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

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
130. Greenhouse gas emissions related to saturated fat, sodium and
dietary fibre content of food products
Corné van Dooren * , Annely Douma
Netherlands Nutrition Centre (Voedingscentrum), P.O. Box 85700, 2508 CK The Hague, The Netherlands,
Corresponding author. E-mail: dooren@voedingscentrum.nl
The Dutch Health Council concludes in her 2011 advice that a healthy diet according to the Wheel of Five
model is usually also environmentally friendly. Furthermore, she states that there is a strong correlation between
various indicators of sustainability, such as greenhouse gases (GHG), energy and land use (Health
Council 2011). The Italian double pyramid shows that there is an inverse relationship between breakdown in
health gain and environmental impact, expressed as carbon, water and ecological footprint (Buchner, Fischler
et al. 2010). Our study investigates and quantifies this hypothesis with Dutch data.
Data sources: food composition (RIVM 2011); land use and energy use (Gerbens-Leenes 2006) water use
(Hoekstra and Chapagain 2004) and GHG (CLM, klimaatweegschaal.nl; 2009 not published). Correlation
between GHG, energy use, water use and land use was calculated with a Spearman rank correlation test.
Further analyses were only done with the GHG data as indicator (n=403). Products were divided into 6 categories
according to the Wheel of Five education model. A Kruskal Wallis and a Mann-Withney U test were
performed to determine differences between groups of products (Fig. 1).
To find whether a healthy food pattern could be in line with a sustainable food pattern, the products were
divided into a broad accepted division of Preference, Neutral and Exception, based on saturated fat, sodium,
added sugar and fibre content (Voedingscentrum 2011). Differences in GHG of these groups were explored.
To further investigate whether this mentioned nutrients affects the emission of GHG, the nutrients were included
in a regression analysis (for this analyses GHG data was log transformed).
We find a correlation between GHG and land, energy and water use (all r>0.354, p