Telecoupled environmental impacts of current and alternative Western diets

Low-meat and no-meat diets are increasingly acknowledged as sustainable alternatives to current Western foodconsumption patterns. Concerns for the environment, individual health or animal welfare are raising consumers’willingness to adopt such diets. Dietary shifts in Western countries may modify the way human-environmentsystems interact over distances, primarily as a result of existing tradeflows in food products. Global studies havefocused on the amount of water, land, and CO2emissions embodied in plant-based versus animal-based proteins,but the potential of alternative diets to shift the location of environmental impacts has not yet been investigated.We build on footprint and trade-based analyses to compare the magnitude and spatial allocation of the impactsof six diets of consumers in the United States of America (USA). We used data on declared diets as well as astylized average diet and a recent dietary guideline integrating health and environmental targets. We demon-strate that low-meat and no-meat diets have a lower demand for land and utilize more crops with naturalnitrogenfixation potential, yet also rely more widely on pollinator abundance and diversity, and can increaseimpacts on freshwater ecosystems in some countries. We recommend that governments carefully consider thelocal impacts of the alternative diets they promote, and minimize trade-offs between the global and local con-sequences of dietary shifts through regulation or incentives