The True Price of External Health Effects from Food Consumption.

Although global food consumption costs more in terms of impact on human life than money is spent on it, health costs have not been consistently quantified or included in food prices to date. In this paper, a method to determine the external health costs of nutrition and dietetics is developed by employing the cost-of-illness (COI) and true cost accounting (TCA) approaches. This is done exemplarily for the reference country Germany.

Influencing Factors for Sustainable Dietary Transformation-A Case Study of German Food Consumption.

In a case study of Germany, we examine current food consumption along the three pillars of sustainability to evaluate external factors that influence consumers' dietary decisions. We investigate to what extent diets meet nutritional requirements (social factor), the diets' environmental impact (ecological factor), and the food prices' influence on purchasing behavior (economic factor). For this, we compare two dietary recommendations (plant-based, omnivorous) with the status quo, and we examine different consumption styles (conventional, organic produce).

Calculation of external climate costs for food highlights inadequate pricing of animal products.

Although the agricultural sector is globally a main emitter of greenhouse gases, thorough economic analysis of environmental and social externalities has not yet been conducted. Available research assessing agricultural external costs lacks a differentiation between farming systems and food categories. A method addressing this scientific gap is established in this paper and applied in the context of Germany.