Climate-friendly diets may come at higher cost for New Zealand families

Switching to a greener diet can help cut emissions – but it could also lead to much higher food bills for families who can least afford it, a first Kiwi study finds. Photo / 123RF

Switching to a more environmentally friendly diet can help reduce emissions – but it can also lead to higher food bills for families who can least afford it, a first Kiwi study finds.

The University of Auckland researchers behind the analysis say their results show that kiwifruit must be affordable if they are expected to switch to a more sustainable diet.

In the study published in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health, the researchers calculated the costs and climate impacts of four nutritional scenarios: current, healthy, flexitarian and vegan.

While the “current” diet reflected what kiwis normally ate, the “healthy diet” followed official New Zealand eating and activity guidelines based on national nutrition surveys.

They recommended lots of fruit and vegetables, grain foods, some milk, legumes, nuts, eggs, and poultry and fish, and less than 500 grams of cooked red meat per week.

The other two nutritional scenarios were based on the “Planetary Diet” of the Eat Lancet Commission, whereby “flexitarian” was mainly based on plant-based foods and vegan based entirely on it.

Study lead author Bruce Kidd said New Zealand needed to switch to a planetary diet as the country’s food system contributed about half of our emissions and poor diet was a large part of our health problems.

“We know, however, that inadequate income and the cost of food have a huge impact on food choices.”

In evaluating each of the four nutritional scenarios, the researchers modeled multiple possible meals for a family of four over a fortnight.

“Each scenario had restrictions on the number of servings allowed for each food and had to meet criteria for health, such as a maximum limit for salt content.”

The team also collected food prices from online supermarkets and also calculated emissions from a recently published database on the life cycle assessment of various foods and beverages in New Zealand.

Household food waste data has also been included to account for the emissions associated with food waste.

The results showed that switching from the current diet to a more sustainable and healthier diet was accompanied by higher average prices.

While a typical kiwi diet was the lowest of the four – about $ 584 for a family – it had the highest average climate impact, or 597 kg carbon dioxide equivalent (kg CO2e).

A healthy diet cost a little more – $ 637 – in 14 days, but it also had a slightly smaller carbon footprint of 452 kg CO2e.

However, the prices of the other two were much higher – $ 728 for flexitarians and $ 798 for vegans – even though their climate impacts were only 263 kg CO2e and 203 kg CO2e, respectively.

“This was noticeable, but mostly because of the rising cost of dairy alternatives, larger servings of fruits and vegetables, and some plant-based protein alternatives such as falafel and burger patties.”

Kidd added that alcohol and takeaway food, which accounted for about 27 percent of households’ food spending, weren’t included in any of the diets.

If this were the case, the “current” diet would have been more expensive than calculated in the study.

Elsewhere in their analysis, the researchers found that within any diet, households are generally able to cut food costs by increasing the amount of plant-based foods.

“This includes foods like beans and lentils that are inexpensive, significantly lower ones [emissions] than animal products and are a healthy addition to any meal. “

The study also pointed to some notable tradeoffs.

“One of them involved the trade-off between health, cost and low-carbon foods, such as replacing soy milk with milk milk, which was more expensive and complemented the nutritional benefits of milk milk but had fewer emissions.”

But ultimately, the results pointed to issues of equity – especially for families who wanted to eat more environmentally friendly diets.

If kiwifruit are expected to switch to a more sustainable diet, it has to be affordable, researchers say. Photo / 123RF

“For example, a household switching from a current to a flexitarian diet would spend $ 144 more every 14 days with the climate benefit of 334 kg of CO2e fewer emissions,” he said, adding that this is far higher than the current price of carbon.

“There are foods that are cheap, healthy and good for the environment, such as replacing beans or lentils with meat and increasing seasonal vegetables and whole grains.

“But we need to lobby the government for action to help everyone in Aotearoa, especially the most deprived, make the transition to sustainable healthy eating.

“According to the articles by Te Tiriti o Waitangi, this requires reshaping our food system to ensure it protects and improves the health of our people and our planet, and empowers communities.”

The study follows a study by Otago University that found that eating fewer red meats could be key to not only reducing New Zealand emissions significantly, but also saving billions of dollars in healthcare in the decades to come.

Specifically, they showed that moving at the population level to a diet rich in plant-based foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes could reduce diet-related emissions by 4 to 42 percent annually, depending on the extent of the changes made.

It would be even more noticeable if all kiwis were to eat exclusively plant-based tomorrow and not avoid unnecessary food waste, we would achieve a 60 percent reduction in emissions from cars.

As a bonus, kiwis together could enjoy up to 1.5 million more “years of life” – that is one year of optimal health – and save our healthcare system between 14 and 20 billion dollars over the lifetime of our current population.

There are already many signs that a green shift is taking place.

By 2016, the proportion of kiwifruit who said all – or almost all – of their diet was vegetarian had increased by almost a third compared to four years earlier.

The biggest increases were among 14- to 34-year-olds, the North Islands and, perhaps surprisingly, among men.

Recent surveys by Colmar Brunton found that roughly one in ten of us now largely avoid meat amid an increasing shift towards a sustainable lifestyle.

source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/climate-friendly-diets-may-come-at-higher-cost-for-new-zealand-families/