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- Comparative life cycle assessment of plant and beef-based patties, including carbon opportunity costsPublication . Saget, Sophie; Costa, Marcela Porto; Santos, Carla Sancho; Vasconcelos, Marta; Styles, David; Williams, MikeLegume-derived foods have been shown to have comparatively low greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities whilst providing high amounts of nutrients. However, processing legumes into meat analogues can incur significant energy costs. Here, we undertake a comprehensive life cycle assessment of plant-based and (Brazilian and Irish) beef burger patties. Sixteen impact categories are supplemented with the carbon opportunity cost of land occupation, and benchmarked against nutrient density units (NDU) to provide holistic evidence on the potential contribution of plant-based patties to environmentally-sustainable nutritional density. Plant-based patties have a smaller environmental footprint across most categories, including a 77% smaller climate change burden, but incur 8% more energy use compared with Brazilian beef patties. Normalised scores (person equivalents) were significantly larger (p < 0.05) for the beef products across key categories including land use, acidification, and marine and terrestrial eutrophication. Sensitivity analyses indicated significant variance across impact categories if beef cattle are reared in South Africa, France or the United States, including a 16-fold difference in land occupation. Biophysical allocation of co-products reduced environmental burdens of beef burgers. However, owing to a 68% higher NDU per serving, reflecting higher fibre and essential fatty acid content, plant-based patties are associated with 81–87% less climate change and 92–95% less marine eutrophication per NDU compared with beef burger patties. Accounting for carbon opportunity cost of land further increased the climate change advantage of plant-based patties by 25–44%. A simple extrapolation indicates that switching from beef to vegetable patties in the UK could save between 9.5 and 11 million tonnes CO2e annually, representing up to 2.4% of territorial GHG emissions.
- A multifunctional solution for wicked problems: value-chain wide facilitation of legumes cultivated at bioregional scales is necessary to address the climate-biodiversity-nutrition nexusPublication . Iannetta, Pietro P. M.; Hawes, Cathy; Begg, Graham S.; Maaß, Henrik; Ntatsi, Georgia; Savvas, Dimitrios; Vasconcelos, Marta; Hamann, Karen; Williams, Michael; Styles, David; Toma, Luiza; Shrestha, Shailesh; Balázs, Bálint; Kelemen, Eszter; Debeljak, Marko; Trajanov, Aneta; Vickers, R.; Rees, Robert M.Well-managed legume-based food systems are uniquely positioned to curtail the existential challenge posed by climate change through the significant contribution that legumes can make toward limiting Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. This potential is enabled by the specific functional attributes offered only by legumes, which deliver multiple co-benefits through improved ecosystem functions, including reduced farmland biodiversity loss, and better human-health and -nutrition provisioning. These three critical societal challenges are referred to collectively here as the “climate-biodiversity-nutrition nexus.” Despite the unparalleled potential of the provisions offered by legumes, this diverse crop group remains characterized as underutilized throughout Europe, and in many regions world-wide. This commentary highlights that integrated, diverse, legume-based, regenerative agricultural practices should be allied with more-concerted action on ex-farm gate factors at appropriate bioregional scales. Also, that this can be achieved whilst optimizing production, safeguarding food-security, and minimizing additional land-use requirements. To help avoid forfeiting the benefits of legume cultivation for system function, a specific and practical methodological and decision-aid framework is offered. This is based upon the identification and management of sustainable-development indicators for legume-based value chains, to help manage the key facilitative capacities and dependencies. Solving the wicked problems of the climate-biodiversity-nutrition nexus demands complex solutions and multiple benefits and this legume-focus must be allied with more-concerted policy action, including improved facilitation of the catalytic provisions provided by collaborative capacity builders—to ensure that the knowledge networks are established, that there is unhindered information flow, and that new transformative value-chain capacities and business models are established.
- Substitution of beef with pea protein reduces the environmental footprint of meat balls whilst supporting health and climate stabilisation goalsPublication . Saget, Sophie; Costa, Marcela; Santos, Carla Sancho; Vasconcelos, Marta Wilton; Gibbon, James; Styles, David; Williams, MichaelRecent environmental footprint comparisons between meat and plant-based meat analogues do not consider nutritional density holistically, nor the high carbon opportunity costs (COC) of land requirements, which are critical in terms of climate stabilisation targets. We performed an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of a 100 g serving of cooked protein balls (PPBs) made from peas (Pisum sativum), and Swedish-style beef meatballs (MBs) made from Irish or Brazilian beef. Per serving, PPB production and consumption was associated with lower environmental burdens across all 16 categories assessed. Global warming, acidification, and land use burdens of PPBs were at least 85%, 81%, and 89% smaller, respectively, than MBs. The scale of environmental advantage was sensitive to the allocation method, with biophysical allocation across cattle co-products decreasing MB burdens by at least 35%, 38%, and 46% in the acidification, climate change, and land use categories, respectively. Furthermore, PPBs have a higher nutritional density than MBs, and hence their environmental footprint per unit of nutrition was considerably lower across all 16 impact categories. Per Nutrient Density Unit, global warming, acidification, and land use burdens of PPBs were at least 89%, 87%, and 93% smaller, respectively, than MBs. Results were tested with Monte Carlo simulations and a modified null hypothesis significance test, which supported the main findings. Finally, when COC of land was factored in, the climate advantage of PPBs extended greatly. Assuming MBs equivalent to just 5% of German beef consumption are replaced by PPBs, total carbon savings including COC could amount to 8 million tonnes CO2e annually, an amount equal to 1% of Germany's annual GHG emissions. Therefore, this study highlights the potential of PPBs to meet health and climate neutrality objectives.