The analysis assigned emissions to individual food items rather than broad food groups for greater accuracy. Analyses of this sort tend to evaluate sustainability at the scale of broad food-group categories.
Food production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately one third of emissions. The more sustainable diets are generally considered to be – based on previous research – those based around nutritious, unprocessed, less energy-dense food. However, much of that work has been conducted using measurements of sustainability for broad categories of food.
This leaves room to improve methodology. This study, which assigns emissions to individual food items instead of broad food groups, provides greater accuracy than before.
Dr Holly Rippin, of the University of Leeds, evaluated existing published research in order to assign greenhouse gas emissions to over 3,233 food items listed in the UK Composition of Foods Integrated...