National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 51(114), p. 13412-13417, 2017
Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology, 2018
DOI: 10.1530/ey.15.14.7
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SignificanceNationally recommended diets are a prominent method for informing the public on dietary choices. Although dietary choices drive both health and environmental outcomes, these diets make almost no reference to environmental impacts. Our study provides a comparison between the environmental impacts of average dietary intakes and a nation-specific recommended diet across 37 middle- and high-income nations. We find that following a nationally recommended diet in high-income nations results in a reduction in greenhouse gases, eutrophication, and land use. In upper-middle–income nations, we find a smaller reduction in impacts, and in lower-middle–income nations we find a substantial increase. The net result from large-scale adoption of nationally recommended diets for countries studied here results in a reduction in environmental impacts.