The Ecological Impact and the Metabolic Food Waste of Overweight and Obese Adult Individuals Living in North European and Mediterranean Countries

Donato Angelino ¹ Elisabetta Toti ² Marina Ramal-Sánchez ¹ Veronica D'Antonio ¹ Chiara Bravo-Trippetta ¹ Mauro Serafini ^1*

• ¹ University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy
• ² Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economy Analysis | CREA, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Overeating is one of the main drivers of the obesity condition through an Excess of Body Fat (EBF) accumulation. This situation affects not only human health issues, but also planet environmental resources wasted to produce the excess of food. Thus, the Metabolic Food Waste (MFW) index has been developed as amount of food wasted for EBF accumulation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land used for its production. The present study aims at evaluating and comparing the MFW and ecological footprints of some Mediterranean (MC) and North European (NEC) countries.The MFW of six Mediterranean and North European countries has been calculated as follows: i) EBF, as the fat resulted from the difference between ideal and real body weight of overweight and obese adult individuals, as FAOSTAT and WHO databases; ii) food wasted for EBF accumulation and energy from the main food categories by retrieving the FAO Food Balance Sheets; iii) GHG emissions and water and land impact to EBF by foods, as WWF Virtual Shopping Cart and Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition. Data refer to total population or standardized for 100,000 citizens. Results showed that NEC had highest rates of obese individuals while MC had slightly higher overweight rates. An overall higher EBF value for 100,000 citizens, both obese subjects and overweight, was found in NEC than MC, in both cases led by small population countries. Data on MFW and ecological footprints showed that, regardless of the countries, obese impact two-to-three folds more than overweight. Highest values of MFW and ecological footprints were found for MC for the whole and overweight/obese populations.The present study highlights the harmful role of the overeating as on human health as on the resource exploitations of the Earth. In particular, both MC and NEC showed similar alarming data about overeating and, consequently, negative impact on EBF and ecological footprints, suggesting that residence in countries close or far from Mediterranean basin is not a proxy of adherence to healthy dietary patterns. For this reason, informative campaigns should be developed to improve the knowledge on conscious dietary choices for human and planet healthiness.