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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Volume 11 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1508601
This article is part of the Research Topic Nutritional Epidemiology: Advances in the Analysis of Healthy and Sustainable Dietary Patterns View all articles
Modeled sustainability impacts of increasing pork consumption among adults in the United States
Provisionally accepted- College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, United States
Little is known about the role of pork in sustainable diet patterns, given that it is often aggregated with other animal proteins or not evaluated at all. To address this gap, this study modeled the sustainability impacts of replacing different protein foods with pork in a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States (US). Data on dietary intake, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), cumulative energy demand, water scarcity footprint, land, pesticides, fertilizer nutrients, food prices, and diet quality were obtained from publicly available repositories. A food substitution model was constructed to evaluate the change in each sustainability impact when 1-3 servings of beef, poultry, seafood, eggs, or legumes were replaced by pork. Modeled substitution of beef with pork was associated with reductions in GHGE, land, pesticides, and fertilizer nutrients by 11-35%, and substitution of seafood with pork was associated with reductions in cumulative energy demand by 6% and diet cost by <1%. All other substitutions led to an increase in sustainability impacts of up to 5%, including all outcomes associated with substituting poultry, eggs, and legumes with pork. The US federal government can play an important role in improving data collection methods that distinguish between pork and other meats. This can facilitate further research to evaluate sustainability trade-offs, which can inform clinical practice and public policy to support informed food choices for consumers.
Keywords: pork, Protein food, sustainability, Food system, greenhouse gas
Received: 09 Oct 2024; Accepted: 23 Dec 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Conrad, Repoulis and Zavela. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zach Conrad, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, United States
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