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Conservative to disruptive diets for optimizing nutrition, environmental impacts and cost in French adults from the NutriNet-Santé cohort

Nature Food volume 2, pages 174–182 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Improving the sustainability of diets requires the identification of diets that meet the nutritional requirements of populations, promote health, are within planetary boundaries, are affordable and are acceptable. Here we explore the extent to which dimensions of sustainability could be optimally aligned and identify more sustainable dietary solutions, from the most conservative to the most disruptive, among 12,166 participants of the NutriNet-Santé cohort. We aim to concomitantly lower environmental impacts (including greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand and land occupation), increase organic food consumption and study departure from observed diets (considered as a proxy for acceptability). From the most conservative to the most disruptive scenario, optimized diets were gradually richer in fruits, vegetables and soya-based products and markedly poorer in animal-based foods and fatty and sweet foods. The contribution of animal protein to total protein intake gradually decreased by 12% to 70% of the observed value. The greenhouse gas emissions from food production for the diets gradually decreased across scenarios (as a percentage of observed values) by 36–86%, land occupation for food production by 32–78% and energy demand by 28–72%. Our results offer a benchmark of scenarios of graded dietary changes against graded sustainability improvements.

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Fig. 1: Sustainable characteristics of observed and optimized diets.
Fig. 2: Structure of observed and optimized diets.
Fig. 3: Organic food and the environmental impacts of observed and optimized diets.

Data availability

Data can be retrieved from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Code and programs can be retrieved from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank O. Hamza, C. Boizot-Santai, L.-G. Soler and Bio Consom’acteurs’ members for price collection and data management. We thank C. Agaesse (dietitian); Y. Esseddik, T. Hong Van Duong, P. Flanzy, R. Gatibelza, J. Mohinder and A. Timera (computer scientists); F. Szabo de Edelenyi, N. Arnault, J. Allegre and L. Bourhis (data-manager/statisticians); and N. Druesne Pecollo (operational coordinator) for their technical contributions to the NutriNet-Santé study. We thank all of the volunteers of the NutriNet-Santé cohort. The NutriNet-Santé study is funded by French Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Santé Publique France, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers and Paris 13 University. The BioNutriNet project was supported by the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) in the context of the 2013 Programme de Recherche Systèmes Alimentaires Durables (ANR-13-ALID-0001). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, preparation of the manuscript, and decision to submit the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, INSERM, IINRAE, CNAM, Epidemiology and Statistics Research Centre—University of Paris (CRESS), Bobigny, France

    Louise Seconda, Julia Baudry, Benjamin Allès, Mathilde Touvier, Serge Hercberg & Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot

  2. ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie), Angers, France

    Louise Seconda

  3. Université Paris-Saclay, AgroParisTech, INRAE, UMR PNCA, Paris, France

    Helene Fouillet, Jean-François Huneau & François Mariotti

  4. Solagro, Toulouse, France

    Philippe Pointereau & Brigitte Langevin

  5. C2VN, Faculté de Médecine de la Timone, Aix Marseille Université, INSERM, INRAE, Marseille, France

    Denis Lairon

  6. Public Health Department, Avicenne Hospital, Bobigny, France

    Serge Hercberg

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  1. Louise Seconda
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Contributions

J.B., D.L., B.A., M.T., S.H. and E.K.-G. conducted the study. L.S., H.F., J.-F.H., F.M. and E.K.-G. designed and conducted the research. L.S., P.P., J.B., B.L., D.L., B.A., M.T., S.H. and E.K.-G. provided essential materials. L.S., H.F., J.-F.H., F.M. and E.K.-G. analysed the data. L.S. wrote the paper. E.K.-G. had primary responsibility for the final content and supervised the research. All authors were involved in interpreting the results and editing the manuscript and read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julia Baudry.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Hanna Tuomisto, Timothy Griffin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, Tables 1–5 and Method 1.

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Seconda, L., Fouillet, H., Huneau, JF. et al. Conservative to disruptive diets for optimizing nutrition, environmental impacts and cost in French adults from the NutriNet-Santé cohort. Nat Food 2, 174–182 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00227-7

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