title: How to Build a Standardized Country-Specific Environmental Food Database for Nutritional Epidemiology Studies.
abstract: There is a lack of standardized country-specific environmental data to combine with nutritional and dietary data for assessing the environmental impact of individual diets in epidemiology surveys, which are consequently reliant on environmental food datasets based on values retrieved from a heterogeneous literature. The aim of this study was to compare and assess the relative strengths and limits of a database of food greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) values estimated with a hybrid method combining input/output and LCA approaches, with a dataset of GHGE values retrieved from the literature. France is the geographical perimeter considered in this study, but the methodology could be applied to other countries. The GHGE of 402 foodstuffs, representative of French diet, were estimated using the hybrid method. In parallel, the GHGE of individual foods were collected from existing literature. Median per-food-category GHGE values from the hybrid method and the reviewed literature were found to correlate strongly (Spearman correlation was 0.83), showing similar rankings of food categories. Median values were significantly different for only 5 (out of 29) food categories, including the ruminant meats category for which the hybrid method gave lower estimates than those from existing literature. Analysis also revealed that literature values came from heterogeneous studies that were not always sourced and that were conducted under different LCA modeling hypotheses. In contrast, the hybrid method helps build reliably-sourced, representative national standards for product-based datasets. We anticipate this hybrid method to be a starting point for better environmental impact assessments of diets.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec, Grande Voie des Vignes, 92290, Châtenay-Malabry, France.|AgroParisTech, SESG UFR MIDEAL, Massy, France.
authors.forename: Gwenola
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bertoluci
authors.affiliation: Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) "Nutrition, Obesity and Risk of Thrombosis," Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique 1260 INRA, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale 1062 INSERM, Aix- Marseille Université, 13385, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Masset
authors.affiliation: BIO by Deloitte, 92200, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gomy
authors.affiliation: UMR GENIAL, AgroParisTech, INRA1145, Cnam, Massy, France.
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mottet
authors.affiliation: Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) "Nutrition, Obesity and Risk of Thrombosis," Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique 1260 INRA, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale 1062 INSERM, Aix- Marseille Université, 13385, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Darmon
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000592:standards*; D004032:Diet / Q000592:standards*; D002149:Energy Intake; D004777:Environment; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005504:Food Analysis; D005602:France / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D018673:Nutrition Policy