View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Waterloo's Institutional Repository Carbon Footprinting Dietary Choices in Ontario: A life cycle approach to assessing sustainable, healthy & socially acceptable diets by Anastasia Veeramani A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Environmental Studies in Sustainability Management Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2015 © Anastasia Veeramani 2015 Author Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revision, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. Anastasia Veeramani Statistics Canada Disclaimer This research was supported by funds to the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and Statistics Canada. Although the research and analysis are based on data from Statistics Canada, the opinions expressed do not represent the views of Statistics Canada. ii Abstract Recent studies have established the link between food consumption and its broad impact on the environment. However, environmental implications of dietary choices have not been previously studied in Canada. Given geographic variations of eating habits and environmental impacts, this study aims to explore current dietary patterns and their environmental implications in Ontario. This exploratory study assesses the environmental impact of seven dietary patterns and investigates the role of nutrition and dietary guidelines in evaluating sustainability of diets. Food baskets representing each dietary pattern were formed based on data obtained from dietary recall survey. Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), greenhouse gas emissions were estimated for farm operations, processing, distribution and household processes associated with current food consumption. Canada’s dietary guidelines were used to assess the nutritional quality of current diets and propose nutritionally optimal dietary changes. Results showed that Ontario population overconsumes protein. Popular dietary patterns including foods rich in animal protein exhibit the highest impact. This interdisciplinary approach helps combine nutritional and environmental research which can facilitate the formulation of environmentally friendly, healthy and socially acceptable diets. The study outlines key limitations in diet-related LCA, provides recommendations for improvement and serves as a primer for further diet-related research in Canada. Key words Carbon footprinting, life cycle assessment, dietary patterns, nutrition, greenhouse gas emissions, dietary guidelines iii Acknowledgements It gives me great pleasure to thank everyone who has made this work possible. I would like to sincerely thank Professor Goretty Dias who has been a thesis advisor extraordinaire. I cannot thank her enough for her guidance, patience, enthusiasm and support. She is a true inspiration and the best supervisor I could have ever wished for. My sincere thank-you goes to my committee members Professor Steven B. Young & Professor Simron Singh for their encouragement, prompt feedback and valuable insights. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Sharon Kirkpatrick from the School of Public Health and Health Systems for patiently guiding me in diet and nutrition-related areas of the thesis. I would like to thank Dr. Pat Newcombe-Welch from the South Western Ontario Research Data Centre for her immense help in acquiring access to Statistics Canada data and troubleshooting SAS. The online SAS community is greatly appreciated for prompt assistance with SAS-related questions. A special thank-you goes to Katherine MacLean, SEED administrator, for her time, help and encouragement. The current Master’s program and thesis writing was lovingly funded by my husband Harish Veeramani, who has inspired me to pursue environmental studies and sustainability, and has always fully supported my endeavors. I would like to thank my family for their understanding, love and support. iv Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................... VII LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................. IX LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................X CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Thesis structure ............................................................................................................................ 2 2. Background .................................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Environmental research ................................................................................................................ 3 2.2 Canadian food sector ................................................................................................................... 5 2.2.1 Ontario context ......................................................................................................................... 6 3. Literature review: Life Cycle Assessment of dietary patterns ...................................................... 7 3.1 Identifying dietary patterns.......................................................................................................... 8 3.2 Environmental footprint of food consumption from an individual to a national level ................ 9 3.3 Nutritional quality assessment .................................................................................................. 19 4. Thesis objectives and Rationale .................................................................................................. 24 CHAPTER II. METHODOLOGY ............................................................................. 25 1. Life Cycle Assessment Methodology .......................................................................................... 25 1.1 Goal & Scope .............................................................................................................................. 26 1.1.2 Functional Unit ........................................................................................................................ 26 1.1.3 Impact categories ..................................................................................................................... 27 1.1.4 System boundaries ................................................................................................................... 27 2. Life Cycle Inventory and Data collection .................................................................................... 28 2.1 Identifying dietary patterns in Ontario ...................................................................................... 28 2.2 Estimating potential environmental impacts associated with dietary patterns ...................... 35 2.3 Assessing the nutritional quality of food baskets ...................................................................... 43 3. Limitations .................................................................................................................................. 46 3.1 Limitations of CCHS & cluster analysis .................................................................................. 46 3.2 Limitations of LCA................................................................................................................... 48 3.3 Limitations of the nutritional assessment ................................................................................. 49 CHAPTER III: FINDINGS & INTERPRETATION ..................................................... 51 v 1. Cluster analysis of Ontario Dietary Patterns .............................................................................. 51 2. Nutritional assessment results ................................................................................................... 53 2.1 Recommended calorie and protein intake.................................................................................. 53 2.2 Recommended number of Food Guide servings for each Food Guide category ........................ 56 3. Life cycle assessment results ....................................................................................................... 58 3.1 Contribution analysis: Largest impacts...................................................................................... 60 3.2 Sensitivity analysis ..................................................................................................................... 73 3.3 Scenario analysis ........................................................................................................................ 75 CHAPTER V: DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION .......................................................... 83 1. Benchmarking Canadian dietary patterns .................................................................................. 83 2. Food as an environmental hotspot .............................................................................................