Sustainability Evaluation of Different Types of Nutrition in Germany in Relation to the Planetary Health Diet

Planetary Health on German plates

The great settings of the agenda towards a sustainable world have to be established systemically, but we can make a start on our plates. Many of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are directly or indirectly connected to our nutrition, not just the containment of climate change. They want to ensure that all humans will be provided with sufficient and healthy food and have an increasingly higher standard of living, without exceeding the planetary boundaries, saving biodiversity and protect our common habitats – or in two words: planetary health.

The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems has scientifically developed the so-called Planetary Health Diet.

Picture: General Recommendations on Nutrition of the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems © EAT-Lancet Commission

We will apply these global recommendations on Germany and will establish exemplary optimized nutrition plans. Vegetarian, vegan, even omnivore is not a problem in the Planetary Health Diet. We calculate different options and compare their footprint with the current German average way of nutrition.

Specific recommendations for private purposes and for the canteen

Thus, we examine the questions: Which impact can a modified plate have over here and how would it look like in particular for one month if it is supposed to cause as little emissions as possible?

We will compile 50–100 typical German recipes per way of nutrition and data like calories, greenhouse emissions as well as land and water consumption for their ingredients. Examples for these recipes (in a broader sense) are Ratatouille, Spaghetti Napoli, potato pancakes, Greek salad, a tomato-mozzarella-plate or a Vienna Schnitzel with salad. We will compile the nutrition plans with the help of mathematic optimization, as we have learned it in the course of our studies of the Integrated Climate System Sciences. We thus minimize the emissions which would be caused by the respective nutrition plan under certain side conditions, by combining an especially efficient – and hopefully tasty – selection of the gathered recipes.

So for example, the canteens of the University of Hamburg can optimize their offerings based on this work or it will be easier for people who want to live sustainably to plan the weekly purchase in the future.

Student research group

• Doris Vollgruber
• Jan Steinhauser

Mentor

• Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneider