Research project
Unpacking the uneven global environmental and health burden of consumer groups
Which consumer groups post the greatest cost to public health and the planet through their food choices, and how can we use this fine-scale information to accelerate a sustainable dietary transition?
- Contact
- Oliver Taherzadeh
- Funding
- Kiem grant (Leiden University)
Excessive and resource intensive food demand has significant effects on both our health and the environment. But not all consumers have the same impact. This research seeks to uncover the differences in environmental and health impacts across various consumer groups, helping us create more effective strategies for transitioning to a more sustainable and equitable patterns of food consumption, both within individual countries and globally.
Research goal
The goal of this project is to better understand the role of various consumer groups in the global transition toward sustainable diets. We aim to map out how and where specific consumer groups contribute to the environmental burden and health risks of the global food system by using microdata on food consumption. This will help us more accurately predict how we can guide the food transition toward a sustainable system.
Interdisciplinary approach
This project combines expertise from the fields of environmental science, health, and nutrition. Oliver Taherzadeh (CML) brings his knowledge of the environmental impacts of food, while Kiefte-de Jong (LUMC) focuses on the health aspects of diets. By combining this expertise, we can map both the ecological and public health dimensions of food consumption and develop solutions to support a sustainable food future.
Project description: Shaping a Sustainable Future: Understanding Consumer Groups’ Impact on Health and the Environment
The transition towards a sustainable food system requires a global shift in diets. To make this transition, we need to understand who is contributing the most to the environmental impacts and health burdens in the global food system. However, existing global food system models often fail to distinguish which specific consumer groups are driving these impacts. By harnessing food consumption microdata – detailed information such as by age, gender, or location - we can identify the groups most responsible for environmental damage and health problems, as well as those most vulnerable to these impacts. This will help guide future sustainable dietary changes.
Integrating this detailed data into global food system models has been challenging due to differences in data sources and methods. However, with advanced, interdisciplinary techniques, our team has already made significant progress. Our analysis has shown how dietary data at the country level can reveal new insights into the uneven environmental and health impacts of different consumer groups.
This project builds on our existing work to combine assessments of environmental sustainability and public health. With funding, we aim to assess how diets affect both sustainability and nutrition across various consumer groups, using freely available data. The results will reveal the differentiated roles of consumer groups in helping reduce environmental and health impacts across, in 150+ countries, insights that is typically hidden when only average national food consumption data is used.
This project also marks the beginning of a new interdisciplinary collaboration between teams at the Faculty of Science and the Leiden University Medical Center, paving the way for future large-scale research on food system transitions that integrates both public health and environmental considerations.