Comparison of Environmental Impacts of Mediterranean and Western Diets Through Life Cycle Assessment

In this study, menus created by considering different food categories by the Mediterranean diet (MD) and Western diet (WD) were evaluated in terms of healthy nutrition, and their environmental footprints were comprehensively compared with life cycle analysis (LCA). The analysis was modeled using SimaPro 9.6, and the EcoInvent 3.10 and Agri-footprint 6.3 databases were used as secondary data sources. In 12 of the 15 environmental impact categories examined, MD had lower environmental impacts than WD. The climate change impact was estimated as 2.19 kg CO2-eq for MD, while it was 3.53 kg CO2-eq for WD. Similarly, freshwater ecotoxicity was 103 CTUe for MD and 418 CTUe for WD. However, MD showed 72% higher human toxicity (cancer) (ΔHTC), 32.5% higher water use (ΔWU), and 12.7% higher mineral-metal resource use (ΔRUM). The findings suggest that MD supports environmental sustainability because of its plant-based structure, whereas WD creates a greater environmental burden due to its high animal-derived content.