Research also shows that a vegan diet brings health benefits and reduces diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In the last 6 years, the number of vegans in Germany has already increased by 33%. Alongside this, the trend towards a meat-free diet is growing. With this, the supposed health industry seems to be booming, with sales of diet products increasing over 30% since 2013. Scientists and institutes have been warning of the health risks of increased food consumption for years. The heightened prosperity and a wide range of food choices and social pressure to opt for convenience foods rather than healthy options, increases the number of people suffering from malnutrition or overweight. For example, the proportion of employees working office jobs steadily rises. Simultaneously, while food intake and, thus, calorie intake increased physical labor and with it energy demand decreased with advancing technology. Later on, the nutrition circle, created by the German Nutrition Society (DGE), was introduced in Germany as a didactic tool.

These guidelines did not change significantly over time. As early as 1950, the first dietary guidelines were developed for this purpose, intended to help people align their lifestyles with healthy food choices. This raised the question of which foods can benefit health and nutrition. As a result, obesity and associated diseases increased sharply.

In 1950–1960, for example, consumption of poultry meat tripled per capita per year, and pork consumption also increased from 19 to 30 kilos per capita per year in Germany. With the economic boom throughout the 20th-mid-century, fears of food insecurity subsided in the global north and, rather, led to overconsumption. To reach these goals, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded in 1945. The top priority was defeating these resource shortages and ensuring stable food security without a focus on healthy and balanced nutrition just yet. COVID-19 gave the industrialized population, in particular, a small glimpse of what it was like to worry about one’s daily food supply, as was the case in the post-war era.Īt the end of World War II, famine and resource scarcity plagued nations due to low agricultural yields and unstable food security. Otherwise, the status quo further drives especially underprivileged consumers towards unhealthy and environmentally damaging consumption.Įmpty supermarket shelves, hoarding, and lack of food and hygiene products, such as pasta, yeast, or toilet paper in grocery stores caused existential fears all over the world at the beginning of the Corona Pandemic.

Action should be taken by policy makers to financially incentivize consumers in favor of healthy and environmentally friendly diets. We find that price is, arguably, the main factor in food choices from a sustainability standpoint. In contrast, a large share of consumers opt for cheap foods, regardless of health and environmental consequences. Furthermore, few consumers align their diet with low environmental impact. Results show that purchasing decisions are only slightly influenced by health-related factors. With this, we are able to evaluate and compare 30 different food baskets along their health, environmental, and economic impact. Additionally, we evaluate 1446 prices of food items from three store types (organic store, supermarket, and discounter). For this, we compare two dietary recommendations (plant-based, omnivorous) with the status quo, and we examine different consumption styles (conventional, organic produce). We investigate to what extent diets meet nutritional requirements (social factor), the diets’ environmental impact (ecological factor), and the food prices’ influence on purchasing behavior (economic factor). In a case study of Germany, we examine current food consumption along the three pillars of sustainability to evaluate external factors that influence consumers’ dietary decisions.

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