IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v20y2023i5p3797-d1075298.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet

Author

Listed:
  • Denise Filippin

    (Scientific Society for Vegetarian Nutrition, 30171 Venice, Italy
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Anna Rita Sarni

    (Scientific Society for Vegetarian Nutrition, 30171 Venice, Italy
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Gianluca Rizzo

    (Independent Researcher, Via Venezuela 66, 98121 Messina, Italy)

  • Luciana Baroni

    (Scientific Society for Vegetarian Nutrition, 30171 Venice, Italy)

Abstract

Food consumption is one of the major causes of climate change, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and other kinds of environmental impact by modern households. According to evidence, a global change in dietary habits could be the single most effective and rapid intervention to reduce anthropic pressure on the planet, especially with respect to climate change. Our study applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate the total environmental impact of two plant-based diets: the Mediterranean and the Vegan diets, according to relevant Italian nutritional recommendations. The two diets share the same macronutrient rates and cover all the nutritional recommendations. Calculations were made on the basis of a theoretical one-week 2000 kcal/day diet. According to our calculations, the Vegan diet showed about 44% less total environmental impact when compared to the Mediterranean diet, despite the fact that the content of animal products of the latter was low (with 10.6% of the total diet calories). This result clearly supports the concept that meat and dairy consumption plays a critical role, above all, in terms of damage to human health and ecosystems. Our study supports the thesis that even a minimal-to-moderate content of animal foods has a consistent impact on the environmental footprint of a diet, and their reduction can elicit significant ecological benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Denise Filippin & Anna Rita Sarni & Gianluca Rizzo & Luciana Baroni, 2023. "Environmental Impact of Two Plant-Based, Isocaloric and Isoproteic Diets: The Vegan Diet vs. the Mediterranean Diet," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-21, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:5:p:3797-:d:1075298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/3797/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/3797/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zahir Barahmand & Marianne S. Eikeland, 2022. "Life Cycle Assessment under Uncertainty: A Scoping Review," World, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-26, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Betty Carlini & Cristina Lucini & Javier Velázquez, 2024. "The Role of Legumes in the Sustainable Mediterranean Diet: Analysis of the Consumption of Legumes in the Mediterranean Population over the Last Ten Years a PRISMA Statement Methodology," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Rosalia Facendola & Giovanni Ottomano Palmisano & Annalisa De Boni & Claudio Acciani & Rocco Roma, 2023. "Profiling Citizens on Perception of Key Factors of Food Security: An Application of K-Means Cluster Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-15, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zoppi, Giulia & Tito, Edoardo & Bianco, Isabella & Pipitone, Giuseppe & Pirone, Raffaele & Bensaid, Samir, 2023. "Life cycle assessment of the biofuel production from lignocellulosic biomass in a hydrothermal liquefaction – aqueous phase reforming integrated biorefinery," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 375-385.
    2. Rudha Khudhair Mohammed & Hooman Farzaneh, 2023. "Life Cycle Environmental Impacts Assessment of Post-Combustion Carbon Capture for Natural Gas Combined Cycle Power Plant in Iraq, Considering Grassroots and Retrofit Design," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-35, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:5:p:3797-:d:1075298. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.