A healthier diet can go hand in hand with taking better care of the climate. In the new official dietary guidelines recently published by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, you can find relevant advice about this. Among other things, the focus is on increasing the consumption of legumes and vegetables and reducing the proportion of meat in the diet. A more plant-based diet is healthy for both the body and the climate.

"Exclusion of animal-based products from the diets has been found to have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the diet by up to 55%. However, also minor adjustments of the diet can make a great difference", says Lisbeth Mogensen, Associate Professor at Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University.

Knowledge about the carbon footprint of food items is an important input to the work behind the new dietary recommendations. Researchers from the Department of Agroecology have advised the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries of Denmark about these carbon footprints of different food items.

The carbon footprint shows the impact of a food product (for example, a litre of milk) on global warming, throughout the product's entire life cycle, from the food production at the farm until it is ready in the supermarket.

Already in 2009, the Department of Agroecology made a first list of the food's carbon footprint for the ministry. That was in connection with the preparation of the ministry's Climate Cookbook, where the climate pyramid was also created. The list of the food's carbon footprints have been updated later in 2016.

The dietary patterns have great potential for mitigation of the climate impact

There is an increasing demand for reducing the total climate impact of our diets as it has been estimated that today’s food supply is responsible for 20-25% of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission per person in the Western countries. And even though the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, among others, carries out a lot of research to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the primary production of foods - in the stables and the fields - and thereby reducing the carbon footprint per kg of food, this effort cannot stand alone.

"The composition of the diet is one of the greatest potentials for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the food system. So, help from the consumers is needed to reduce the climate impact through their dietary choices. And the good news is that you as a consumer can make a huge difference and at the same time reduce the climate impact  if you follow the new dietary guidelines, "says Lisbeth Mogensen.

More research on sustainable dietary recommendations on the way

In relation to this work about the new dietary guidelines, Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University, in collaboration with DTU Food, will participate in a project for the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, where the department will contribute to an update of the list of carbon footprint for the food products used in the dietary recommendations.

 "It is a very important first step to incorporate the climate impact into the dietary guidelines. The next step should be that we also include other environmental considerations, for example pesticide use and the impact on biodiversity," says Senior Researcher Marie Trydeman Knudsen, Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University and head of the SustainOrganic project. This project focuses on sustainable diets, and examines the climate profile of the food products along with the other environmental impacts.

The researchers also emphasise that, alongside a greener diet, it is important to limit food waste to reduce the climate impact of our food consumption.