By Kim Anastasiou, Mark Lawrence, Michalis Hadjikakou and Phillip Baker for The Conversation
Our world is facing a major challenge: we need to create enough high-quality, varied, and nutritious food to feed a growing population, and to do so within the limits of our planet. This means significantly reducing the environmental impact of the global food system.
There are more than 7,000 species of edible plants that could be eaten for food. But today, 90 percent of the world’s energy intake comes from 15 crop species, and more than half of the world’s population depends on just three cereal crops: rice, wheat and maize.
The rise of ultra-processed foods is likely to play a major role in this ongoing shift, as our latest research points out. Therefore, reducing our consumption and production of these foods offers a unique opportunity to improve both our health and the environmental sustainability of the food system.
Food system impacts
Agriculture is a major driver of environmental change. It is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and about 70 percent of freshwater use. It also uses 38 percent of global land and is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss.
While research has highlighted how Western diets containing excessive calories and livestock products tend to have a major environmental impact, there are also environmental concerns related to ultra-processed foods.
The impacts of these foods on human health are well described, but less attention has been paid to the effects on the environment. This is surprising, considering that ultra-processed foods are a dominant component of the food supply in high-income countries (and sales are rising rapidly in low- and middle-income countries as well).
Our latest research, led by colleagues in Brazil, proposes that increasingly globalized diets high in ultra-processed foods are being produced at the expense of growing, manufacturing and consuming “traditional” foods.
How to spot ultra-processed foods
Ultra-processed foods are a group of foods defined as “ingredient formulations, mostly for exclusively industrial use, resulting from a series of industrial processes”.
They typically contain cosmetic additives and little or no whole foods. You can think of them as foods that you would have a hard time creating in your own kitchen. Examples include confectionery, soft drinks, potato chips, ready meals, and restaurant fast food items.
In contrast to this are “traditional” foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, canned legumes, dairy and meat products, which are minimally processed or made using traditional processing methods.
While traditional processing, methods such as fermentation, canning, and bottling are critical to ensuring food safety and global food security. Ultra-processed foods, however, are processed beyond what is necessary for food safety.
Australians have particularly high rates of consuming ultra-processed foods. These foods account for 39 per cent of total energy intake among Australian adults. This is more than Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico and Spain, but less than the United States, where they account for 57.9 percent of dietary energy for adults.
According to an analysis of the 2011-12 Australian Health Survey (the most recent national data available on this), the ultra-processed foods that contributed the most dietary energy for Australians aged two and over included ready meals, fast food, pastries, buns and pastries, breakfast cereals, fruit drinks, iced tea, and confectionery.
What are the environmental impacts?
Ultra-processed foods are also based on a small number of crop species, placing a burden on the environments in which these ingredients are grown.
Corn, wheat, soybeans, and oilseed crops (such as palm oil) are good examples. These crops are chosen by food manufacturers because they are cheap to produce and high-yielding, meaning they can be produced in large volumes.
Additionally, the animal-derived ingredients in ultra-processed foods are sourced from animals that rely on these same crops for food.
The rise of cheap and convenient ultra-processed foods has replaced a wide variety of minimally processed whole foods including fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, meat and dairy. This has reduced both the quality of our diet and the diversity of the food supply.
In Australia, the most frequently used ingredients in the 2019 packaged food and drink supply were sugar (40.7%), wheat flour (15.6%), vegetable oil (12.8%) and milk (11.0%).
Some ingredients used in ultra-processed foods, such as cocoa, sugar and some vegetable oils, are also strongly associated with biodiversity loss.
What can be done?
The environmental impact of ultra-processed foods is avoidable. These foods are not only harmful, but also unnecessary for human nutrition. Diets rich in ultra-processed foods are linked to poor health outcomes, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, and depression, among others.
To counteract this, food production resources around the world could be redirected to produce healthier, less processed foods. For example, globally, significant amounts of grains such as wheat, corn, and rice are ground into refined flours to produce refined breads, cakes, donuts, and other baked goods.
These could be diverted towards the production of more nutritious foods, such as whole wheat bread or pasta. This would contribute to improving world food security and would also provide greater protection against natural disasters and conflicts in the main areas of the breadbasket.
Other environmental resources could be saved by completely avoiding the use of certain ingredients. For example, the demand for palm oil (a common ingredient in ultra-processed foods and associated with deforestation in Southeast Asia) could be significantly reduced if consumers shifted their preferences towards healthier foods.
Reducing your consumption of ultra-processed foods is one way to reduce your environmental footprint while also improving your health.
(The authors are from Deakin University)
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