Sustainable nutrition, or: Who eats strawberries in winter?

We all eat several times a day. How, where and what we eat has a major influence on our well-being and our health. At the same time the way our food is produced, where we buy it, the ingredients it contains and the quantity in which it is consumed has a variety of impacts on society and the environment.

The principles of sustainable nutrition are extremely relevant for the climate, as studies show that, along with the categories of “housing” and “mobility”, the food sector is the source of the most environmental impacts arising from personal consumption. The focus of nutrition ecology is on the entire production chain: from farming, through the supermarkets right to the kitchen.

Growing, processing, transporting and storing food, together with the preparation of meals and the disposal of waste, accounts for around 15 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions arising from personal consumption. If other environmental impacts are also included, such as the contamination of soil and water by nitrate discharge or the decline in biodiversity caused by the use of pesticides and by monoculture, then the contribution of nutrition to the total environmental impact of personal consumption rises to over 25 per cent.