PURPOSE: School meals have the potential to promote more sustainable diets. Our aim was to identify the best trade-off between nutrition and the environment by applying four levers to school meals: (i) reducing the number of meal components, (ii) complying with the French school nutritional guidelines, (iii) increasing the number of vegetarian meals, and/or (iv) avoiding ruminant meat. METHODS: Levers were analyzed alone or in combination in 17 scenarios. For each scenario, 100 series of 20 meals were generated from a database of 2316 school dishes using mathematical optimization. The nutritional quality of the series was assessed through the mean adequacy ratio (MAR/2000 kcal). Seven environmental impacts were considered such as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). One scenario, close to series usually served in French schools (containing four vegetarian meals, at least four ruminant meat-based meals, and at least four fish-based meals) was considered as the reference scenario. RESULTS: Reducing the number of meal components induced an important decrease of the energy content but the environmental impact was little altered. Complying with school-specific nutritional guidelines ensured nutritional quality but slightly increased GHGE. Increasing the number of vegetarian meals decreased GHGE (from 11.7 to 61.2%) but decreased nutritional quality, especially when all meals were vegetarian (MAR = 88.1% against 95.3% in the reference scenario). Compared to the reference scenario, series with 12 vegetarian meals, 4 meals containing fish and 4 meals containing pork or poultry reduced GHGE by 50% while maintaining good nutritional quality (MAR = 94.0%). CONCLUSION: Updating French school nutritional guidelines by increasing the number of vegetarian meals up to 12 over 20 and serving non-ruminant meats and fish with the other meals would be the best trade-off for decreasing the environmental impacts of meals without altering their nutritional quality.
PURPOSE: School meals have the potential to promote more sustainable diets. Our aim was to identify the best trade-off between nutrition and the environment by applying four levers to school meals: (i) reducing the number of meal components, (ii) complying with the French school nutritional guidelines, (iii) increasing the number of vegetarian meals, and/or (iv) avoiding ruminant meat. METHODS: Levers were analyzed alone or in combination in 17 scenarios. For each scenario, 100 series of 20 meals were generated from a database of 2316 school dishes using mathematical optimization. The nutritional quality of the series was assessed through the mean adequacy ratio (MAR/2000 kcal). Seven environmental impacts were considered such as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). One scenario, close to series usually served in French schools (containing four vegetarian meals, at least four ruminant meat-based meals, and at least four fish-based meals) was considered as the reference scenario. RESULTS: Reducing the number of meal components induced an important decrease of the energy content but the environmental impact was little altered. Complying with school-specific nutritional guidelines ensured nutritional quality but slightly increased GHGE. Increasing the number of vegetarian meals decreased GHGE (from 11.7 to 61.2%) but decreased nutritional quality, especially when all meals were vegetarian (MAR = 88.1% against 95.3% in the reference scenario). Compared to the reference scenario, series with 12 vegetarian meals, 4 meals containing fish and 4 meals containing pork or poultry reduced GHGE by 50% while maintaining good nutritional quality (MAR = 94.0%). CONCLUSION: Updating French school nutritional guidelines by increasing the number of vegetarian meals up to 12 over 20 and serving non-ruminant meats and fish with the other meals would be the best trade-off for decreasing the environmental impacts of meals without altering their nutritional quality.
Authors: Laura Batlle-Bayer; Alba Bala; Rubén Aldaco; Berta Vidal-Monés; Rosa Colomé; Pere Fullana-I-Palmer Journal: Sci Total Environ Date: 2020-12-03 Impact factor: 7.963
Authors: Marije Oostindjer; Jessica Aschemann-Witzel; Qing Wang; Silje Elisabeth Skuland; Bjørg Egelandsdal; Gro V Amdam; Alexander Schjøll; Mark C Pachucki; Paul Rozin; Jarrett Stein; Valerie Lengard Almli; Ellen Van Kleef Journal: Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr Date: 2017-12-12 Impact factor: 11.176
Authors: Manuel Rama; Eduardo Entrena-Barbero; Ana Cláudia Dias; María Teresa Moreira; Gumersindo Feijoo; Sara González-García Journal: Sci Total Environ Date: 2020-10-16 Impact factor: 7.963
Authors: Walter Willett; Johan Rockström; Brent Loken; Marco Springmann; Tim Lang; Sonja Vermeulen; Tara Garnett; David Tilman; Fabrice DeClerck; Amanda Wood; Malin Jonell; Michael Clark; Line J Gordon; Jessica Fanzo; Corinna Hawkes; Rami Zurayk; Juan A Rivera; Wim De Vries; Lindiwe Majele Sibanda; Ashkan Afshin; Abhishek Chaudhary; Mario Herrero; Rina Agustina; Francesco Branca; Anna Lartey; Shenggen Fan; Beatrice Crona; Elizabeth Fox; Victoria Bignet; Max Troell; Therese Lindahl; Sudhvir Singh; Sarah E Cornell; K Srinath Reddy; Sunita Narain; Sania Nishtar; Christopher J L Murray Journal: Lancet Date: 2019-01-16 Impact factor: 79.321