LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 4B: DIET 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
tary scenarios than the FU ‘day’. Differences with a p-value less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically
significant.
3. Results
3.1. Characteristics of diets in selected studies
We found 13 studies that met our selection criteria (Carlsson-Kanyama, 1998; Carlsson-Kanyama et al.,
2003; Carlsson-Kanyama and Gonzalez, 2009; Collins and Fairchild, 2007; Davis and Sonesson, 2008;
Davis et al., 2010; Gerbens-Leenes and Nonhebel, 2002; Pathak et al., 2010; Peters et al., 2007; Risku-Norja
et al., 2008; Risku-Norja et al., 2009; Saxe et al., 2012; Thibert and Badami, 2011).
The size of the diets described in these studies varied from single meals to yearly per capita diets. Meals
contained a median of five food products, whereas daily diets contained a median of 23 products. Some of
the diets are representative for a country or region, such as the average Finnish diet (Risku-Norja et al.,
2008). Other diets are self-defined alternatives, such as the pork and poultry-free diet (Risku-Norja et al.,
2008). The contribution of animal protein in the diets differed from 0% in the various vegan scenarios to
90%.
3.2. Nutritional quality of meals and diets
Meals are not representative for a daily diet. In case we would scale-up a meal to a daily diet, i.e. scaling
up to a 2000 kcal diet, we observed vitamin A intake levels of over 1000% of RDV. Because the meals contain
a relatively small number of food products, the individual nutrient scores are relatively sensitive to product
choice. Because meals cannot be made representative for a daily consumption, further computations focussed
exclusively on daily diets and not on meals.
Fig. 1 shows the protein levels of daily diets. The scenarios were clustered per study (indicated by capital
letters at the horizontal bar). Within study, the scenarios were ranked by their fractional content of animalsource
protein, ranging from 0 to 78%. The horizontal line indicates the RDV of protein of 57 g. Most studies
have one blank bar, which represents the average/actual scenario within the studied country of region.
Total protein content ranged from 54 g (94% of RDV) in the vegan scenarios by Risku-Norja et al., (2008) to
150 grams (263% of RDV) (Peters et al., 2007). Among the scenarios within study, the total (excess) content
of protein generally increased with increasing fractional content of animal protein.
Figure 1. Daily intake of protein. A: Gerbens-Leenes and Nonhebel, (2002); B: Risku-Norja et al., (2009); C:
Collins and Fairchild, (2007); D:Risku-Norja et al., (2008); E: Peters et al., (2007); F: Pathak et al., (2010);
G: Saxe et al., (2012).
The NRD9.3 score was generally lower for diets that had a higher fractional content of animal protein
(Fig. 2). This decrease is due especially to higher levels of sodium, saturated fat and total sugar in diets that
had higher fractional contents of animal protein. Although diets which contain a lower fractional content of
animal protein have higher excess levels of fibre, diets were not rewarded for this due to the applied capping.
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