Data Integration for Diet Sustainability Analyses

Zach Conrad, Alexandra Stern, David C. Love, Meredith Salesses, Ashley Cyril, Acree McDowell and Nicole Tichenor Blackstone
Additional contact information
Zach Conrad: Department of Health Sciences, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
Alexandra Stern: Division of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA
David C. Love: Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
Meredith Salesses: College of Arts & Sciences, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
Ashley Cyril: College of Arts & Sciences, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
Acree McDowell: College of Arts & Sciences, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
Nicole Tichenor Blackstone: Division of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: Diet sustainability analyses are stronger when they incorporate multiple food systems domains, disciplines, scales, and time/space dimensions into a common modeling framework. Few analyses do this well: there are large gaps in food systems data in many regions, accessing private and some public data can be difficult, and there are analytical challenges, such as creating linkages across datasets and using complex analytical methods. This article summarizes key data sources across multiple domains of food system sustainability (nutrition, economic, environment) and describes methods and tools for integrating them into a common analytic framework. Our focus is the United States because of the large number of publicly available and highly disaggregated datasets. Thematically, we focus on linkages that exist between environmental and economic datasets to nutrition, which can be used to estimate the cost and agricultural resource use of food waste, interrelationships between healthy eating and climate impacts, diets optimized for cost, nutrition, and environmental impacts, and others. The limitations of these approaches and data sources are described next. By enhancing data integration across these fields, researchers can be better equipped to promote policy for sustainable diets.

Keywords: sustainability; food system; integration; NHANES; environment; economic; climate change; diets; nutrition; natural resource use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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