Quality and environmental footprints of diets by socio-economic status in Argentina

Abstract

Food consumption and production plays a major role on human health and environmental sustainability. In addition, socio-economic status (SES) could be an important determinant on these impacts. Here we investigated the quality and environmental footprints of diets of different SES in Argentina. Dietary data was obtained from a recent national-wide representative survey (21,547 households), and individual intake was estimated by applying the Adult-Male Equivalent (AME) approach. Dietary quality was assessed by comparing the apparent consumption of foods and nutrients with the level of intake associated with the lowest risk of mortality, and applying the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010). The environmental footprints were assessed with a set of six environmental indicators: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, total land occupation, cropland demand, fossil energy use, freshwater consumption and eutrophying emissions. Per capita total expenditure was utilized as an indicator of SES. We found a suboptimal intake of healthy and excess of unhealthy foods and nutrients in all SES, as well as a low AHEI-2010 score (34.7 ± 3.56 over 100). Regarding environmental footprints per AME, we estimated 8.91 ± 2.49 kg CO₂-eq/day for GHG emissions, 9.30 ± 2.93 MJ/day for fossil energy use, 54.2 ± 14.8 m²/day for total land occupation, 7.07 ± 1.90 m²/day for cropland demand, 205 ± 65.3 L/day for freshwater consumption and 19.8 ± 6.43 g PO₄-eq/day for eutrophying emissions. The Argentinian diet was found to be both unhealthy and unsustainable in all socio-economic levels.

Keywords: Diet, food and nutrition; Food system; Greenhouse gas emission; Life cycle analysis; Suboptimal diet.