The effect of diet changes and food loss reduction in reducing the water footprint of an average American

We analyzed the consumptive water reduction of diet shifting along with food waste reductions in the case of the United States. We find that a dietary shift to healthy diet will not always lead to reduced water footprint. Dietary shifts to vegan and vegetarian diets provide larger reduction in the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWater international Vol. 43; no. 6; pp. 860 - 870
Main Authors Mekonnen, Mesfin M., Fulton, Julian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Urbana Routledge 18.08.2018
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Diet
diets
Food
Food consumption
Food intake
food loss and waste
Food waste
Foods
Loss reduction
United States
Vegan
Vegetarian diet
Vegetarianism
Water
Water consumption
Water footprint
United States > US
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Summary:We analyzed the consumptive water reduction of diet shifting along with food waste reductions in the case of the United States. We find that a dietary shift to healthy diet will not always lead to reduced water footprint. Dietary shifts to vegan and vegetarian diets provide larger reduction in the consumptive water footprint. Reducing food loss and waste produced the largest potential water footprint reduction in our analysis of the US food system. Our findings suggest that a combination of measures that include dietary shift, reducing caloric intake, and reducing food waste result in a significant decline in water footprint.
ISSN:0250-8060
1941-1707
DOI:10.1080/02508060.2018.1515571