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Climate, Food Systems, Diet, Nutrition and Health (Poster Session)

(P19-002-24) The Ecological Impact and the Metabolic Food Waste of Overweight and Obese Individuals Living in Mediterranean and North European Countries

Monday, July 1, 2024
12:45 PM – 1:45 PM CT
Location: Poster Board 80

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Donato Angelino, PhD (he/him/his)

    Associate Professor
    University of Teramo, Functional Food and Metabolic Stress Prevention Laboratory, Department of Bioscience and Technology for Food, Agriculture and Environment
    Teramo, Abruzzi, Italy

    • Co-Author(s)

  • ET

    Elisabetta Toti, PhD

    Research Centre for Food and Nutrition, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics
    Rome, Italy

  • MS

    Mauro Serafini

    University of Teramo, Functional Food and Metabolic Stress Prevention Laboratory, Department of Bioscience and Technology for Food, Agriculture and Environment
    Teramo, Italy

Disclosure(s):
Donato Angelino, PhD: No relevant financial relationship(s) with ineligible companies to disclose.


Objectives: Overeating is one of the main drivers of the obesity condition through an Excess of Body Fat (EBF) accumulation. This situation leads to not only human health issues, but also impacts on planet environmental resources wasted to produce the excess of food. Thus, the Metabolic Food Waste (MFW) index has been developed as amount of food wasted for EBF accumulation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land used for its production. The present study aims at evaluating and comparing the MFW and ecological footprints of some Mediterranean (MEC) and North European (NEC) countries.

Methods: The MFW of six Mediterranean and North European countries has been calculated as follows: i) EBF considered as the fat resulted from the difference between ideal and real body weight of overweight and obese individuals, as FAOSTAT and WHO databases; ii) food wasted for EBF accumulation and energy from the main food categories by retrieving the FAO Food Balance Sheets; iii) GHG emissions and water and land impact to EBF by foods, as WWF Virtual Shopping Cart and Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition. Data refer to total population or standardized for 100,000 citizens.

Results: NEC had the highest rates of obese individuals (UK and Sweden on the top) while MEC had slightly higher overweight people rates (Italy and France on the top). An overall higher EBF value for 100,000 citizens, both obese subjects and overweight, was found in NEC than MEC, in both cases led by low small population countries. Data on MFW and ecological footprints showed that, regardless of the countries, obese impact two-to-three folds more than overweight subjects. Highest values of MFW and ecological footprints were found for MEC than NEC as for the whole and overweight/obese populations.

Conclusions: The present study highlights the harmful role of the overeating – and consequently – overweighting not only on human health, but also on the rates of food wasted and the relative resource exploitations of the Earth. In particular, the consideration of MEC as holders of the Mediterranean Diet, one of the most healthy and sustainable dietary patterns, should be carefully reconsidered. Informative campaigns should be developed to improve the knowledge on conscious dietary choices for human and planet healthiness.

Funding Sources: The research did not receive any funding.