Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The production of meat and animal products has been shown to cause higher average greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) per kilogram than the production of plant-based foods. However, in the U.S. there is limited evidence on whether household diets that contain less meat result in lower GHGEs. It is also not known if these diets are nutritionally adequate and affordable for all U.S. households. Quantifying the GHGEs intensity at the diet level is essential for both consumer nutrition education efforts and for federal nutrition policy (i.e. the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA)). This is because it has been estimated that the global food system generates a large share of total GHGEs and, at the same time climate change threatens to negatively impact the global food system’s ability to produce adequate levels of food. It is therefore imperative that research is conducted to determine if nutrition and climate change mitigation goals are in alignment.

The objective of this project is to determine if lower meat U.S. household food expenditures are as nutritionally adequate and affordable as food expenditures containing average amounts of meat. To achieve this objective food expenditure data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) was used to calculate weekly GHGEs of household food purchases and acquisitions using an Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment. FoodAPS data provide a unique opportunity to achieve this project’s objective because it is the first ever nationally representative survey of disaggregated U.S. household food purchases and acquisitions.

FoodAPS households were grouped into quintiles based on the share of food spending on beef, pork, lamb, poultry, and seafood. The quintiles were defined as very low, low, medium, high, and very high meat expenditure shares. Comparison of weekly GHGEs, percent daily value of macro- and micronutrients purchased, Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score, and total food expenditures according to meat expenditure share quintiles was conducted using survey-design adjusted means and construction of joint 95% confidence intervals.

Results show that households in the very low quintile (who spent <10.4% of their food budget on meat) had significantly lower GHGEs compared to households in all other quintiles (i.e. those who spent >10.4% of their food budget on meat). Households in the very low quintile spent 29% less on food and their expenditures contained less cholesterol and saturated fat than households in the medium quintile. However, very low meat expenditure share households purchased less than optimal levels of some micronutrients and minerals. No difference in HEI score was found across quintiles.

We conclude that lower meat food expenditures have a better GHGE profile and overall nutrition quality is not jeopardized by reduced meat spending, even if one considers the reduced purchase of some nutrients. Reduced spending on meats could also help households lower their food costs. These results provide evidence that environmental sustainability goals, such as climate change mitigation, are not necessarily at odds with prevailing nutrition advice to consumers or with federal dietary guidance such as the DGA.