ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1572297
This article is part of the Research TopicSpaces for Sustainable Food Systems and Healthy DietsView all 3 articles
A Matrix Approach to Visually Communicate Simultaneously the Environmental and Health Impacts of Foods
Provisionally accepted
- 1United States Military Academy West Point, West Point, United States
- 2Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California, United States
- 3Instituto Salud Global Barcelona (ISGlobal), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Despite an unprecedented wealth of knowledge regarding the environmental and health effects of foods, few no studies effectively and simultaneously communicate both characteristics in an easily comprehensible visual format. This work therefore aims to provide a clear visualization that intuitively demonstrates the relative characteristics of a comprehensive list of foods to encourage more informed decision-making across stakeholders.Methods: The visualization is informed by dData are aggregated from meta-analyses and reviews regarding the carbon footprint and health effects of thirty food groups commonly consumed in the United States of America. The data are then used to categorize food groups as favorable, neutral, or unfavorable to health and as having a low, medium, or high carbon footprint. These classifications are then used to arrange food groups into a three by three color-coded matrix.Results: The resulting visualization simultaneously communicates environmental impacts and health implications of food groups in a single figure. Overall, the visualization indicates plant-based and less processed foods are preferable to animal-based and more processed foods. An exception to the format is made to emphasize the exceptionally large carbon footprint of beef by splitting the lowerright cell into two halves. Discussion: Classification of food groups according to health effects and carbon footprint is consistent with results presented in other studies, which generally show that more plant-based and less processed foods are preferable when compared to more animal-based and more processed foods. The color-coded matrix format quickly and intuitively communicates the tradeoffs made when choosing between different food groups, which may help improve choices for human and planetary health.
Keywords: Environmental sustainability, Human health, Food groups, relative risk, health index
Received: 06 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Berardy, Fresán, Abbaspour and Sabate. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Andrew Berardy, United States Military Academy West Point, West Point, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.