Environmental implications of Swedish food consumption and dietary choices

In recent years, a growing interest from consumers to know the origins and contents of foods has put alternative choices such as organic foods and dietary changes in the agenda. Dietary choices are important to address as many studies find that activities related to food production account for nearly 20-30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, while GHG emissions are important, often other environmental impact categories are not used to assess the sustainability of different foods, diets and choices. This study therefore aims to understand the implications of dietary choices for Swedish food consumption on a broad range of environmental impact categories to provide insight into the impacts associated with certain food products and dietary choices.

The study reviews dietary choices based on Swedish consumption statistics and assesses the implications using a number of scenarios. These include scenarios related to increasing organic and regional food consumption in addition to reducing meat, vegetarian diets and eating based on nutritional guidelines. Life cycle methodology is used to review environmental impacts of Swedish food consumption (from both domestic and imported products) in the year 2015 and 2020.