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      Relationship between food waste, diet quality, and environmental sustainability

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          Abstract

          Improving diet quality while simultaneously reducing environmental impact is a critical focus globally. Metrics linking diet quality and sustainability have typically focused on a limited suite of indicators, and have not included food waste. To address this important research gap, we examine the relationship between food waste, diet quality, nutrient waste, and multiple measures of sustainability: use of cropland, irrigation water, pesticides, and fertilizers. Data on food intake, food waste, and application rates of agricultural amendments were collected from diverse US government sources. Diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index-2015. A biophysical simulation model was used to estimate the amount of cropland associated with wasted food. This analysis finds that US consumers wasted 422g of food per person daily, with 30 million acres of cropland used to produce this food every year. This accounts for 30% of daily calories available for consumption, one-quarter of daily food (by weight) available for consumption, and 7% of annual cropland acreage. Higher quality diets were associated with greater amounts of food waste and greater amounts of wasted irrigation water and pesticides, but less cropland waste. This is largely due to fruits and vegetables, which are health-promoting and require small amounts of cropland, but require substantial amounts of agricultural inputs. These results suggest that simultaneous efforts to improve diet quality and reduce food waste are necessary. Increasing consumers’ knowledge about how to prepare and store fruits and vegetables will be one of the practical solutions to reducing food waste.

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          Lost food, wasted resources: global food supply chain losses and their impacts on freshwater, cropland, and fertiliser use.

          Reducing food losses and waste is considered to be one of the most promising measures to improve food security in the coming decades. Food losses also affect our use of resources, such as freshwater, cropland, and fertilisers. In this paper we estimate the global food supply losses due to lost and wasted food crops, and the resources used to produce them. We also quantify the potential food supply and resource savings that could be made by reducing food losses and waste. We used publically available global databases to conduct the study at the country level. We found that around one quarter of the produced food supply (614 kcal/cap/day) is lost within the food supply chain (FSC). The production of these lost and wasted food crops accounts for 24% of total freshwater resources used in food crop production (27 m(3)/cap/yr), 23% of total global cropland area (31 × 10(-3)ha/cap/yr), and 23% of total global fertiliser use (4.3 kg/cap/yr). The per capita use of resources for food losses is largest in North Africa & West-Central Asia (freshwater and cropland) and North America & Oceania (fertilisers). The smallest per capita use of resources for food losses is found in Sub-Saharan Africa (freshwater and fertilisers) and in Industrialised Asia (cropland). Relative to total food production, the smallest food supply and resource losses occur in South & Southeast Asia. If the lowest loss and waste percentages achieved in any region in each step of the FSC could be reached globally, food supply losses could be halved. By doing this, there would be enough food for approximately one billion extra people. Reducing the food losses and waste would thus be an important step towards increased food security, and would also increase the efficiency of resource use in food production. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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            Drivers of food waste and their implications for sustainable policy development

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              Reducing Phosphorus to Curb Lake Eutrophication is a Success

              As human populations increase and land-use intensifies, toxic and unsightly nuisance blooms of algae are becoming larger and more frequent in freshwater lakes. In most cases, the blooms are predominantly blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria), which are favored by low ratios of nitrogen to phosphorus. In the past half century, aquatic scientists have devoted much effort to understanding the causes of such blooms and how they can be prevented or reduced. Here we review the evidence, finding that numerous long-term studies of lake ecosystems in Europe and North America show that controlling algal blooms and other symptoms of eutrophication depends on reducing inputs of a single nutrient: phosphorus. In contrast, small-scale experiments of short duration, where nutrients are added rather than removed, often give spurious and confusing results that bear little relevance to solving the problem of cyanobacteria blooms in lakes.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                18 April 2018
                2018
                : 13
                : 4
                : e0195405
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States of America
                [2 ] Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Food Systems Program, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
                [3 ] Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
                [4 ] Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
                [5 ] Sustainability Institute, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States of America
                Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: Dr. Meredith Niles is on the Board of Directors at PLOS ONE. This role has in no way influenced the outcome or development of this work or the peer-review process. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5376-8775
                Article
                PONE-D-17-45065
                10.1371/journal.pone.0195405
                5905889
                29668732
                02df5057-b065-4740-ae8f-435363199b88

                This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

                History
                : 27 December 2017
                : 21 March 2018
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 1, Pages: 18
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100007917, Agricultural Research Service;
                Award ID: 3062-51000-051-00D
                Award Recipient :
                This research was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, 3062-51000-051-00D. There was no additional external funding received for this study.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Nutrition
                Diet
                Food
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Nutrition
                Diet
                Food
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Physiology
                Physiological Processes
                Food Consumption
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Physiology
                Physiological Processes
                Food Consumption
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Nutrition
                Diet
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Nutrition
                Diet
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Plants
                Fruits
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Agrochemicals
                Fertilizers
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Agricultural Methods
                Agricultural Irrigation
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Nutrition
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Nutrition
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Agrochemicals
                Pesticides
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Pest Control
                Pesticides
                Custom metadata
                Data are available in the Supporting Information files and from DANS using the following link: https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-x9y-879t.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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