Is healthy eating healthy for the environment? Barilla center for food and nutrition double food pyramid

Abstract

Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition decided to repropose an updated food pyramid, involving global warming and impacts of food on the environment. It has been made a reclassification of foods that together with their positive impacts on health also included their environmental impacts. These values were overlapped in descending order to obtain an upside-down pyramid that reproposes the same succession of foods. The new “Double Pyramid” shows that foods with higher recommended consumption levels are also those with lower environmental impact, and foods with lower recommended consumption levels are those with higher environmental impact. Two daily menu were analysed: both balanced from a nutritional point of view, but in the first one the protein is of plant origin, while in the second one it is mainly of animal origin. Vegetarian menu has an environmental impact that is two and a half times lower than the animal protein-based one.