Recipient Organization
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV
(N/A)
RALEIGH,NC 27695
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Food systems are challenged to supply sufficient, affordable, and healthy food for the growing population within the environmental limits. In the meantime, the food systems alone are responsible for about 1/3 of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally sincefood systems require large natural resource inputs. Hence, the development of novel foods and technologies such as plant-based food presents an opportunity to produce nutrient-rich proteins without compromising the global ecosystem. Understanding of sustainability of plant-based food can be challenging as different stakeholders hold different opinions and limited work has been devoted to fully assessing the sustainability of plant-based food from environmental, economic, and societal metrics in a holistic approach. To address this challenge, we propose to develop a life-cycle sustainability assessment framework to comprehensively evaluate the sustainability of plant-based food by integrating the environmental, economic, and societal impacts. The outcome of this project could provide guidance on the overall sustainability of plant-based food and prioritize research efforts for further commercialization.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
60%
Applied
20%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
The objectiveof this project is to assess the sustainability of plant-based foods by integrating environmental, economic, and societal metrics andprovidestrategic guidance to a wide range of stakeholders in the plant-based food industry. Specifically, we aim to: 1) develop process models of diverse plant-based foods and quantify the relevant costs, 2) evaluate the environmental impacts of plant-based foods,3) explore the social implications of plant-based foods, and 4) develop a life-cycle sustainability framework of plant-based foods via environmental, economic, and societal metrics to comprehensively assess the sustainability.
Project Methods
We will first start to develop technoeconomic models of state-of-art technologies for plant-based food production from soybean, wheat, and pea and quantify relevant life-cycle costs. Based on the process developed in the previous task, we will develop life-cycle models to quantify the nutrition-environmental impacts of plant-based foods.Afterward, we will apply the social life-cycle assessment framework provided by the United Nations to assess the social implications, either positive or negative aspects of the well-being of stakeholders, of plant-based food throughout their life cycle. Lastly, we will combine previous economic, environmental, and social metrics into an integrated life-cycle sustainability framework to fully assess the sustainability of plant-based foods.