Back to Basics: How Traditional Eating Habits Can Foster a Sustainable Future

Researchers are evaluating the balance between healthfulness and environmental impact

By Cora Bainum

A healthy and sustainable diet may be as simple as what our grandparents taught us decades ago. It isn’t necessary to go keto, intermittent fasting, or even be a vegan. Research from the emerging field of sustainable nutrition is finding that behavioral changes and greater attention to food consumption can eliminate chronic disease and the environmental crisis. 

In a study published in July in Advances in Nutrition, researchers in Ireland investigated which dietary patterns can protect against chronic disease and improve planetary health. Clarissa Leydon, lead author and a researcher at the School of Public Health at University College Cork, is developing a sustainable and healthy dietary guide to educate the public and shape policy. Somewhere along the way, food consumption and production created a multifaceted health dilemma. Studying the overlapping dietary patterns that lead to optimal population health, minimal environmental impact, and affordability can realign the imbalance between both food and people as well as people and the environment. Leydon says, “We need dietary change. We need it as soon as possible for both planetary and population health.”

Government guidelines versus environmental impact

The study utilizes two kinds of measures; one to examine health outcomes and the other to examine the environmental impact. Leydon first quantifies how closely a dietary pattern aligns with federal nutritional recommendations. Most countries have healthy eating guidelines developed by the supported by their respective governments that are updated and released every five years. While these guidelines differ, the aim of these recommendations is to inform which foods (and how much of them) fulfill the body’s physiological needs and protect against chronic disease. Leydon uses predefined algorithms to determine how well an individual’s dietary pattern meets these high-diet-quality recommendations. The algorithms make it sound complicated, but Leydon says, “It’s basically just an easy way to look at a wide group of people and be like, okay, well, what percentage of them are meeting a lot of the recommendations?”

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Leydon then determines the environmental impact of a diet by quantifying the average amount of food consumed in the said diet by the food’s predicted emission output. Each food has an environmental impact indicator that is based on greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation, energy demand, toxic impacts of pesticides, and ecological footprint. For a diet rich in rice, for example, the environmental impact indicator of rice is multiplied by the average quantity of rice consumed per person, per year. The result is the estimated environmental impact (per person) of frequently consuming rice for a year. After calculating the environmental impact of multiple foods commonly consumed in a specific dietary pattern, Leydon can reasonably compare which dietary patterns have the greatest effect on the natural environment. 

The findings of this study support the dietary recommendations that longstanding public health organizations and medical clinics have made for years. Healthier diets— defined as those consisting predominantly of high-quality, plant-based, and whole foods—can reduce environmental impacts and protect against obesity. The Mediterranean, Nordic, and Greek diets are among the most nutritional diets in the world because they all focus on whole, real foods. Moving current dietary patterns away from ultra-processed and completely animal-based foods creates the potential to improve both planetary health and eliminate chronic diseases.

“That’s not to say that everyone needs to go Vegan, or never eat animal-source foods,” Leydon says. “Because you know, despite the fact that they have a very high environmental impact, they do have a very important role in being nutrient-dense and providing essential micronutrients.”

Balancing sustainability and healthfulness

Naglaa El-Abbadi, researcher and lecturer in the Division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, reiterates the complexities of aligning diet and sustainability. “It’s all very complicated. There’s not one formula,” says El-Abbadi. “If a person is hungry, they’re not worried about sustainability, nor is that the priority that the community is going to focus on,” she continues. Like Leydon, El-Abbadi believes that affordability, accessibility, and fair labor are major factors in the sustainable nutrition issue. It’s not just about which dietary patterns improve health outcomes within environmentally sustainable parameters, but also about an individual’s ability to act upon recommendations.  

 “Just because something is sustainable doesn’t mean that it’s healthy,” El-Abbadi says, “Just because it’s healthy doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. And if it’s one or the other, it doesn’t mean it’s in price point or access.” Her advice is to make small shifts and change things that are within individual control. 

Reducing food waste is one of the biggest changes a person can make. According to the FAO, approximately 1.3 billion tons of edible food is wasted each year one-third of all. That is an estimated 3.3 billion tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere per year. Therefore, being mindful of food waste – including the quantity of food purchased, food storage, and food preparation – can really make a difference environmentally. Making small dietary shifts on an individual basis, if at all possible, will also benefit both personal and planetary health.  

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Choosing future directions in research

Introducing the environmental impact of dietary choices might seem like it makes food choices even more complicated. It is hard enough trying to determine what a healthy diet looks like and how to integrate it into time constraints, a budget, and food preferences. However, the aim of measuring both personal health and environmental health outcomes is not to make dietary decisions any harder. While the relationship between planetary and population health is complicated, developing an awareness of the interplay between the two can trigger significant impacts. 

Leydon and El-Abbadi agree that there is still so much work to be done in the field of sustainable nutrition. There needs to be more research, on a broader scale, into the socio-cultural acceptability of dietary trends and into the economics of food systems. Information about the relationships within food networks can further inform how to make necessary interventions. It is also necessary to enact federal regulations and policies to support a sustainable diet. Leydon says, “If it’s not accessible, if it’s not affordable, you know, individual behavior is not going to change.”

According to experts in the field of sustainable nutrition, the best thing one can do to align diet and sustainability while keeping within the bounds of affordability and preference is to be cognizant of the foods one buys. From a nutrition standpoint, cutting out a specific food group entirely can create deficiencies. Plus, it is important to consider the emotional, social, and cultural factors that are tied to food. Therefore, the best diet is one that is conscientious of environmental impacts and is physically, mentally, and socially sustainable for an individual in the long term.