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Dietary environmental impacts of French adults are poorly related to their income levels or food insecurity status

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Abstract

Purpose

Recent global-scale analysis showed the extent of inequality in terms of carbon emissions related to overall consumption, with richer households emitting significantly more greenhouse gases than poorer ones. While socio-economic status is a known determinant of food consumption, and despite the urgent need to move towards more sustainable diets, very few studies have explored socio-economic differences regarding the environmental impacts of diets. The objective of the present study was to compare the environmental impacts of French adults' diets according to food insecurity (FI) status and income level.

Methods

The environmental impacts of diets of a representative sample of adults living in France (n = 1964) were assessed using data from the last National Individual Food Consumption Survey (INCA3) and the Agribalyse® v3.0.1 environmental database. Fifteen impact indicators were estimated, including climate change, eutrophication (freshwater, marine, terrestrial), resource depletion (energy, minerals, water), and the single EF score. First, the mean diet-related impact (per day per person) was estimated for each environmental indicator by decile of environmental impact. Second, the environmental impacts of diets of individuals living in food-insecure households (severe and moderate FI, as measured by the Household Food Security Survey Module) were compared with those of individuals living in food-secure households, the latter being divided by income decile. Differences in environmental impacts of diets (total and by food group) between these 12 sub-populations were tested by ANOVA after adjustment for age, gender, energy intake and household size.

Results

The 10% of the population with the highest environmental impact has a mean impact approximately 3–6 times higher than the 10th with the lowest environmental impact, depending on the indicator. Individuals living in households with severe and moderate FI represented 3.7% and 6.7% of the studied population, respectively. Results showed a high variability in impacts within each of the 12 sub-population and no difference in environmental impacts of diets between sub-populations, except for water use (p < 0.001) and freshwater eutrophication (p = 0.02). The lowest water use and freshwater eutrophication were observed for individuals living in households with severe FI and the highest for high-income sub-populations, with differences mainly explained by the level of fruit and vegetable intakes and the type of fish consumed, respectively. Low-income populations, in particular individuals living in households with severe FI, had relatively high intakes of ruminant meat but for most indicators, the high environmental impact of this food group was offset by low consumption of other high impacting food groups (e.g., fruits and vegetables), and/or by high consumption of low impacting food groups (e.g., starches), resulting in no difference in the impact at the diet level.

Conclusion

While there is a high inter-individual variability in the environmental impacts of diets, this variability was not related to income level or FI status for most indicators, except higher water use and freshwater eutrophication in higher-income populations. Overall, our results underline the importance of considering individual dietary patterns and thinking at the whole diet level, and not only considering specific food or food groups impacts, when designing educational tools or public policies to promote more sustainable diets.

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Data availability

Food consumption data from the Third French Individual and National Food Consumption (INCA3) Survey are available on the data.gouv.fr plateform. Data on the environmental impacts of foods consumed in France are available on the agribalyse.ademe.fr plateform.

Change history

  • 03 June 2023

    Track changes have been removed from supplementary material

Abbreviations

FI:

Food insecurity

FS:

Food secure

GHGE:

Greenhouse gas emissions

HFSS:

Foods high in fat sugar and salt

MFI:

Moderately food insecure

SFI:

Severely food insecure

FV:

Fruit and vegetables

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Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MoISA, Univ Montpellier, CIHEAM-IAMM, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, IRD, Montpellier, France

    Marlène Perignon, Eric O. Verger, Nicolas Bricas & Nicole Darmon

  2. MS-Nutrition, Marseille, France

    Florent Vieux

Authors
  1. Marlène Perignon
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  4. Nicolas Bricas
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Contributions

Conceptualization and methodology, MP, FV, EV, NB, ND; Formal Analysis, FV; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, MP; Writing—Review and Editing, MP, FV, EV, NB, ND; Visualization, MP; Supervision, MP and ND. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marlène Perignon.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Dietary data used in the present study were derived from the Third French Individual and National Food Consumption (INCA3) study. The INCA3 study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the French Data Protection Authority (Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés) on May 2, 2013 (Decision DR 2013–228), after a favorable opinion from the Advisory Committee on Information Processing in Health Research (Comité consultatif sur le traitement de l'information en matière de recherche dans le domaine de la santé) on January 30, 2013 (Opinion 13.055). All participants gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study.

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Perignon, M., Vieux, F., Verger, E.O. et al. Dietary environmental impacts of French adults are poorly related to their income levels or food insecurity status. Eur J Nutr 62, 2541–2553 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-023-03163-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-023-03163-3

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