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An assessment of individual foodprints attributed to diets and food waste in the United States
Open accessAbstract
This paper assesses the environmental impacts of the average American's diet and food loss and waste (FLW) habits through an analysis of energy, water, land, and fertilizer requirements (inputs) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (outputs). We synthesized existing datasets to determine the ramifications of the typical American adult's food habits, as well as the environmental impact associated with shifting diets to meet the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) dietary guideline recommendations. In 2010, FLW accounted for 35% of energy use, 34% of blue water use, 34% of GHG emissions, 31% of land use, and 35% of fertilizer use related to an individual's food-related resource consumption, i.e. their foodprint . A shift in consumption towards a healthier diet, combined with meeting the USDA and Environmental Protection Agency's 2030 food loss and waste reduction goal could increase per capita food related energy use 12%, decrease blue water consumption 4%, decrease green water use 23%, decrease GHG emissions from food production 11%, decrease GHG emissions from landfills 20%, decrease land use 32%, and increase fertilizer use 12%.
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“In contrast to our analysis, Birney et al. included retail food loss and waste in their analysis and did not account for multi-use crops (i.e., crops that are used to produce multiple products from equivalent mass) and multi-use cropland (cropland used to produce multiple crops during different parts of the year), both of which could explain the observed differences in results.”
From Relationship between food waste, diet quality, and environmental sustainability (2018) · cites this paper as [51]
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“Our estimates of cropland and fertilizer used to produce wasted food were also lower than Birney et al. (61 million acres of cropland and 8.7 billion pounds of fertilizer),[51]”
From Relationship between food waste, diet quality, and environmental sustainability (2018) · cites this paper as [51]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Birney, C. I., Franklin, K. F., Davidson, F. T., & Webber, M. E.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Corresponding author
- Birney, Catherine I
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2017-10-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 105008
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2765323761
- Cited by
- 106
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 7
- FWCI
- 9.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
- Dairy Management
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Keywords
- food loss and waste, diet, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, land use, fertilizer use, energy consumption, dietary guidelines, food waste reduction, landfill emissions, United States
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