Data Integration for Diet Sustainability Analyses

Augmenting the National Nutrition Data System to Promote Diet Sustainability Analyses

Research on sustainable diets has become an important and growing area of the nutrition field, but recent studies have pointed to a lack of sustainability metrics and methods that are hindering research and policy progress. To fill this gap, the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health calls for increased funding to improve metrics, data collection, and research to address all domains of sustainability, which include nutrition/health, economic, environmental, and social domains. Commodity recipe databases, such as the Food Commodity Intake Database (FCID), are important tools for conducting diet sustainability analyses because they translate mixed dishes from dietary surveys, such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), into commodity ingredients. These ingredients have been linked to data on environmental impacts and economic costs from other databases, thus facilitating collaboration between nutrition researchers, environmental scientists, economists, and others. These linkages cannot be made with other components of the national nutrition data system, such as the Food Patterns Equivalents Database (FPED), because the disaggregated food groups from them are not relevant for examining environmental impacts. Although the NHANES is conducted on an ongoing basis, and FPED is continually updated, the FCID has not been officially updated since 2010. This severely limits advancements in sustainability research and related policy analyses. In this commentary, we argue that the federal government should promote this diet sustainability work by integrating a commodity recipe database into the national nutrition data system, and updating it on a regular basis, as it does with other component databases.

Visualizing Data Interoperability for Food Systems Sustainability Research-From Spider Webs to Neural Networks

Food systems represent all elements and activities needed to feed the growing global population. Research on sustainable food systems is transdisciplinary, relying on the interconnected domains of health, nutrition, economics, society, and environment. The current lack of interoperability across databases poses a challenge to advancing research on food systems transformation. Crosswalks among largely siloed data on climate change, soils, agricultural practices, nutrient composition of foods, food processing, prices, dietary intakes, and population health are not fully developed. Starting with US Department of Agriculture FoodData Central, we assessed the interoperability of databases from multiple disciplines by identifying existing crosswalks and corresponding visualizations. Our visual demonstration serves as proof of concept, identifying databases in need of expansion, integration, and harmonization for use by researchers, policymakers, and the private sector. Interoperability is the key: ontologies and well-defined crosswalks are necessary to connect siloed data, transcend organizational barriers, and draw pathways from agriculture to nutrition and health.

Greenhouse gas emissions, cost, and diet quality of specific diet patterns in the United States

BACKGROUND

Major policy agendas are calling for accelerated investment in research that addresses the impact of diet patterns on multiple domains of sustainability.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the comparative greenhouse gas emissions, diet cost, and diet quality of plant-based, low grain, restricted carbohydrate, low fat, and time restricted diet patterns on a daily per capita basis.

DESIGN

Dietary data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2013-2016, n=4,025) were merged with data on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and food prices from multiple databases. The Healthy Eating Index-2015 was used to measure diet quality.

RESULTS

The plant-based diet pattern had the lowest GHGE (3.5 kg CO2eq, 95% CI: 3.3, 3.8 kg CO2eq) and among the lowest diet cost ($11.51, 95% CI: $10.67, $12.41), but diet quality (45.8, 95% CI: 43.3, 48.5) was similar (P>0.005) to most other diet patterns. All of the sustainability impacts of the low grain diet pattern were intermediate. The restricted carbohydrate diet pattern had the highest diet cost ($18.46, 95% CI: $17.80, $19.13) but intermediate diet quality (46.8, 95% CI: 45.7, 47.9) and moderate-to-high GHGE (5.7 kg CO2eq, 95% CI: 5.4, 5.9 kg CO2eq). The low fat diet pattern had the highest diet quality (52.0, 95% CI: 50.8, 53.1) and intermediate GHGE (4.4 kg CO2eq, 95% CI: 4.1, 4.6 kg CO2eq) and diet cost ($14.53, 95% CI: $13.73, $15.38). The time restricted diet pattern had among the lowest diet quality score (42.6, 95% CI: 40.8, 44.6), had GHGE similar to most other diet patterns (4.6 kg CO2eq, 95% CI: 4.2, 5.0 kg CO2eq), and low-to-moderate diet cost ($12.34, 95% CI: $11.38, $13.40).

CONCLUSIONS

Most diet patterns were associated with sustainability trade-offs. The nature of those trade-offs can help inform discussions on food and nutrition policy in the US, including the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, and future Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps

Introduction

Research on the impacts of dietary patterns on human and planetary health is a rapidly growing field. A wide range of metrics, datasets, and analytical techniques has been used to explore the role of dietary choices/constraints in driving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental degradation, health and disease outcomes, and the affordability of food baskets. Many argue that each domain is important, but few have tackled all simultaneously in analyzing diet-outcome relationships.

Methods

This paper reviews studies published between January 2015 and December 2021 (inclusive) that examined dietary patterns in relation to at least two of the following four thematic pillars: (i) planetary health, including, climate change, environmental quality, and natural resource impacts, (ii) human health and disease, (iii) economic outcomes, including diet cost/affordability, and (iv) social outcomes, e.g., wages, working conditions, and culturally relevant diets. We systematically screened 2,425 publications by title and abstract and included data from 42 eligible publications in this review.

Results

Most dietary patterns used were statistically estimated or simulated rather than observed. A rising number of studies consider the cost/affordability of dietary scenarios in relation to optimized environmental and health outcomes. However, only six publications incorporate social sustainability outcomes, which represents an under-explored dimension of food system concerns.

Discussion

This review suggests a need for (i) transparency and clarity in datasets used and analytical methods; (ii) explicit integration of indicators and metrics linking social and economic issues to the commonly assessed diet-climate-planetary ecology relationships; (iii) inclusion of data and researchers from low- and middle-income countries; (iv) inclusion of processed food products to reflect the reality of consumer choices globally; and (v) attention to the implications of findings for policymakers. Better understanding is urgently needed on dietary impacts on all relevant human and planetary domains simultaneously.

Diet Sustainability Analyses Can Be Improved With Updates to the Food Commodity Intake Database

Diet sustainability analyses inform policymaking decisions and provide clinicians and consumers with evidence-based information to make dietary changes. In the United States, the Food Commodity Intake Database (FCID) provides a crosswalk for integrating nationally representative data on food intake from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) with data on sustainability outcomes from other publicly available databases. However, FCID has not been updated since 2010 and does not link with contemporary NHANES data, which limits further advancements in sustainability research. This study fills this research gap by establishing novel linkages between FCID and NHANES 2011-2018, comparing daily per capita food intake with and without these linkages, and making these data publicly available for use by other researchers. To update FCID, two investigators independently established novel data linkages, a third investigator resolved discrepancies, and a fourth investigator audited linkages for accuracy. Dietary data were acquired from nearly 45,000 adults from 2001 to 2018, and food intake was compared between updated vs. non-updated FCID versions. Total food intake from 2011 to 2018 was 5-23% higher using the updated FCID compared to the non-updated version, and intake was over 100% higher in some years for some food categories including poultry, eggs, legumes, starchy vegetables, and tropical oils (P < 0.001 for all comparisons). Further efforts may be needed to create new food composition data to reflect new products and reformulations that enter the food supply over time. This study removes a barrier to further diet sustainability analyses by establishing a data crosswalk between contemporary NHANES and other publicly available databases on agricultural resource use, environmental impacts, and consumer food expenditures.