Paolo Tessari
University of Padova, Italy
Title: Essential amino acids: master players in both nutrition and in the environmental footprint of food production?
Biography
Biography: Paolo Tessari
Abstract
The choice between vegetarian and animal diets is assumed to have a relevant environmental footprint, since that for crops production is usually considered several-fold lower than that for production of animal foods. However, an often neglected issue in these estimates is the nutritional value of the foods. Previous comparisons between vegetal and animal-based diets had been based on either food raw weight or caloric content, not in respect to human requirements. In this perspective, the content of essential amino acids (EAAs) is a key parameter in food quality assessment. Here we have re-evaluated the environmental footprint (expressed as land usage for production), of sample foods from either animal or vegetal sources, on the basis of their EAAs content vs. requirement for humans. Egg, milk, lean beef and pork meat, chicken, fish (seabass), soybeans, peas, wheat flour, quinoa and beans, were selected. Production of high-quality animal proteins, in amounts sufficient to match the requirement of the limiting EAA, require less, equal or only slightly more land, than that necessary to produce vegetal proteins, with the exception of soybeans, that still require the lowest land surface. This new analysis downsizes the common concept of a large advantage, in respect to environmental footprint, of crops vs. animal foods production, when human requirements of EAAs are taken as reference.