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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets

Estimating the environmental impact of diets based on individual-level dietary intake data: infographics on the FAO/WHO GIFT platform

Provisionally accepted
Victoria Padula de QuadrosVictoria Padula de Quadros1*Jacqueline Tereza da SilvaJacqueline Tereza da Silva1,2Agnieszka BalcerzakAgnieszka Balcerzak1Pauline AllemandPauline Allemand1Catherine LeclercqCatherine Leclercq3Marika FerrariMarika Ferrari3Ximena Schmidt RiveraXimena Schmidt Rivera4Christian ReynoldsChristian Reynolds5Bridget Anna HolmesBridget Anna Holmes1
  • 1Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy), Rome, Italy
  • 2Division of Agriculture and Food Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • 3Research Centre for Food and Nutrition, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Rome, Italy
  • 4Brunel University London College of Engineering Design and Physical Sciences, London, United Kingdom
  • 5City St George's University of London, London, United Kingdom

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Integrating environmental impacts into dietary assessment is crucial to promote healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Nonetheless, the environmental impacts of individual dietary intake are rarely reported. This paper describes how environmental impacts are integrated into dietary data through the FAO/WHO Global Individual Food Consumption Data Tool (FAO/WHO GIFT). The environmental infographics available on FAO/WHO GIFT offer a user-friendly interface to understand the average footprint of diets, identifying contributing food groups, and exploring variations in environmental impacts. The infographics present estimates for three environmental indicators - greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and land use of dietary intake, allowing users to assess the environmental implications of different diets. Tools to monitor and assess dietary environmental impact, such as those offered by FAO/WHO GIFT, are essential for informing transformation towards healthy diets from sustainable food systems.

Keywords: food systems, Healthy diets, dietary assessment, Environmental Impacts, greenhousegas emissions, Water use, land use

Received: 09 Jul 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Padula de Quadros, Tereza da Silva, Balcerzak, Allemand, Leclercq, Ferrari, Schmidt Rivera, Reynolds and Holmes. 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: Victoria Padula de Quadros, victoria.paduladequadros@fao.org

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.

Supplementary Material