Cradle-to-grave carbon footprint of dried organic pasta: assessment and potential mitigation measures

A systematic literature review of life cycle assessments in the durum wheat sector

It is recognised today that the global food system does not always deliver good nutrition for all human beings, and, additionally, dramatically contributes to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. In particular, the cereal sector threatens biodiversity and ecosystem functions, due to environmentally harmful farming activities, that critically alter climate conditions, along with energy, land, and water resources. According to this paper's authors' opinion, this supports the rationale of conducting a systematic literature review of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in the durum wheat (DW) sector, to highlight environmental hotspots and improvement potentials in the phases of cultivation and processing into finished products like pasta and bread. Methodological aspects were also discussed in this paper, to provide useful insights on how to best perform LCA in such agri-food supply chains. Given the findings from the papers reviewed, the authors could document that the cultivation phase is the primary environmental hotspot of DW-derived food products and suggested several mitigation and improvements solution including, organic farming practices, diversified cropping systems, reduction of N fertilisers and pesticides application, and irrigation optimisation strategies. Furthermore, the review highlighted that there exist two main gaps in the literature, mainly related to the scarce attention on the organic farming sector and DW landraces, and the lack of nutritional-property accounting in LCAs. Finally, although specific, the review may be of interest to researchers, LCA practitioners, farmers and producers, policy- and decision-makers, and other stakeholders, and could support the promotion of environmental sustainability in the DW sector.

Cereal and Confectionary Packaging: Assessment of Sustainability and Environmental Impact with a Special Focus on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The usefulness of food packaging is often questioned in the public debate about (ecological) sustainability. While worldwide packaging-related CO2 emissions are accountable for approximately 5% of emissions, specific packaging solutions can reach significantly higher values depending on use case and product group. Unlike other groups, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and life cycle assessment (LCA) of cereal and confectionary products have not been the focus of comprehensive reviews so far. Consequently, the present review first contextualizes packaging, sustainability and related LCA methods and then depicts how cereal and confectionary packaging has been presented in different LCA studies. The results reveal that only a few studies sufficiently include (primary, secondary and tertiary) packaging in LCAs and when they do, the focus is mainly on the direct (e.g., material used) rather than indirect environmental impacts (e.g., food losses and waste) of the like. In addition, it is shown that the packaging of cereals and confectionary contributes on average 9.18% to GHG emissions of the entire food packaging system. Finally, recommendations on how to improve packaging sustainability, how to better include packaging in LCAs and how to reflect this in management-related activities are displayed.

Cereal and Confectionary Packaging: Background, Application and Shelf-Life Extension

In both public and private sectors, one can notice a strong interest in the topic of sustainable food and packaging. For a long time, the spotlight for optimization was placed on well-known examples of high environmental impacts, whether regarding indirect resource use (e.g., meat, dairy) or problems in waste management. Staple and hedonistic foods such as cereals and confectionary have gained less attention. However, these products and their packaging solutions are likewise of worldwide ecologic and economic relevance, accounting for high resource input, production amounts, as well as food losses and waste. This review provides a profound elaboration of the status quo in cereal and confectionary packaging, essential for practitioners to improve sustainability in the sector. Here, we present packaging functions and properties along with related product characteristics and decay mechanisms in the subcategories of cereals and cereal products, confectionary and bakery wares alongside ready-to-eat savories and snacks. Moreover, we offer an overview to formerly and recently used packaging concepts as well as established and modern shelf-life extending technologies, expanding upon our knowledge to thoroughly understand the packaging's purpose; we conclude that a comparison of the environmental burden share between product and packaging is necessary to properly derive the need for action(s), such as packaging redesign.

Effect of cooking temperature on cooked pasta quality and sustainability

BACKGROUND

Everyday pasta cooking has a large environmental impact. The aims of this work were to assess the effect of cooking temperatures (T_C ) that were lower than the water boiling point (T_BW ) on the main chemico-physical quality parameters of two pasta shapes (i.e., ziti and spaghetti) cooked at the conventional and minimum water-to-pasta ratios, as well as their optimum cooking time (OCT), cooking energy consumption, and carbon footprint, by using a novel eco-sustainable pasta cooker.

RESULTS

Once the effect of T_C on OCT had been modeled in accordance with the Bigelow model, it was possible to estimate that the energy saved to heat the cooking water from ambient temperature to a lower temperature than T_BW was smaller than the extra energy needed to complete the pasta cooking phase. After several cooking trials, the water uptake, cooking loss, textural properties, and thickness of the central nerve (as observed with a scanning electronic microscope) of cooked pasta were found to be independent of T_C in the range of 85-98 °C.

CONCLUSIONS

By using smaller amounts of water (~3 L kg^-1 ) and cooking at 85 °C with the eco-sustainable pasta cooker, the energy consumption reduced from the default value of 2.8 kWh kg^-1 to ~0.45 kWh kg^-1 and GHG emissions to about one sixth of those resulting from the use of the average European home appliances. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.