1 day-1;
(ii) Favour the consumption of plant-based products for low-classes, which should increase vegetables and plant-based products consumption by 90-93 g per person-1 day-1. This scenario aims at improving food security and thus requires a special emphasis on groups in vulnerable conditions;
(iii) Combine reduction and changing production of different systems, taking into consideration systems linked with local resources. This scenario brings into the equation the context of the agri-food system and rethinks production methods.
5. Conclusions
The shift towards sustainable and healthy agri-food systems is a cross-cutting issue that needs to take into account the characteristics of the production systems, as well as socioeconomic aspects affecting consumers’ decisions. Further CF analysis related to Spanish BDs is required to explore transition scenarios through LCA studies. Nonetheless, our preliminary results represent a starting point for improving the localised sustainability of food habits.
