Protein consumption and sustainability: Diet diversity in EU15
8
ANALYSIS Protein consumption and sustainability: Diet diversity in EU-15 Joop de Boer ⁎ , Martine Helms, Harry Aiking Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Received 12 August 2005 Received in revised form 17 October 2005 Accepted 17 October 2005 Available online 1 December 2005 In search of viable ways to create more sustainable diets, it is extremely valuable to analyse how people in various countries are supplied with dietary proteins from plant- based and animal-based sources. As a cross-national comparison of food ingredients may easily lead to misleading interpretations, it is crucial to opt for a multidisciplinary approach and to focus on countries that are spread across a bounded geographical area. In the present paper, an overview of diet proteins in the EU-15 member states is presented. As it turns out, the diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same major sources can be distinguished, i.e., meat, cereals and milk. The analysis showed a strong influence of location on protein diets. There are significant differences between, on the one hand, countries with high supplies of protein provided by vegetables and cereals, and, on the other hand, countries with high supplies of protein derived from milk. In this respect, Portugal, Italy and Greece can be contrasted with The Netherlands, Sweden and Finland as the two poles of an axis, with intermediate positions for the other countries. A number of interrelated differences between these countries clearly demonstrated the impacts of ecological, economic and cultural factors on current dietary protein supply. Although it does not make sense to plea simply in favour of turning the clock back, we draw the conclusion that there is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition and health. Our results suggest that the East Mediterranean diet of the early 1960s has interesting qualities for the development of options to create more sustainable, healthful diets. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Sustainability Meat Plant protein EU-15 Consumption East Mediterranean diet 1. Introduction Although food is crucial for providing nutrients to all human beings and generating income for many (Tansey and Wors- ley, 1995), it is evident that a major proportion of global environmental pressure is caused by food-related human activities (Imhoff et al., 2004; Smil, 2002). Crops are grown, processed, turned into food products and transported in ever- larger volumes, with ever-increasing impacts on the environ- ment (Pretty et al., 2005; Tilman et al., 2002). Due to the fact that the world population will continue to grow for several more decades and that the rise of real incomes will lead to the purchase of more expensive foods (Grigg, 1995), there are vast challenges to care for the sustainability of both food production and the ecosystems on which food production depends. Meat protein production is particularly environment- unfriendly, due to an inherently inefficient conversion. On average, 6 kg plant protein is required to yield 1 kg meat protein (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2003; Smil, 2000). Accord- ingly, direct human consumption of plant proteins is likely to be environmentally more beneficial than indirect con- sumption via meat. However, the general trend in food mar- kets seems to be the other way around. While the world ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS 59 (2006) 267 – 274 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 20 5989 514; fax: +31 20 5989 553. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. de Boer). 0921-8009/$ - see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.10.011 available at www.sciencedirect.com www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon
Transcript of Protein consumption and sustainability: Diet diversity in EU15
E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
ava i l ab l e a t wwwsc i enced i rec t com
wwwe l sev i e r com l oca te eco l econ
ANALYSIS
Protein consumption and sustainability Diet diversity in EU-15
Joop de Boer Martine Helms Harry AikingVrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Netherlands
A R T I C L E I N F O
Corresponding author Tel +31 20 5989 514E-mail addr ess joopde boerivmfalwv u
0921-8009$ - see front matter copy 2005 Elsevidoi101016 jecolecon2005 10011
A B S T R A C T
Article historyReceived 12 August 2005Received in revised form17 October 2005Accepted 17 October 2005Available online 1 December 2005
In search of viable ways to create more sustainable diets it is extremely valuable toanalyse how people in various countries are supplied with dietary proteins from plant-based and animal-based sources As a cross-national comparison of food ingredients mayeasily lead to misleading interpretations it is crucial to opt for a multidisciplinaryapproach and to focus on countries that are spread across a bounded geographical areaIn the present paper an overview of diet proteins in the EU-15 member states is presentedAs it turns out the diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same major sources can bedistinguished ie meat cereals and milk The analysis showed a strong influence oflocation on protein diets There are significant differences between on the one handcountries with high supplies of protein provided by vegetables and cereals and on theother hand countries with high supplies of protein derived from milk In this respectPortugal Italy and Greece can be contrasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland asthe two poles of an axis with intermediate positions for the other countries A number ofinterrelated differences between these countries clearly demonstrated the impacts ofecological economic and cultural factors on current dietary protein supply Although itdoes not make sense to plea simply in favour of turning the clock back we draw theconclusion that there is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins withoutgoing beyond the limits set by nutrition and health Our results suggest that the EastMediterranean diet of the early 1960s has interesting qualities for the development ofoptions to create more sustainable healthful diets
copy 2005 Elsevier BV All rights reserved
KeywordsSustainabilityMeatPlant proteinEU-15ConsumptionEast Mediterranean diet
1 Introduction
Although food is crucial for providing nutrients to all humanbeings and generating income for many (Tansey and Wors-ley 1995) it is evident that a major proportion of globalenvironmental pressure is caused by food-related humanactivities (Imhoff et al 2004 Smil 2002) Crops are grownprocessed turned into food products and transported in ever-larger volumes with ever-increasing impacts on the environ-ment (Pretty et al 2005 Tilman et al 2002) Due to the factthat the world population will continue to grow for severalmore decades and that the rise of real incomes will lead to
fax +31 20 5989 553nl (J de Boer)
er BV All rights reserved
the purchase of more expensive foods (Grigg 1995) there arevast challenges to care for the sustainability of both foodproduction and the ecosystems on which food productiondepends
Meat protein production is particularly environment-unfriendly due to an inherently inefficient conversion Onaverage 6 kg plant protein is required to yield 1 kg meatprotein (Pimentel and Pimentel 2003 Smil 2000) Accord-ingly direct human consumption of plant proteins is likelyto be environmentally more beneficial than indirect con-sumption via meat However the general trend in food mar-kets seems to be the other way around While the world
268 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
population doubled during the second half of the 20th cen-tury its appetite for meat quadrupled requiring over 40 ofthe world grain harvest to be fed to livestock (Evans 1998)Consequently meat production is responsible for a dispro-portionate share of environmental pressure resource utilisa-tion (such as land area biodiversity freshwater) as well aspollution (eutrophication pesticides climate change) Whenstriving for sustainable food production and consumptionsystems therefore an analysis of dietary proteins from var-ious sources (ie meat dairy and plant) is an excellent start-ing point (Gilland 2002 Millstone and Lang 2003 Smil 2002)
One of the main complexities of such an analysis is thenotion that diet differences are a result of ecological eco-nomic and cultural factors at various levels of geographicscales For instance descriptions in the European historicalliterature show that there are ecologically induced differ-ences between the classic (Roman and Greek) versus theGermanic and Celtic cultures The historian Montanari(1994 p 6) explains that the former was based on agriculturalcultivation of wheat grapes and olives ldquoOut of this produc-tive system there developed a diet which we may call lsquoMed-iterraneanrsquo characterized by a dominant vegetablecomponent ndash bread wine oil and greens ndash complementedby a little meat and especially cheeserdquo With respect to thenorthern cultures ldquoHunting and fishing the gathering of wildfruits and the free pasturing of livestock in the woods (espe-cially swine but also horses and cows) was central to theirway of life Meat rather than bread or polenta was the mostimportant element of their dietrdquo (ibidem p 6) In fact Caesar(De Bello Gallico VI 22) wrote of the Germans ldquoFor agriculturethey have no zeal and the greater part of their food consistsof milk cheese and fleshrdquo (ibidem p 7) Although some ofthese food practices show a remarkable degree of historicalcontinuity economic factors have gradually gained influence(Hoffmann 2001)
For the pursuit of sustainability in food production thecrucial point is that current food choices are no longer tiedto the ldquonatural rhythmrdquo of an agricultural society and divergedinto a field of their own (Ilmonen 1991) Some clues on thenature of this change can be derived from the transformationof the European diet in the 20th century In their analysisTeuteberg and Flandrin (1999) indicate that the proportion ofanimal proteins and fats has increased dramatically in allcountries ndash except forerunner France ndash after World War IIThis was possibly part of a more general homogenization offood consumption patterns across Europe which may signifi-cantly reduce the age-old multitude of location-dependentfood practices shaped by differences in latitude and conse-quently in climate vegetation and historical development(Montanari 1994) Until recently for instance differences inthe local retail cost per gram of protein and differences inincome resulted in typical positive spatial correlationsbetween on the one hand local income and on the otherhand consumption of the more expensive types of proteinsuch as meat (Grigg 1995) This type of diet variation hasgreatly diminished due to increases in agricultural productiv-ity decreasing differences in national income greater trade infood and an increasing internationalization of eating habits
At the level of countries however there still appear to bewide disparities between the consumption of certain food
items across the European Single Market (Askegaard andMadsen 1998 European Communities 2001 Valli and Traill2005) More generally it has been observed that culturalvalues are an enduring influence on society and may allowfor a socio-economic development that is in fact path depen-dent (Inglehart and Baker 2000) This applies in particular toEuropes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones which havelargely inherited its early northern and southern civilizationsThe notion of path dependency agrees with the observationthat food internationalization seems to develop primarily onthe level of ingredients in the ldquoplanetary supermarketrdquo leav-ing much room for already existing categorizations and ruleson what can be eaten with what and when (Askegaard andMadsen 1998 Fischler 1999 Ilmonen 1991) For instanceboth Danes and Italians may serve a cappuccino but theywill do it in their own way The level of ingredients is alsoof primary importance from the perspective of sustainability
The present paper is focusing primarily on national varia-tions in amounts of diet proteins and their origins (plant dairyor meat) within the boundaries determined by nutrition andhealth The EU-15 member states were chosen to get a rele-vant geographical spread across northern and southern Eur-ope with a range of ecological economic and culturalconditions The aim is to survey the protein consumption inits full variety while trying to explain national differences inthe quantity and source of protein The survey is part of themultidisciplinary PROFETAS research programme (PROFETAS2005) which investigates policy options for more sustainableconsumption through a reduction of protein productionrelated environmental pressures in Europe and abroad Con-sequently an important part of the PROFETAS job is to iden-tify the forces shaping protein diets This will give someinsight into (1) what differences exist between nationaldiets to what range of sustainability gains can potentiallybe expected and (2) what societal differences may have tobe taken into account in the pursuit of food sustainabilityTherefore in this paper first a protein consumption inventoryof the EU-15 member states is analysed in relation to its maincomponents Second national differences in protein sourcesare explored by examining impacts of latitude (location)national income and food culture Finally the issues pertain-ing to a diet transition are discussed
2 Methodology
For a protein consumption inventory of EU-15 three sourcesof data are available each with its strengths and weaknessesThe most obvious sources of dietary intake data are nationalfood consumption surveys However only a small number ofEU-15 countries has recently planned and conducted such asurvey among their adult population (Verger et al 2002)These countries include Sweden (Becker and Pearson 2003)Germany (Mensink and Beitz 2004) the Netherlands (Hulshofet al 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) andIreland (Henderson et al 2003) One of the main reasons forthe lack of recent surveys is that dietary intake assessment atthe level of individuals is running into difficulties due to theincreasingly complex composition of food products Althoughthe surveys are meant to represent actual food intake some
Table 1 ndashMain sources of daily protein supply (gperson)in 14 European countries per category lowest levelhighest level range and mean in 1999
Source Lowest level(countryinvolved)
Highest level(countryinvolved)
Range Mean
Cereals 176 (TheNetherlands)
355 (Italy) 179 262
Potatoes 16 (Italy) 55 (Portugal) 39 34Pulses b01 (4
countries)37 (Spain) 37 16
Tree nuts b01 (12countries)
17 (Greece) 17 02
Oil crops b01 (10countries)
16 (Germany) 16 04
Vegetables 21 (Finland) 77 (Greece) 56 41Fruit 10 (Finland) 25 (Greece) 15 14Stimulants
(includingcoffee)
b01 (Greece) 26 (Denmark) 26 14
Alcoholicbeverages
b01 (6countries)
26 (Ireland) 26 09
Beef andveal
46 (Germany) 104 (Italy) 58 76
Mutton andgoat
01 (Finland) 54 (Greece) 53 13
Pork 67 (UnitedKingdom)
227 (Austria) 160 125
Poultry 46 (Sweden) 117 (Ireland) 71 79Offal 05 (Denmark) 96 (Ireland) 91 24Milk
(includingcheese)
139 (Spain) 282 (TheNetherlands)
143 224
Eggs 21 (Ireland) 50 (France) 29 37Fish
seafood29 (Austria) 157 (Portugal) 128 72
Total plantprotein
326 (TheNetherlands)
533 (Greece) 207 419
Totalanimalprotein
553 (UnitedKingdom)
762 (France) 209 667
Totalprotein
958 (Germany) 1189 (Portugal) 231 1086
Source (FAO 2005)Including the small contributions of ldquoother sourcesrdquo
269E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
under-reporting is possible Despite these limitations thedata may provide useful information to support between-country comparisons of protein consumption
A broader dataset is the compilation of national house-hold budget surveys provided by Eurostat (2005) every 5years These data refer to consumption expenditures at thehousehold level After a conversion step to eliminate differ-ences in price levels between countries these data allow forvolume comparisons but they are not very detailed in termsof specified protein sources For example all householdexpenditures on meat are lumped into one category More-over the ingredients of meals eaten outside are not specifiedeither At the country level they nevertheless provide someindicators of consumption patterns
The third dataset is based on the FAOSTAT supply data(FAO 2005) The set refers to national per capita supply atretail level (=production+importsminusexports) and the data arefar more detailed than the Eurostat data including mealseaten outside Due to food wasted beyond retail level thesupply data are weak indicators of the food actually con-sumed by individuals but they are probably the most useddata concerning human nutrition (Smil 2000) Since no betterpublished data are available about specific sources of proteinconsumption the FAOSTAT supply data will be employedhere to compare supply patterns as indicators of consump-tion patterns They will be used to reveal overall trends pri-marily which is generally considered feasible (Grigg 1995Verger et al 2002) Current FAOSTAT data cover the periodfrom 1961 to 2003 but we will mainly use data on 1999 mdash themost recent year of the Eurostat household budget survey AsFAOSTAT often combines the data about Belgium and Lux-embourg the actual number of countries is 14
To identify patterns of protein consumption we use aprincipal component analysis which reduces the large setof variables (ie protein source categories) into a smaller setof uncorrelated components that represent most of the infor-mation found in the original variables Instead of standardprincipal components analysis we use an optimal-scalingapproach that allows weighting of the variables in proportionto their average diet contribution The statistical methodCategorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) allowsus to examine how the protein-based differences between thecountries can be summarized by reducing the dimensionalityof the data (SPSS 2003)
In addition a number of correlations with relevant vari-ables will be calculated One of the variables is the countriesaverage latitude (derived from CIA 2003) which may serve asa proxy for differences in climate vegetation and historicaldevelopment Because national incomes in northern Europeare higher it is also important to consider the role of theirGross Domestic Product per capita (current prices US dollarsper person derived from IMF 2003) which may serve as aproxy for differences in income Ecological and economic fac-tors are complemented with data on cultural differences inparticular the boundaries between a more ascetic Protestantfood culture and a more indulgent Catholic pattern (Aske-gaard and Madsen 1998) These boundaries were derivedfrom the European Values Survey (eg Breacutechon 2004) Therelationship between these variables is treated in a descrip-tive way as the 14 countries involved are not a random sam-
ple of statistically independent cases Although it should beemphasized that the correlates of national differences in con-sumption patterns are often so intertwined that they cannotbe fully spelled out by statistical techniques a cautiousapproach may provide useful information (Scheuch 1989)
3 Results
Table 1 specifies the main sources of protein supply (gpersonday) in 14 European countries Compared to the overall meanof 1086 g dietary proteins it appears that plant-derived foodsprovide the smallest part ranging from 326 (The Nether-lands) to 533 g (Greece) Of all plant sources cereals (mostlywheat) are the largest supplier of plant protein in all EUcountries which is in agreement with the global trend
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
20
10
00
-10
-20
-20 -10 00 10 20
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
10
05
00
-05
-10
-10 -05 00 05 10
fish
eggs
milk
muttonpoultry
pork
beef
stimulants
vegetables
pulses
potatoes
cereals
offal
Loadings of protein categories
Country scores
Fig 1 ndashPlots of the statistical analysis country scores (top)and relationships between the protein categories (bottom)after rotation and mirroring of the original output
270 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
(Grigg 1995) On average cereals contribute 262 g or 63 of allplant protein the largest contribution is in Italy (355 g) thelowest in The Netherlands (176 g) Vegetables and potatoesare the second and third most important suppliers of plantprotein but their average contributions are relatively small41 and 34 g respectively Interestingly vegetables (in parti-cular tomatoes) provide a significant share of the proteins inthe Mediterranean countries In agreement with expectationsbased on pasta consumption the highest cereals and thelowest potato contribution (16 g of protein supply) is foundin Italy Portugal is leading in the consumption of potatoesand Spain in pulses In spite of the latter it should beremarked that the present contribution of pulses is surpris-ingly low in all countries (ranging from 0 to 37 g) consideringtheir age-old importance as a protein-delivering foodstuffuntil 1945 (Smil 2000) Noteworthy is the protein contributionof stimulants such as coffee in the Scandinavian countriesand the Netherlands which are at levels approaching thoseof vegetables in these countries Self-evidently alcoholic bev-erages prove important in beer-drinking but not in wine-drinking countries
After summation of the five meat categories this source isgenerally the largest supplier of animal proteins but its totaldiet contribution (317 g) is not very much higher than that ofcereals on average in agreement with Grigg (1995) The dif-ferent varieties of meat are not equally preferred in all coun-tries Especially pork though the largest meat proteinsupplier in general shows large variations in its relative con-tribution The difference between the highest (227 g in Aus-tria) and the lowest (67 g in the UK) is more than threefoldDirectly behind meat milk (including cheese) is the secondmost important supplier of animal proteins in most EU coun-tries ranging from 139 (Spain) to 282 g (The Netherlands)Offal seems to be exceptionally popular in Ireland (almost10 of total protein supply) possibly in consequence of thetraditional Irish stew
From Table 1 it may also be concluded that the fishsea-food food group is relatively unimportant as a source of pro-tein (72 g on average) although its contribution almostmatches the average share of beef and veal (76 g) Howeverthe fishseafood group is responsible for a large variationbetween countries That Portugal is the top fish-consumingnation (157 g supplied protein) is hardly surprising but thatIreland (34 g) is almost as low as land-locked Austria (29 g) iscertainly remarkable for a country with such plentiful marineand freshwater resources Eurostat (2005) data also indicate alow level of household expenses on fish in both Ireland andAustria and the Irish national food consumption survey con-firms a low intake (Harrington et al 2001)
A more systematic way of dealing with the range in con-tributions of the various protein sources is to reduce thedimensionality of the data by applying a principal componentanalysis In the analysis those protein source categories ofTable 1 were included that contribute on average at least 1 gof protein Each variable was weighted in proportion to itsaverage diet contribution (ie the weight of cereals in theoptimal scaling approach was set at 26) The results of theanalysis demonstrate that the differences between the coun-tries can be summarized in two statistical dimensions(accounting for 64 of the variance) Interestingly the plot
of the scores of the countries on these dimensions shows asurprising resemblance to the map of Europe after rotationand mirroring which do not influence the relationshipsbetween the depicted elements This suggests a strong influ-ence of location (latitude in particular) on protein diets
The upper part of Fig 1 graphically displays the positionsof the 14 countries on the two dimensions the lower partpresents the loadings of the protein categories in their role ofvariables that contribute to the specified dimensionality Thevertical dimension separates countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals from countrieswith high supplies of protein derived from milk and to amuch lesser degree stimulants The main contrast is thatbetween Portugal Italy and Greece on the one hand andThe Netherlands Sweden and Finland on the other Thehorizontal dimension separates countries with a relativelyhigh share of beef and milk protein from countries thatdepend on other protein sources The exceptional positionof Spain is largely determined by the relatively low supplyof milk protein in that country The bottom part of Fig 1
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Gramperson in 196130 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
SwedenDenmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
AustriaFrance
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Plant protein in 2001 and 1961
30 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
SpainPortugal
Greece
Animal protein in 2001 and 1961
Gramperson in 1961
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Fig 2 ndashNational averages of animal protein supply and plantprotein supply in the years 2001 and 1961 Source FAO(2005)
271E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
shows the statistical relationship between the proteinsources expressed as positive or negative correlations (ldquoload-ingsrdquo) with each of the two dimensions The correlations areindicated by the length and the direction of lines starting atthe origin (point 00) Interestingly the figure shows that theloadings of the main varieties of meat (eg pork beef andpoultry) point in different directions indicating that eachcountry has its own preference for one of these three proteinsources without neglecting the others The small loading ofthe category fish protein means that high or low fish supplyis not very indicative of any related dietary protein prefer-ences In other words apart from their relatively high fishconsumption countries such as Spain and Sweden may nothave many dietary characteristics in common
Further analysis demonstrates that the vertical dimensionof Fig 1 is crucial in separating the 14 countries in relationwith a number of relevant characteristics The scores of thecountries on the vertical dimension were significantly corre-lated with four related variables high positive scores (iemore plant proteins) were found among countries in thesouthern part of Europe (Pearson correlation coefficient r=minus 754 with countrys average latitude) countries with a rela-tively low level of national income (r=minus 761 with GrossDomestic Product per capita) countries with higher (sic)meat expenses per household member (r=653 with Eurostat(2005) meat purchasing data) and countries that do notbelong to Europes Protestant zone (r=minus0529 with percentageof Protestant inhabitants see Breacutechon (2004)) Although thesefour variables also proved interrelated their combined rela-tionship with the vertical dimension of Fig 1 was very high(R2= 971) and their regression weights indicated that eachhad a contribution of its own Some additional analysesmay clarify the meaning of these relationships
A methodologically proper way to clarify the combinedeffects of the countries average latitude and their nationalincome is to put the protein supply data in the perspective ofrising incomes since the 1960s From the FAOSTAT supplydata it is clear that the average total protein supply in theEU-15 member states has increased gradually and consis-tently during 1961ndash2001 and that this increase was attributa-ble to a rise in animal proteins exclusively Fig 2 summarizesthis development by displaying national averages of animalprotein supply and plant protein supply in the years 2001 and1961 The figure clearly shows that the supply of plant proteinshas been remarkably stable over the past forty years while thesupply of animal proteins has increased significantly As aresult in all countries nowadays the supply of animal proteinsis larger than the supply of plant proteins The supply of plantproteins shows a decreasing trend from southern to northerncountries once linked to the phenomenon of a high-plant andlow-meat ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet However especiallythe countries that once showed a ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet(ie Greece and Italy) have increased the supply of animalprotein in the recent past
As the rising incomes did not affect the observed strongNorthndashSouth trends in plant protein supply historical differ-ences in availability and culture may still be an importantcause underlying present differences in demand In the caseof meat protein rising incomes may almost have completedthe diet transformation that started after World War II As
Grigg (1999) notes by the 1960s most countries in westernEurope ndash save the Mediterranean area ndash had already gonethrough the transition Given the S shaped relationshipbetween national income and meat consumption and theposition of all EU-15 countries in the saturated part of thecurve (GDPN$10000) (Keyzer et al 2005) it is to be expectedthat the consumption of meat will not increase much with acontinued rise of incomes
A complication to this relationship is that the amount ofmoney consumers spend on food seems partly dependent oncultural factors The different food cultures of countries in theProtestant and the Catholic cultural zone may allow a path-dependent development Fig 3 shows that increasing annualexpenditures of households are related to increasing expen-ditures on meat but that the average meat expenditures aresignificantly higher among countries in the Catholic zone
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
268 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
population doubled during the second half of the 20th cen-tury its appetite for meat quadrupled requiring over 40 ofthe world grain harvest to be fed to livestock (Evans 1998)Consequently meat production is responsible for a dispro-portionate share of environmental pressure resource utilisa-tion (such as land area biodiversity freshwater) as well aspollution (eutrophication pesticides climate change) Whenstriving for sustainable food production and consumptionsystems therefore an analysis of dietary proteins from var-ious sources (ie meat dairy and plant) is an excellent start-ing point (Gilland 2002 Millstone and Lang 2003 Smil 2002)
One of the main complexities of such an analysis is thenotion that diet differences are a result of ecological eco-nomic and cultural factors at various levels of geographicscales For instance descriptions in the European historicalliterature show that there are ecologically induced differ-ences between the classic (Roman and Greek) versus theGermanic and Celtic cultures The historian Montanari(1994 p 6) explains that the former was based on agriculturalcultivation of wheat grapes and olives ldquoOut of this produc-tive system there developed a diet which we may call lsquoMed-iterraneanrsquo characterized by a dominant vegetablecomponent ndash bread wine oil and greens ndash complementedby a little meat and especially cheeserdquo With respect to thenorthern cultures ldquoHunting and fishing the gathering of wildfruits and the free pasturing of livestock in the woods (espe-cially swine but also horses and cows) was central to theirway of life Meat rather than bread or polenta was the mostimportant element of their dietrdquo (ibidem p 6) In fact Caesar(De Bello Gallico VI 22) wrote of the Germans ldquoFor agriculturethey have no zeal and the greater part of their food consistsof milk cheese and fleshrdquo (ibidem p 7) Although some ofthese food practices show a remarkable degree of historicalcontinuity economic factors have gradually gained influence(Hoffmann 2001)
For the pursuit of sustainability in food production thecrucial point is that current food choices are no longer tiedto the ldquonatural rhythmrdquo of an agricultural society and divergedinto a field of their own (Ilmonen 1991) Some clues on thenature of this change can be derived from the transformationof the European diet in the 20th century In their analysisTeuteberg and Flandrin (1999) indicate that the proportion ofanimal proteins and fats has increased dramatically in allcountries ndash except forerunner France ndash after World War IIThis was possibly part of a more general homogenization offood consumption patterns across Europe which may signifi-cantly reduce the age-old multitude of location-dependentfood practices shaped by differences in latitude and conse-quently in climate vegetation and historical development(Montanari 1994) Until recently for instance differences inthe local retail cost per gram of protein and differences inincome resulted in typical positive spatial correlationsbetween on the one hand local income and on the otherhand consumption of the more expensive types of proteinsuch as meat (Grigg 1995) This type of diet variation hasgreatly diminished due to increases in agricultural productiv-ity decreasing differences in national income greater trade infood and an increasing internationalization of eating habits
At the level of countries however there still appear to bewide disparities between the consumption of certain food
items across the European Single Market (Askegaard andMadsen 1998 European Communities 2001 Valli and Traill2005) More generally it has been observed that culturalvalues are an enduring influence on society and may allowfor a socio-economic development that is in fact path depen-dent (Inglehart and Baker 2000) This applies in particular toEuropes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones which havelargely inherited its early northern and southern civilizationsThe notion of path dependency agrees with the observationthat food internationalization seems to develop primarily onthe level of ingredients in the ldquoplanetary supermarketrdquo leav-ing much room for already existing categorizations and ruleson what can be eaten with what and when (Askegaard andMadsen 1998 Fischler 1999 Ilmonen 1991) For instanceboth Danes and Italians may serve a cappuccino but theywill do it in their own way The level of ingredients is alsoof primary importance from the perspective of sustainability
The present paper is focusing primarily on national varia-tions in amounts of diet proteins and their origins (plant dairyor meat) within the boundaries determined by nutrition andhealth The EU-15 member states were chosen to get a rele-vant geographical spread across northern and southern Eur-ope with a range of ecological economic and culturalconditions The aim is to survey the protein consumption inits full variety while trying to explain national differences inthe quantity and source of protein The survey is part of themultidisciplinary PROFETAS research programme (PROFETAS2005) which investigates policy options for more sustainableconsumption through a reduction of protein productionrelated environmental pressures in Europe and abroad Con-sequently an important part of the PROFETAS job is to iden-tify the forces shaping protein diets This will give someinsight into (1) what differences exist between nationaldiets to what range of sustainability gains can potentiallybe expected and (2) what societal differences may have tobe taken into account in the pursuit of food sustainabilityTherefore in this paper first a protein consumption inventoryof the EU-15 member states is analysed in relation to its maincomponents Second national differences in protein sourcesare explored by examining impacts of latitude (location)national income and food culture Finally the issues pertain-ing to a diet transition are discussed
2 Methodology
For a protein consumption inventory of EU-15 three sourcesof data are available each with its strengths and weaknessesThe most obvious sources of dietary intake data are nationalfood consumption surveys However only a small number ofEU-15 countries has recently planned and conducted such asurvey among their adult population (Verger et al 2002)These countries include Sweden (Becker and Pearson 2003)Germany (Mensink and Beitz 2004) the Netherlands (Hulshofet al 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) andIreland (Henderson et al 2003) One of the main reasons forthe lack of recent surveys is that dietary intake assessment atthe level of individuals is running into difficulties due to theincreasingly complex composition of food products Althoughthe surveys are meant to represent actual food intake some
Table 1 ndashMain sources of daily protein supply (gperson)in 14 European countries per category lowest levelhighest level range and mean in 1999
Source Lowest level(countryinvolved)
Highest level(countryinvolved)
Range Mean
Cereals 176 (TheNetherlands)
355 (Italy) 179 262
Potatoes 16 (Italy) 55 (Portugal) 39 34Pulses b01 (4
countries)37 (Spain) 37 16
Tree nuts b01 (12countries)
17 (Greece) 17 02
Oil crops b01 (10countries)
16 (Germany) 16 04
Vegetables 21 (Finland) 77 (Greece) 56 41Fruit 10 (Finland) 25 (Greece) 15 14Stimulants
(includingcoffee)
b01 (Greece) 26 (Denmark) 26 14
Alcoholicbeverages
b01 (6countries)
26 (Ireland) 26 09
Beef andveal
46 (Germany) 104 (Italy) 58 76
Mutton andgoat
01 (Finland) 54 (Greece) 53 13
Pork 67 (UnitedKingdom)
227 (Austria) 160 125
Poultry 46 (Sweden) 117 (Ireland) 71 79Offal 05 (Denmark) 96 (Ireland) 91 24Milk
(includingcheese)
139 (Spain) 282 (TheNetherlands)
143 224
Eggs 21 (Ireland) 50 (France) 29 37Fish
seafood29 (Austria) 157 (Portugal) 128 72
Total plantprotein
326 (TheNetherlands)
533 (Greece) 207 419
Totalanimalprotein
553 (UnitedKingdom)
762 (France) 209 667
Totalprotein
958 (Germany) 1189 (Portugal) 231 1086
Source (FAO 2005)Including the small contributions of ldquoother sourcesrdquo
269E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
under-reporting is possible Despite these limitations thedata may provide useful information to support between-country comparisons of protein consumption
A broader dataset is the compilation of national house-hold budget surveys provided by Eurostat (2005) every 5years These data refer to consumption expenditures at thehousehold level After a conversion step to eliminate differ-ences in price levels between countries these data allow forvolume comparisons but they are not very detailed in termsof specified protein sources For example all householdexpenditures on meat are lumped into one category More-over the ingredients of meals eaten outside are not specifiedeither At the country level they nevertheless provide someindicators of consumption patterns
The third dataset is based on the FAOSTAT supply data(FAO 2005) The set refers to national per capita supply atretail level (=production+importsminusexports) and the data arefar more detailed than the Eurostat data including mealseaten outside Due to food wasted beyond retail level thesupply data are weak indicators of the food actually con-sumed by individuals but they are probably the most useddata concerning human nutrition (Smil 2000) Since no betterpublished data are available about specific sources of proteinconsumption the FAOSTAT supply data will be employedhere to compare supply patterns as indicators of consump-tion patterns They will be used to reveal overall trends pri-marily which is generally considered feasible (Grigg 1995Verger et al 2002) Current FAOSTAT data cover the periodfrom 1961 to 2003 but we will mainly use data on 1999 mdash themost recent year of the Eurostat household budget survey AsFAOSTAT often combines the data about Belgium and Lux-embourg the actual number of countries is 14
To identify patterns of protein consumption we use aprincipal component analysis which reduces the large setof variables (ie protein source categories) into a smaller setof uncorrelated components that represent most of the infor-mation found in the original variables Instead of standardprincipal components analysis we use an optimal-scalingapproach that allows weighting of the variables in proportionto their average diet contribution The statistical methodCategorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) allowsus to examine how the protein-based differences between thecountries can be summarized by reducing the dimensionalityof the data (SPSS 2003)
In addition a number of correlations with relevant vari-ables will be calculated One of the variables is the countriesaverage latitude (derived from CIA 2003) which may serve asa proxy for differences in climate vegetation and historicaldevelopment Because national incomes in northern Europeare higher it is also important to consider the role of theirGross Domestic Product per capita (current prices US dollarsper person derived from IMF 2003) which may serve as aproxy for differences in income Ecological and economic fac-tors are complemented with data on cultural differences inparticular the boundaries between a more ascetic Protestantfood culture and a more indulgent Catholic pattern (Aske-gaard and Madsen 1998) These boundaries were derivedfrom the European Values Survey (eg Breacutechon 2004) Therelationship between these variables is treated in a descrip-tive way as the 14 countries involved are not a random sam-
ple of statistically independent cases Although it should beemphasized that the correlates of national differences in con-sumption patterns are often so intertwined that they cannotbe fully spelled out by statistical techniques a cautiousapproach may provide useful information (Scheuch 1989)
3 Results
Table 1 specifies the main sources of protein supply (gpersonday) in 14 European countries Compared to the overall meanof 1086 g dietary proteins it appears that plant-derived foodsprovide the smallest part ranging from 326 (The Nether-lands) to 533 g (Greece) Of all plant sources cereals (mostlywheat) are the largest supplier of plant protein in all EUcountries which is in agreement with the global trend
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
20
10
00
-10
-20
-20 -10 00 10 20
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
10
05
00
-05
-10
-10 -05 00 05 10
fish
eggs
milk
muttonpoultry
pork
beef
stimulants
vegetables
pulses
potatoes
cereals
offal
Loadings of protein categories
Country scores
Fig 1 ndashPlots of the statistical analysis country scores (top)and relationships between the protein categories (bottom)after rotation and mirroring of the original output
270 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
(Grigg 1995) On average cereals contribute 262 g or 63 of allplant protein the largest contribution is in Italy (355 g) thelowest in The Netherlands (176 g) Vegetables and potatoesare the second and third most important suppliers of plantprotein but their average contributions are relatively small41 and 34 g respectively Interestingly vegetables (in parti-cular tomatoes) provide a significant share of the proteins inthe Mediterranean countries In agreement with expectationsbased on pasta consumption the highest cereals and thelowest potato contribution (16 g of protein supply) is foundin Italy Portugal is leading in the consumption of potatoesand Spain in pulses In spite of the latter it should beremarked that the present contribution of pulses is surpris-ingly low in all countries (ranging from 0 to 37 g) consideringtheir age-old importance as a protein-delivering foodstuffuntil 1945 (Smil 2000) Noteworthy is the protein contributionof stimulants such as coffee in the Scandinavian countriesand the Netherlands which are at levels approaching thoseof vegetables in these countries Self-evidently alcoholic bev-erages prove important in beer-drinking but not in wine-drinking countries
After summation of the five meat categories this source isgenerally the largest supplier of animal proteins but its totaldiet contribution (317 g) is not very much higher than that ofcereals on average in agreement with Grigg (1995) The dif-ferent varieties of meat are not equally preferred in all coun-tries Especially pork though the largest meat proteinsupplier in general shows large variations in its relative con-tribution The difference between the highest (227 g in Aus-tria) and the lowest (67 g in the UK) is more than threefoldDirectly behind meat milk (including cheese) is the secondmost important supplier of animal proteins in most EU coun-tries ranging from 139 (Spain) to 282 g (The Netherlands)Offal seems to be exceptionally popular in Ireland (almost10 of total protein supply) possibly in consequence of thetraditional Irish stew
From Table 1 it may also be concluded that the fishsea-food food group is relatively unimportant as a source of pro-tein (72 g on average) although its contribution almostmatches the average share of beef and veal (76 g) Howeverthe fishseafood group is responsible for a large variationbetween countries That Portugal is the top fish-consumingnation (157 g supplied protein) is hardly surprising but thatIreland (34 g) is almost as low as land-locked Austria (29 g) iscertainly remarkable for a country with such plentiful marineand freshwater resources Eurostat (2005) data also indicate alow level of household expenses on fish in both Ireland andAustria and the Irish national food consumption survey con-firms a low intake (Harrington et al 2001)
A more systematic way of dealing with the range in con-tributions of the various protein sources is to reduce thedimensionality of the data by applying a principal componentanalysis In the analysis those protein source categories ofTable 1 were included that contribute on average at least 1 gof protein Each variable was weighted in proportion to itsaverage diet contribution (ie the weight of cereals in theoptimal scaling approach was set at 26) The results of theanalysis demonstrate that the differences between the coun-tries can be summarized in two statistical dimensions(accounting for 64 of the variance) Interestingly the plot
of the scores of the countries on these dimensions shows asurprising resemblance to the map of Europe after rotationand mirroring which do not influence the relationshipsbetween the depicted elements This suggests a strong influ-ence of location (latitude in particular) on protein diets
The upper part of Fig 1 graphically displays the positionsof the 14 countries on the two dimensions the lower partpresents the loadings of the protein categories in their role ofvariables that contribute to the specified dimensionality Thevertical dimension separates countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals from countrieswith high supplies of protein derived from milk and to amuch lesser degree stimulants The main contrast is thatbetween Portugal Italy and Greece on the one hand andThe Netherlands Sweden and Finland on the other Thehorizontal dimension separates countries with a relativelyhigh share of beef and milk protein from countries thatdepend on other protein sources The exceptional positionof Spain is largely determined by the relatively low supplyof milk protein in that country The bottom part of Fig 1
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Gramperson in 196130 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
SwedenDenmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
AustriaFrance
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Plant protein in 2001 and 1961
30 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
SpainPortugal
Greece
Animal protein in 2001 and 1961
Gramperson in 1961
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Fig 2 ndashNational averages of animal protein supply and plantprotein supply in the years 2001 and 1961 Source FAO(2005)
271E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
shows the statistical relationship between the proteinsources expressed as positive or negative correlations (ldquoload-ingsrdquo) with each of the two dimensions The correlations areindicated by the length and the direction of lines starting atthe origin (point 00) Interestingly the figure shows that theloadings of the main varieties of meat (eg pork beef andpoultry) point in different directions indicating that eachcountry has its own preference for one of these three proteinsources without neglecting the others The small loading ofthe category fish protein means that high or low fish supplyis not very indicative of any related dietary protein prefer-ences In other words apart from their relatively high fishconsumption countries such as Spain and Sweden may nothave many dietary characteristics in common
Further analysis demonstrates that the vertical dimensionof Fig 1 is crucial in separating the 14 countries in relationwith a number of relevant characteristics The scores of thecountries on the vertical dimension were significantly corre-lated with four related variables high positive scores (iemore plant proteins) were found among countries in thesouthern part of Europe (Pearson correlation coefficient r=minus 754 with countrys average latitude) countries with a rela-tively low level of national income (r=minus 761 with GrossDomestic Product per capita) countries with higher (sic)meat expenses per household member (r=653 with Eurostat(2005) meat purchasing data) and countries that do notbelong to Europes Protestant zone (r=minus0529 with percentageof Protestant inhabitants see Breacutechon (2004)) Although thesefour variables also proved interrelated their combined rela-tionship with the vertical dimension of Fig 1 was very high(R2= 971) and their regression weights indicated that eachhad a contribution of its own Some additional analysesmay clarify the meaning of these relationships
A methodologically proper way to clarify the combinedeffects of the countries average latitude and their nationalincome is to put the protein supply data in the perspective ofrising incomes since the 1960s From the FAOSTAT supplydata it is clear that the average total protein supply in theEU-15 member states has increased gradually and consis-tently during 1961ndash2001 and that this increase was attributa-ble to a rise in animal proteins exclusively Fig 2 summarizesthis development by displaying national averages of animalprotein supply and plant protein supply in the years 2001 and1961 The figure clearly shows that the supply of plant proteinshas been remarkably stable over the past forty years while thesupply of animal proteins has increased significantly As aresult in all countries nowadays the supply of animal proteinsis larger than the supply of plant proteins The supply of plantproteins shows a decreasing trend from southern to northerncountries once linked to the phenomenon of a high-plant andlow-meat ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet However especiallythe countries that once showed a ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet(ie Greece and Italy) have increased the supply of animalprotein in the recent past
As the rising incomes did not affect the observed strongNorthndashSouth trends in plant protein supply historical differ-ences in availability and culture may still be an importantcause underlying present differences in demand In the caseof meat protein rising incomes may almost have completedthe diet transformation that started after World War II As
Grigg (1999) notes by the 1960s most countries in westernEurope ndash save the Mediterranean area ndash had already gonethrough the transition Given the S shaped relationshipbetween national income and meat consumption and theposition of all EU-15 countries in the saturated part of thecurve (GDPN$10000) (Keyzer et al 2005) it is to be expectedthat the consumption of meat will not increase much with acontinued rise of incomes
A complication to this relationship is that the amount ofmoney consumers spend on food seems partly dependent oncultural factors The different food cultures of countries in theProtestant and the Catholic cultural zone may allow a path-dependent development Fig 3 shows that increasing annualexpenditures of households are related to increasing expen-ditures on meat but that the average meat expenditures aresignificantly higher among countries in the Catholic zone
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
Table 1 ndashMain sources of daily protein supply (gperson)in 14 European countries per category lowest levelhighest level range and mean in 1999
Source Lowest level(countryinvolved)
Highest level(countryinvolved)
Range Mean
Cereals 176 (TheNetherlands)
355 (Italy) 179 262
Potatoes 16 (Italy) 55 (Portugal) 39 34Pulses b01 (4
countries)37 (Spain) 37 16
Tree nuts b01 (12countries)
17 (Greece) 17 02
Oil crops b01 (10countries)
16 (Germany) 16 04
Vegetables 21 (Finland) 77 (Greece) 56 41Fruit 10 (Finland) 25 (Greece) 15 14Stimulants
(includingcoffee)
b01 (Greece) 26 (Denmark) 26 14
Alcoholicbeverages
b01 (6countries)
26 (Ireland) 26 09
Beef andveal
46 (Germany) 104 (Italy) 58 76
Mutton andgoat
01 (Finland) 54 (Greece) 53 13
Pork 67 (UnitedKingdom)
227 (Austria) 160 125
Poultry 46 (Sweden) 117 (Ireland) 71 79Offal 05 (Denmark) 96 (Ireland) 91 24Milk
(includingcheese)
139 (Spain) 282 (TheNetherlands)
143 224
Eggs 21 (Ireland) 50 (France) 29 37Fish
seafood29 (Austria) 157 (Portugal) 128 72
Total plantprotein
326 (TheNetherlands)
533 (Greece) 207 419
Totalanimalprotein
553 (UnitedKingdom)
762 (France) 209 667
Totalprotein
958 (Germany) 1189 (Portugal) 231 1086
Source (FAO 2005)Including the small contributions of ldquoother sourcesrdquo
269E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
under-reporting is possible Despite these limitations thedata may provide useful information to support between-country comparisons of protein consumption
A broader dataset is the compilation of national house-hold budget surveys provided by Eurostat (2005) every 5years These data refer to consumption expenditures at thehousehold level After a conversion step to eliminate differ-ences in price levels between countries these data allow forvolume comparisons but they are not very detailed in termsof specified protein sources For example all householdexpenditures on meat are lumped into one category More-over the ingredients of meals eaten outside are not specifiedeither At the country level they nevertheless provide someindicators of consumption patterns
The third dataset is based on the FAOSTAT supply data(FAO 2005) The set refers to national per capita supply atretail level (=production+importsminusexports) and the data arefar more detailed than the Eurostat data including mealseaten outside Due to food wasted beyond retail level thesupply data are weak indicators of the food actually con-sumed by individuals but they are probably the most useddata concerning human nutrition (Smil 2000) Since no betterpublished data are available about specific sources of proteinconsumption the FAOSTAT supply data will be employedhere to compare supply patterns as indicators of consump-tion patterns They will be used to reveal overall trends pri-marily which is generally considered feasible (Grigg 1995Verger et al 2002) Current FAOSTAT data cover the periodfrom 1961 to 2003 but we will mainly use data on 1999 mdash themost recent year of the Eurostat household budget survey AsFAOSTAT often combines the data about Belgium and Lux-embourg the actual number of countries is 14
To identify patterns of protein consumption we use aprincipal component analysis which reduces the large setof variables (ie protein source categories) into a smaller setof uncorrelated components that represent most of the infor-mation found in the original variables Instead of standardprincipal components analysis we use an optimal-scalingapproach that allows weighting of the variables in proportionto their average diet contribution The statistical methodCategorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) allowsus to examine how the protein-based differences between thecountries can be summarized by reducing the dimensionalityof the data (SPSS 2003)
In addition a number of correlations with relevant vari-ables will be calculated One of the variables is the countriesaverage latitude (derived from CIA 2003) which may serve asa proxy for differences in climate vegetation and historicaldevelopment Because national incomes in northern Europeare higher it is also important to consider the role of theirGross Domestic Product per capita (current prices US dollarsper person derived from IMF 2003) which may serve as aproxy for differences in income Ecological and economic fac-tors are complemented with data on cultural differences inparticular the boundaries between a more ascetic Protestantfood culture and a more indulgent Catholic pattern (Aske-gaard and Madsen 1998) These boundaries were derivedfrom the European Values Survey (eg Breacutechon 2004) Therelationship between these variables is treated in a descrip-tive way as the 14 countries involved are not a random sam-
ple of statistically independent cases Although it should beemphasized that the correlates of national differences in con-sumption patterns are often so intertwined that they cannotbe fully spelled out by statistical techniques a cautiousapproach may provide useful information (Scheuch 1989)
3 Results
Table 1 specifies the main sources of protein supply (gpersonday) in 14 European countries Compared to the overall meanof 1086 g dietary proteins it appears that plant-derived foodsprovide the smallest part ranging from 326 (The Nether-lands) to 533 g (Greece) Of all plant sources cereals (mostlywheat) are the largest supplier of plant protein in all EUcountries which is in agreement with the global trend
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
20
10
00
-10
-20
-20 -10 00 10 20
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
10
05
00
-05
-10
-10 -05 00 05 10
fish
eggs
milk
muttonpoultry
pork
beef
stimulants
vegetables
pulses
potatoes
cereals
offal
Loadings of protein categories
Country scores
Fig 1 ndashPlots of the statistical analysis country scores (top)and relationships between the protein categories (bottom)after rotation and mirroring of the original output
270 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
(Grigg 1995) On average cereals contribute 262 g or 63 of allplant protein the largest contribution is in Italy (355 g) thelowest in The Netherlands (176 g) Vegetables and potatoesare the second and third most important suppliers of plantprotein but their average contributions are relatively small41 and 34 g respectively Interestingly vegetables (in parti-cular tomatoes) provide a significant share of the proteins inthe Mediterranean countries In agreement with expectationsbased on pasta consumption the highest cereals and thelowest potato contribution (16 g of protein supply) is foundin Italy Portugal is leading in the consumption of potatoesand Spain in pulses In spite of the latter it should beremarked that the present contribution of pulses is surpris-ingly low in all countries (ranging from 0 to 37 g) consideringtheir age-old importance as a protein-delivering foodstuffuntil 1945 (Smil 2000) Noteworthy is the protein contributionof stimulants such as coffee in the Scandinavian countriesand the Netherlands which are at levels approaching thoseof vegetables in these countries Self-evidently alcoholic bev-erages prove important in beer-drinking but not in wine-drinking countries
After summation of the five meat categories this source isgenerally the largest supplier of animal proteins but its totaldiet contribution (317 g) is not very much higher than that ofcereals on average in agreement with Grigg (1995) The dif-ferent varieties of meat are not equally preferred in all coun-tries Especially pork though the largest meat proteinsupplier in general shows large variations in its relative con-tribution The difference between the highest (227 g in Aus-tria) and the lowest (67 g in the UK) is more than threefoldDirectly behind meat milk (including cheese) is the secondmost important supplier of animal proteins in most EU coun-tries ranging from 139 (Spain) to 282 g (The Netherlands)Offal seems to be exceptionally popular in Ireland (almost10 of total protein supply) possibly in consequence of thetraditional Irish stew
From Table 1 it may also be concluded that the fishsea-food food group is relatively unimportant as a source of pro-tein (72 g on average) although its contribution almostmatches the average share of beef and veal (76 g) Howeverthe fishseafood group is responsible for a large variationbetween countries That Portugal is the top fish-consumingnation (157 g supplied protein) is hardly surprising but thatIreland (34 g) is almost as low as land-locked Austria (29 g) iscertainly remarkable for a country with such plentiful marineand freshwater resources Eurostat (2005) data also indicate alow level of household expenses on fish in both Ireland andAustria and the Irish national food consumption survey con-firms a low intake (Harrington et al 2001)
A more systematic way of dealing with the range in con-tributions of the various protein sources is to reduce thedimensionality of the data by applying a principal componentanalysis In the analysis those protein source categories ofTable 1 were included that contribute on average at least 1 gof protein Each variable was weighted in proportion to itsaverage diet contribution (ie the weight of cereals in theoptimal scaling approach was set at 26) The results of theanalysis demonstrate that the differences between the coun-tries can be summarized in two statistical dimensions(accounting for 64 of the variance) Interestingly the plot
of the scores of the countries on these dimensions shows asurprising resemblance to the map of Europe after rotationand mirroring which do not influence the relationshipsbetween the depicted elements This suggests a strong influ-ence of location (latitude in particular) on protein diets
The upper part of Fig 1 graphically displays the positionsof the 14 countries on the two dimensions the lower partpresents the loadings of the protein categories in their role ofvariables that contribute to the specified dimensionality Thevertical dimension separates countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals from countrieswith high supplies of protein derived from milk and to amuch lesser degree stimulants The main contrast is thatbetween Portugal Italy and Greece on the one hand andThe Netherlands Sweden and Finland on the other Thehorizontal dimension separates countries with a relativelyhigh share of beef and milk protein from countries thatdepend on other protein sources The exceptional positionof Spain is largely determined by the relatively low supplyof milk protein in that country The bottom part of Fig 1
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Gramperson in 196130 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
SwedenDenmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
AustriaFrance
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Plant protein in 2001 and 1961
30 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
SpainPortugal
Greece
Animal protein in 2001 and 1961
Gramperson in 1961
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Fig 2 ndashNational averages of animal protein supply and plantprotein supply in the years 2001 and 1961 Source FAO(2005)
271E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
shows the statistical relationship between the proteinsources expressed as positive or negative correlations (ldquoload-ingsrdquo) with each of the two dimensions The correlations areindicated by the length and the direction of lines starting atthe origin (point 00) Interestingly the figure shows that theloadings of the main varieties of meat (eg pork beef andpoultry) point in different directions indicating that eachcountry has its own preference for one of these three proteinsources without neglecting the others The small loading ofthe category fish protein means that high or low fish supplyis not very indicative of any related dietary protein prefer-ences In other words apart from their relatively high fishconsumption countries such as Spain and Sweden may nothave many dietary characteristics in common
Further analysis demonstrates that the vertical dimensionof Fig 1 is crucial in separating the 14 countries in relationwith a number of relevant characteristics The scores of thecountries on the vertical dimension were significantly corre-lated with four related variables high positive scores (iemore plant proteins) were found among countries in thesouthern part of Europe (Pearson correlation coefficient r=minus 754 with countrys average latitude) countries with a rela-tively low level of national income (r=minus 761 with GrossDomestic Product per capita) countries with higher (sic)meat expenses per household member (r=653 with Eurostat(2005) meat purchasing data) and countries that do notbelong to Europes Protestant zone (r=minus0529 with percentageof Protestant inhabitants see Breacutechon (2004)) Although thesefour variables also proved interrelated their combined rela-tionship with the vertical dimension of Fig 1 was very high(R2= 971) and their regression weights indicated that eachhad a contribution of its own Some additional analysesmay clarify the meaning of these relationships
A methodologically proper way to clarify the combinedeffects of the countries average latitude and their nationalincome is to put the protein supply data in the perspective ofrising incomes since the 1960s From the FAOSTAT supplydata it is clear that the average total protein supply in theEU-15 member states has increased gradually and consis-tently during 1961ndash2001 and that this increase was attributa-ble to a rise in animal proteins exclusively Fig 2 summarizesthis development by displaying national averages of animalprotein supply and plant protein supply in the years 2001 and1961 The figure clearly shows that the supply of plant proteinshas been remarkably stable over the past forty years while thesupply of animal proteins has increased significantly As aresult in all countries nowadays the supply of animal proteinsis larger than the supply of plant proteins The supply of plantproteins shows a decreasing trend from southern to northerncountries once linked to the phenomenon of a high-plant andlow-meat ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet However especiallythe countries that once showed a ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet(ie Greece and Italy) have increased the supply of animalprotein in the recent past
As the rising incomes did not affect the observed strongNorthndashSouth trends in plant protein supply historical differ-ences in availability and culture may still be an importantcause underlying present differences in demand In the caseof meat protein rising incomes may almost have completedthe diet transformation that started after World War II As
Grigg (1999) notes by the 1960s most countries in westernEurope ndash save the Mediterranean area ndash had already gonethrough the transition Given the S shaped relationshipbetween national income and meat consumption and theposition of all EU-15 countries in the saturated part of thecurve (GDPN$10000) (Keyzer et al 2005) it is to be expectedthat the consumption of meat will not increase much with acontinued rise of incomes
A complication to this relationship is that the amount ofmoney consumers spend on food seems partly dependent oncultural factors The different food cultures of countries in theProtestant and the Catholic cultural zone may allow a path-dependent development Fig 3 shows that increasing annualexpenditures of households are related to increasing expen-ditures on meat but that the average meat expenditures aresignificantly higher among countries in the Catholic zone
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
20
10
00
-10
-20
-20 -10 00 10 20
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Dim
ensi
on 1
Dimension 2
10
05
00
-05
-10
-10 -05 00 05 10
fish
eggs
milk
muttonpoultry
pork
beef
stimulants
vegetables
pulses
potatoes
cereals
offal
Loadings of protein categories
Country scores
Fig 1 ndashPlots of the statistical analysis country scores (top)and relationships between the protein categories (bottom)after rotation and mirroring of the original output
270 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
(Grigg 1995) On average cereals contribute 262 g or 63 of allplant protein the largest contribution is in Italy (355 g) thelowest in The Netherlands (176 g) Vegetables and potatoesare the second and third most important suppliers of plantprotein but their average contributions are relatively small41 and 34 g respectively Interestingly vegetables (in parti-cular tomatoes) provide a significant share of the proteins inthe Mediterranean countries In agreement with expectationsbased on pasta consumption the highest cereals and thelowest potato contribution (16 g of protein supply) is foundin Italy Portugal is leading in the consumption of potatoesand Spain in pulses In spite of the latter it should beremarked that the present contribution of pulses is surpris-ingly low in all countries (ranging from 0 to 37 g) consideringtheir age-old importance as a protein-delivering foodstuffuntil 1945 (Smil 2000) Noteworthy is the protein contributionof stimulants such as coffee in the Scandinavian countriesand the Netherlands which are at levels approaching thoseof vegetables in these countries Self-evidently alcoholic bev-erages prove important in beer-drinking but not in wine-drinking countries
After summation of the five meat categories this source isgenerally the largest supplier of animal proteins but its totaldiet contribution (317 g) is not very much higher than that ofcereals on average in agreement with Grigg (1995) The dif-ferent varieties of meat are not equally preferred in all coun-tries Especially pork though the largest meat proteinsupplier in general shows large variations in its relative con-tribution The difference between the highest (227 g in Aus-tria) and the lowest (67 g in the UK) is more than threefoldDirectly behind meat milk (including cheese) is the secondmost important supplier of animal proteins in most EU coun-tries ranging from 139 (Spain) to 282 g (The Netherlands)Offal seems to be exceptionally popular in Ireland (almost10 of total protein supply) possibly in consequence of thetraditional Irish stew
From Table 1 it may also be concluded that the fishsea-food food group is relatively unimportant as a source of pro-tein (72 g on average) although its contribution almostmatches the average share of beef and veal (76 g) Howeverthe fishseafood group is responsible for a large variationbetween countries That Portugal is the top fish-consumingnation (157 g supplied protein) is hardly surprising but thatIreland (34 g) is almost as low as land-locked Austria (29 g) iscertainly remarkable for a country with such plentiful marineand freshwater resources Eurostat (2005) data also indicate alow level of household expenses on fish in both Ireland andAustria and the Irish national food consumption survey con-firms a low intake (Harrington et al 2001)
A more systematic way of dealing with the range in con-tributions of the various protein sources is to reduce thedimensionality of the data by applying a principal componentanalysis In the analysis those protein source categories ofTable 1 were included that contribute on average at least 1 gof protein Each variable was weighted in proportion to itsaverage diet contribution (ie the weight of cereals in theoptimal scaling approach was set at 26) The results of theanalysis demonstrate that the differences between the coun-tries can be summarized in two statistical dimensions(accounting for 64 of the variance) Interestingly the plot
of the scores of the countries on these dimensions shows asurprising resemblance to the map of Europe after rotationand mirroring which do not influence the relationshipsbetween the depicted elements This suggests a strong influ-ence of location (latitude in particular) on protein diets
The upper part of Fig 1 graphically displays the positionsof the 14 countries on the two dimensions the lower partpresents the loadings of the protein categories in their role ofvariables that contribute to the specified dimensionality Thevertical dimension separates countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals from countrieswith high supplies of protein derived from milk and to amuch lesser degree stimulants The main contrast is thatbetween Portugal Italy and Greece on the one hand andThe Netherlands Sweden and Finland on the other Thehorizontal dimension separates countries with a relativelyhigh share of beef and milk protein from countries thatdepend on other protein sources The exceptional positionof Spain is largely determined by the relatively low supplyof milk protein in that country The bottom part of Fig 1
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Gramperson in 196130 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
SwedenDenmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
AustriaFrance
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Plant protein in 2001 and 1961
30 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
SpainPortugal
Greece
Animal protein in 2001 and 1961
Gramperson in 1961
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Fig 2 ndashNational averages of animal protein supply and plantprotein supply in the years 2001 and 1961 Source FAO(2005)
271E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
shows the statistical relationship between the proteinsources expressed as positive or negative correlations (ldquoload-ingsrdquo) with each of the two dimensions The correlations areindicated by the length and the direction of lines starting atthe origin (point 00) Interestingly the figure shows that theloadings of the main varieties of meat (eg pork beef andpoultry) point in different directions indicating that eachcountry has its own preference for one of these three proteinsources without neglecting the others The small loading ofthe category fish protein means that high or low fish supplyis not very indicative of any related dietary protein prefer-ences In other words apart from their relatively high fishconsumption countries such as Spain and Sweden may nothave many dietary characteristics in common
Further analysis demonstrates that the vertical dimensionof Fig 1 is crucial in separating the 14 countries in relationwith a number of relevant characteristics The scores of thecountries on the vertical dimension were significantly corre-lated with four related variables high positive scores (iemore plant proteins) were found among countries in thesouthern part of Europe (Pearson correlation coefficient r=minus 754 with countrys average latitude) countries with a rela-tively low level of national income (r=minus 761 with GrossDomestic Product per capita) countries with higher (sic)meat expenses per household member (r=653 with Eurostat(2005) meat purchasing data) and countries that do notbelong to Europes Protestant zone (r=minus0529 with percentageof Protestant inhabitants see Breacutechon (2004)) Although thesefour variables also proved interrelated their combined rela-tionship with the vertical dimension of Fig 1 was very high(R2= 971) and their regression weights indicated that eachhad a contribution of its own Some additional analysesmay clarify the meaning of these relationships
A methodologically proper way to clarify the combinedeffects of the countries average latitude and their nationalincome is to put the protein supply data in the perspective ofrising incomes since the 1960s From the FAOSTAT supplydata it is clear that the average total protein supply in theEU-15 member states has increased gradually and consis-tently during 1961ndash2001 and that this increase was attributa-ble to a rise in animal proteins exclusively Fig 2 summarizesthis development by displaying national averages of animalprotein supply and plant protein supply in the years 2001 and1961 The figure clearly shows that the supply of plant proteinshas been remarkably stable over the past forty years while thesupply of animal proteins has increased significantly As aresult in all countries nowadays the supply of animal proteinsis larger than the supply of plant proteins The supply of plantproteins shows a decreasing trend from southern to northerncountries once linked to the phenomenon of a high-plant andlow-meat ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet However especiallythe countries that once showed a ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet(ie Greece and Italy) have increased the supply of animalprotein in the recent past
As the rising incomes did not affect the observed strongNorthndashSouth trends in plant protein supply historical differ-ences in availability and culture may still be an importantcause underlying present differences in demand In the caseof meat protein rising incomes may almost have completedthe diet transformation that started after World War II As
Grigg (1999) notes by the 1960s most countries in westernEurope ndash save the Mediterranean area ndash had already gonethrough the transition Given the S shaped relationshipbetween national income and meat consumption and theposition of all EU-15 countries in the saturated part of thecurve (GDPN$10000) (Keyzer et al 2005) it is to be expectedthat the consumption of meat will not increase much with acontinued rise of incomes
A complication to this relationship is that the amount ofmoney consumers spend on food seems partly dependent oncultural factors The different food cultures of countries in theProtestant and the Catholic cultural zone may allow a path-dependent development Fig 3 shows that increasing annualexpenditures of households are related to increasing expen-ditures on meat but that the average meat expenditures aresignificantly higher among countries in the Catholic zone
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Gramperson in 196130 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
SwedenDenmark
United KingdomIreland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
AustriaFrance
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Plant protein in 2001 and 1961
30 40 50 60 70
30
40
50
60
70
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
SpainPortugal
Greece
Animal protein in 2001 and 1961
Gramperson in 1961
Gra
mp
erso
n in
200
1
Fig 2 ndashNational averages of animal protein supply and plantprotein supply in the years 2001 and 1961 Source FAO(2005)
271E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
shows the statistical relationship between the proteinsources expressed as positive or negative correlations (ldquoload-ingsrdquo) with each of the two dimensions The correlations areindicated by the length and the direction of lines starting atthe origin (point 00) Interestingly the figure shows that theloadings of the main varieties of meat (eg pork beef andpoultry) point in different directions indicating that eachcountry has its own preference for one of these three proteinsources without neglecting the others The small loading ofthe category fish protein means that high or low fish supplyis not very indicative of any related dietary protein prefer-ences In other words apart from their relatively high fishconsumption countries such as Spain and Sweden may nothave many dietary characteristics in common
Further analysis demonstrates that the vertical dimensionof Fig 1 is crucial in separating the 14 countries in relationwith a number of relevant characteristics The scores of thecountries on the vertical dimension were significantly corre-lated with four related variables high positive scores (iemore plant proteins) were found among countries in thesouthern part of Europe (Pearson correlation coefficient r=minus 754 with countrys average latitude) countries with a rela-tively low level of national income (r=minus 761 with GrossDomestic Product per capita) countries with higher (sic)meat expenses per household member (r=653 with Eurostat(2005) meat purchasing data) and countries that do notbelong to Europes Protestant zone (r=minus0529 with percentageof Protestant inhabitants see Breacutechon (2004)) Although thesefour variables also proved interrelated their combined rela-tionship with the vertical dimension of Fig 1 was very high(R2= 971) and their regression weights indicated that eachhad a contribution of its own Some additional analysesmay clarify the meaning of these relationships
A methodologically proper way to clarify the combinedeffects of the countries average latitude and their nationalincome is to put the protein supply data in the perspective ofrising incomes since the 1960s From the FAOSTAT supplydata it is clear that the average total protein supply in theEU-15 member states has increased gradually and consis-tently during 1961ndash2001 and that this increase was attributa-ble to a rise in animal proteins exclusively Fig 2 summarizesthis development by displaying national averages of animalprotein supply and plant protein supply in the years 2001 and1961 The figure clearly shows that the supply of plant proteinshas been remarkably stable over the past forty years while thesupply of animal proteins has increased significantly As aresult in all countries nowadays the supply of animal proteinsis larger than the supply of plant proteins The supply of plantproteins shows a decreasing trend from southern to northerncountries once linked to the phenomenon of a high-plant andlow-meat ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet However especiallythe countries that once showed a ldquoMediterraneanrdquo type of diet(ie Greece and Italy) have increased the supply of animalprotein in the recent past
As the rising incomes did not affect the observed strongNorthndashSouth trends in plant protein supply historical differ-ences in availability and culture may still be an importantcause underlying present differences in demand In the caseof meat protein rising incomes may almost have completedthe diet transformation that started after World War II As
Grigg (1999) notes by the 1960s most countries in westernEurope ndash save the Mediterranean area ndash had already gonethrough the transition Given the S shaped relationshipbetween national income and meat consumption and theposition of all EU-15 countries in the saturated part of thecurve (GDPN$10000) (Keyzer et al 2005) it is to be expectedthat the consumption of meat will not increase much with acontinued rise of incomes
A complication to this relationship is that the amount ofmoney consumers spend on food seems partly dependent oncultural factors The different food cultures of countries in theProtestant and the Catholic cultural zone may allow a path-dependent development Fig 3 shows that increasing annualexpenditures of households are related to increasing expen-ditures on meat but that the average meat expenditures aresignificantly higher among countries in the Catholic zone
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000
250
300
350
400
450
Finland
Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Germany
Belgium + L
Austria
France
Italy
Spain
PortugalGreece
Exp
endi
ture
on
mea
t (P
PS
per
son)
Overall expenditure (PPSperson)
Fig 3 ndashExpenditure on meat in 1999 as a function of annualhousehold expenditure in Purchasing Power Standards(Eurostat 2005) among predominantly Protestant countries(names underlined no data on Sweden) and non-Protestantcountries
272 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
than among the countries in the Protestant zone (countrynames underlined) This suggests that consumers in theCatholic zone are more inclined to appreciate meat as a plea-sure and an expression of the familys social position (eg seeSarasuacutea 2001) Fig 3 clearly demonstrates that even thosecountries in the Catholic cultural zone with a low level ofoverall household expenditures spent more on meat thansome Protestant countries with a much higher level of overallhousehold expenditures Notably these differences should beunderstood at the level of cultural zones sociologicalresearch has shown that the basic values of Catholics inmixed countries such as Germany and the Netherlandsresemble those of their Protestant countrymen more thanthey resemble Catholics in other countries (Inglehart andBaker 2000) In other words the differences mentionedabove do not necessarily mean that Protestants and Catholicsfrom the same country will differ in their diets
The diet diversity created by ecological economic and cul-tural factors suggests that it is feasible to reduce the produc-tion of meat and its environmental burden within theboundaries determined by nutrition and health An obviousreference point is the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s characterized by high consumption of plant proteinand low consumption of meat protein (Grigg 1999) This dietmay not just appear to be relevant for a sustainable system offood production and consumption but also for public healthadherence to an East Mediterranean diet and healthful life-style is associated with lower rates of mortality (Knoops et al2004) It should be stressed at this point that a public healthperspective requires more insight into actual protein intakeby specified cohorts than just overall supply data The recentnational food consumption surveys in Sweden (Becker andPearson 2003) United Kingdom (Harrington et al 2001) Ire-land (Henderson et al 2003) and the Netherlands (Voedings-centrum 1998) showed that protein intake by adults isadequate and that it amounts to 70 to 80 of the level
indicated by the FAOSTAT supply data Only in Germany thispercentage was slightly higher (Mensink and Beitz 2004) Inthe Netherlands for instance the average intake of protein in1998 was 80 g (per adult per day) (Voedingscentrum 1998)which is lower than the supply of 106 g per capita Apartfrom differences in the denominator the gap between thefigures is primarily due to losses between national supply atretail level and consumption by the individual (Quist 2000)The intake of 80 g is on average higher than RDI (recom-mended daily intake) values which are specified in accor-dance with sex and age Based on recent insights on ahealthy diet the Dutch over-consumption of protein is 60(Health Council of the Netherlands 2001) Accordingly thereis room for a diet that is less dependent on meat proteins andthat is attractive from a sustainability perspective
4 Discussion
The current paper presents an overview of the diet in the EU-15 member states with respect to proteins As it turns outthe diets are rather diverse but everywhere the same majorsources can be distinguished Meat cereals and milk providethe main part of our dietary proteins Interestingly meatcontributes only slightly more than cereals As a generaltrend it was established that there are significant differencesbetween on the one hand countries with high supplies ofprotein provided by vegetables and cereals and on the otherhand countries with high supplies of protein derived frommilk In this respect Portugal Italy and Greece can be con-trasted with The Netherlands Sweden and Finland as thetwo poles of an axis with intermediate positions for theother countries A number of interrelated differencesbetween these countries clearly demonstrated how foodchoices are dependent on particular combinations of ecolo-gical economic and cultural factors that have developed overtime Major changes in one of these factors such as risingincomes create a development path that depends on theircommon past
The overall pattern of results demonstrates that anycross-national comparison of food ingredients will lead tomisleading interpretations without a historical dimensionThose comparative studies in particular that treat countriesas black boxes which may be called Germany or France mayresult in naiumlve use of cultural material for instance by refer-ring to national stereotypes In the words of an expert incomparative research Scheuch (1989) the dominant positionof the potato in German cuisine should not be explained by aGerman preference ldquoto dig deeprdquo In many instances thenational background does not affect food practices as a singlefactor but as a set of conditions such as amount of localproduction degree of specialization extensiveness of tradingnetworks and adherence to traditional life-styles To a certainextent these conditions may have been different in countriesfrom Europes Protestant and Catholic cultural zones (eg seeBlum and Dudley 2001) As all of these are currently high-income countries sharing many characteristics of modernsocieties we should be cautious not to overstate the differ-ences that we have found but from a sustainability perspec-tive they may be relevant
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
273E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
In the history of meat eating the real issues emerged afterthe introduction and growth of intensive (high input) live-stock industry It is in particular the production of pigs andpoultry that causes ecological imbalances as high levels ofinput and output are required for the conversion of plantprotein into meat protein This applies even if part of thelivestock feed is generated from sources that are not suitablefor human consumption such as waste-streams (Nonhebel2004) In addition to the environmental burden that this sys-tem creates its basic vulnerability should be emphasized (eganimal health and welfare issues) However the data depictedin Figs 1ndash3 show that a diet shift will not be easy because thegeneral trend in food markets has been the other way aroundThat is precisely why these data are of crucial importance forany attempt to design policy options that should contribute tomore sustainable protein consumption The role of ecologicaleconomic and cultural factors demonstrates that there willnot just be a single path to more food sustainability
Given the notion of multiple development paths any shiftin the direction of the East Mediterranean diet of the early1960s may appear interesting This involves a high consump-tion of olive oil vegetables fruits legumes and cereals mod-erately high fish intake and low consumption of meat anddairy products As far as this diet can serve as a referencepoint there are at least two cultural gaps to be bridged Thefirst gap is that between the East Mediterranean food cultureand the food cultures of the other European countries espe-cially those in the Protestant cultural zone The second gapruns between East Mediterranean consumers preferences inthe early 1960s and those in the late 2000s when they areadapted to a much higher level of income and meat con-sumption As many people will not be in favour of simplyturning the clock back these gaps can only be bridged ifpolicymakers in industry and government are able to addresssome genuine concerns of consumers However empiricalresearch on environmental concerns has indicated that thenotion of sustainability itself does not resonate with howpeople are experiencing everyday life it is too abstract andmany consumers are sceptical of the motives of governmentbusinesses and NGOs which propose simple solutions (Mac-naghten 2003) Therefore other consumer concerns have tobe identified
The past decades have shown a development in whichdifferences between north-western Europe and the Mediter-ranean have become linked with increasing concerns abouteither health or culinary traditions (Fischler 1999) In north-ern Europe the United Kingdom and also the United Statesthe dominant concern was health In France Italy Spain andother traditionally Catholic countries people also worriedabout what they perceive as threats to their culinary tradi-tions Given the intriguing connections between the EastMediterranean diet and concerns about health or culinarytraditions these may provide the inspiration for attempts topromote more sustainable protein consumption Examplesinclude eating less protein (the average Dutch over-consump-tion is 60) replacing a significant part of meat proteins byplant-derived proteins (including meat substitutes) andreplacing the remaining part by grass-fed extensively pro-duced types of meat (such as beef and lamb at the expenseof most pork and poultry)
5 Conclusion
The protein chain is responsible for a disproportionate andstill increasing share of environmental pressure In theoryreduction of meat production and replacement of the meatproteins with plant protein products would constitute a giantstep towards the goal of more sustainable consumptionActual practice however will be less straightforward Thedevelopment of policy options for a (partial) transition fromanimal to plant proteins has to be supported by multidisci-plinary analyses of the main forces shaping protein dietsBased on an analysis at the level of countries we have seenthat there is a strong influence of location on protein diets Itappeared that the diversity of those diets across Europe stillreflects ecologically induced differences between the classic(Roman and Greek) versus the Germanic and Celtic cultureswhich correspond closely to current Catholic and Protestantcultural zones During the past decades economic factorshave gained influence and the general trend in food marketshas resulted in large increases in meat consumptionAlthough it does not make sense to plea simply in favour ofturning back the clock we have come to the conclusion thatthere is room for a diet that is less dependent on meat pro-teins without going beyond the limits set by nutrition andhealth A shift in the direction of the East Mediterranean dietof the early 1960s is an interesting option In view of the roleof ecological economic and cultural factors we identified atleast two paths to more food sustainability These refer toconnections between the East Mediterranean diet and consu-mer concerns about health on the one hand and culinarytraditions on the other If policymakers in industry and gov-ernment are able to address these consumer concerns prop-erly they may also stimulate more sustainable protein dietsin stride
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge The Netherlands Organi-zation for Scientific Research (NWO) for generous financialsupport (grant number 45510300) of the PROFETAS researchprogramme and ZonMw (grant number 014-12-002) for sup-port of the Sustainable and healthy food programme Valu-able comments were provided by Pier Vellinga
R E F E R E N C E S
Askegaard S Madsen TK 1998 The local and the globalexploring traits of homogeneity and heterogeneity in Europeanfood cultures International Business Review 7 549ndash568
Becker W Pearson M 2003 Dietary habits and nutrient intake inSweden 1997ndash98 the second national food consumptionsurvey Swedish National Food Administration Available fromwwwslvsetemplatesSLV_Page____6558aspx last updated2003-02-19 Uppsala
Blum U Dudley L 2001 Religion and economic growth wasWeber right Journal of Evolutionary Economics 11 207ndash230
Breacutechon P 2004 Lheacuteritage chreacutetien de lEurope occidentalequen ont fait les nouvelles geacuteneacuterations (Christian heritage of
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
scan London pp 1ndash259Teuteberg HJ Flandrin J-L1999 The transformation of the
European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
Voedingscentrum 1998 Results of the Dutch Ood ConsumptionSurvey (Zo eet Nederland 1998 Resultaten van de Voedsel-consumptiepeiling 1997ndash1998 in Dutch) VoedingscentrumThe Hague
274 E C O L O G I C A L E C O N O M I C S 5 9 ( 2 0 0 6 ) 2 6 7 ndash 2 7 4
western Europe mdash how have the new generations handled it)Social Compass 51 203ndash219
CIA 2003 The world fact book Available from bwwwciagovciapublicationsfactbookindexnlN Washington DC
European Communities 2001 Consumers in Europe Facts andFigures Data 1996ndash2000 Office for Official Publications of theEuropean Communities Luxembourg
Eurostat 2005 Household Budget Surveys 1994 and 1999 Statis-tical Office of the European Communities last accessed April8th 2005 Luxembourg
Evans LT 1998 Feeding the Ten Billion Plants and PopulationGrowth Cambridge University Press Cambridge MA
FAO 2005 Food balance sheets Last updated 27 August 2004Available from bhttpappsfaoorgpagecollectionssubset=nutritionN
Fischler C 1999 The lsquoMcDonaldizationrsquo of cultureIn Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A (Eds) Food aCulinary History from Antiquity to the Present (Histoire delalimentation) Columbia University Press (Original workpublished in 1996 C Botsford et al Trans) New Yorkpp 530ndash547
Gilland B 2002 World population and food supply can foodproduction keep pace with population growth in the next half-century Food Policy 27 47ndash63
Grigg D 1995 The pattern of world protein consumptionGeoforum 26 1ndash17
Grigg D 1999 Food consumption in the Mediterranean regionTijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 90 391ndash409
Harrington K McGowan M Kiely M Robson P Livingstone MMorrissey P Gibney M 2001 Macronutrient intakes and foodsources in Irish adults findings of the NorthSouth IrelandFood Consumption Survey Public Health Nutrition 41051ndash1060
Health Council of the Netherlands 2001 Dietary reference intakesEnergy proteins fats and digestible carbohydrates (in Dutchwith English summary) Report 200119 Health Council of theNetherlands Available from bwwwgrnlN The Hague
Henderson L Gregory J Irving K Swan G 2003 The NationalDiet and Nutrition Survey Adults Aged 19 to 64 Years EnergyProtein Carbohydrate Fat and Alcohol Intake vol 2 HMSOwwwfoodgovukmultimediapdfsndnsv2pdf London
Hoffmann RC 2001 Frontier foods for late medieval consumersculture economy ecology Environment and History 7131ndash167
Hulshof KFAM Brussaard JH Kruizinga AG Telman JLoumlwik MRH 2003 Socio-economic status dietary intake and10 y trends the Dutch National Food Consumption SurveyEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition 57 128ndash137
Ilmonen K 1991 Change and stability in Finnish eating habits InFuumlrst EL Praumlttaumllauml R Ekstroumlm M Holm L Kjaernes U (Eds)Palatable Worlds Sociocultural Food Studies Solum ForlagOslo pp 169ndash184
IMF 2003 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product Available frombwwwimforgN Washington DC
Imhoff ML Bounoua L Ricketts T Loucks C Harriss RLawrence WT 2004 Global patterns in human consumptionof net primary production Nature 429 870ndash873
Inglehart R Baker WE 2000 Modernization cultural changeand the persistence of traditional values American Socio-logical Review 65 19ndash51
Keyzer MA Merbis MD Pavel IFPW vanWesenbeeck CFA2005 Diet shifts towards meat and the effects on cereal usecan we feed the animals in 2030 Ecological Economics 55187ndash202
Knoops KTB de Groot LCPGM Kromhout D Perrin AEMoreiras-Varela O Menotti A van Staveren WA 2004Mediterranean diet lifestyle factors and 10-year mortality in
elderly European men and women mdash The HALE project JAMAmdashJournal of the American Medical Association 292 1433ndash1439
Macnaghten P 2003 Embodying the environment in everyday lifepractices Sociological Review 51 63ndash84
Mensink GBM Beitz R 2004 Food and nutrient intake in EastandWest Germany 8 years after the reunification the GermanNutrition Survey 1998 European Journal of Clinical Nutrition58 1000ndash1010
Millstone E Lang T 2003 The Atlas of Food Earthscan LondonMontanari M 1994 The Culture of Food (La fame e labbondanza
storia dellalimentazione in Europa) Blackwell (Original workpublished in 1993) (Carl Ipsen Trans) Oxford
Nonhebel S 2004 On resource use in food production systemsthe value of livestock as lsquorest-stream upgrading systemrsquoEcological Economics 48 221ndash230
Pimentel D Pimentel M 2003 Sustainability of meat-based andplant-based diets and the environment American Journal ofClinical Nutrition 78 (suppl) 660Sndash663S
Pretty JN Ball AS Lang T Morison JIL 2005 Farm costs andfoodmiles an assessment of the full cost of the UKweekly foodbasket Food Policy 30 1ndash19
PROFETAS 2005 Protein Foods Environment Technology AndSociety Up-to-date information available frombwwwprofetasnlN Amsterdam
Quist J 2000 Towards Sustainable Shopping Cooking and Eatingin The Netherlands Background Report Delft University ofTechnology Delft The Netherlands available on CD ROM frombwwwsushousetudelftnlN
Sarasuacutea C 2001 Upholding status the diet of a noble family inearly nineteenth-century La Manga In Scholliers P (Ed)Food Drink and Identity Cooking Eating and Drinking inEurope since the Middle Ages Berg Oxford pp 37ndash61
Scheuch EK 1989 Theoretical implications of comparativesurvey-research mdash why the wheel of cross-cultural metho-dology keeps on being reinvented International Sociology 4147ndash167
Smil V 2000 Feeding theWorld a Challenge for the Twenty-FirstCentury The MIT Press Cambridge MA
Smil V 2002Worldwide transformation of diets burdens ofmeatproduction and opportunities for novel food proteins Enzymeand Microbial Technology 30 305ndash311
SPSS 2003 Release 120 SPSS Inc Chicago ILTansey G Worsley T 1995 The Food System A Guide Earth-
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European diet In Flandrin J-L Montanari M Sonnenfeld A(Eds) Food a Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present(Histoire de lalimentation) Columbia University Press (Origi-nal work published in 1996) (C Botsford et al Trans) NewYork pp 442ndash456
Tilman D Cassman KG Matson PA Naylor R Polasky S2002 Agricultural sustainability and intensive productionpractices Nature 418 671ndash677
Valli C Traill WB 2005 Culture and food a model of yoghurtconsumption in the EU Food Quality and Preference 16291ndash304
Verger Ph Ireland J Moslashller A Abravicius JA De Henauw SNaska A 2002 Improvement of comparability of dietaryintake assessment using currently available individual foodconsumption surveys European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56(Suppl 2) S18ndashS24
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