Takacs, B;
Borrion, A;
(2020)
The Use of Life Cycle-Based Approaches in the Food Service Sector to Improve Sustainability: A Systematic Review.
Sustainability
, 12
(9)
, Article 3504. 10.3390/su12093504.
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Abstract
With the prevalence of eating out increasing, the food service sector has an increasing role in accelerating the transition towards more sustainable and healthy food systems. While life cycle-based approaches are recommended to be used as reference methods for assessing the environmental sustainability of food systems and supply chains, their application in the food service sector is still relatively scarce. In this study, a systematic review was conducted to examine the use and effectiveness of life-cycle based interventions in improving the sustainability of food services. This review found that life-cycle based approaches are not only useful for identifying hotspots for impact reduction, but also for comparing the performance of different sustainability interventions. In particular, interventions targeting the production phase, such as promoting dietary change through menu planning in which high-impact ingredients (e.g., animal products) are replaced with low-impact ingredients (e.g., plant foods), had the highest improvement potential. Interventions targeting other phases of the catering supply chain (e.g., food storage, meal preparation, waste management) had considerably lower improvement potentials. This review article provides valuable insights on how the sustainability of the food service sector can be improved without the burden shifting of impacts, which interventions to prioritise, and where knowledge gaps in research exist. A key recommendation for future research is to focus on combined life cycle thinking approaches that are capable of addressing sustainability holistically in the food service sector by integrating and assessing the environmental, social and economic dimensions of interventions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Use of Life Cycle-Based Approaches in the Food Service Sector to Improve Sustainability: A Systematic Review |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3390/su12093504 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093504 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | food service; life cycle thinking; LCA; food systems; health; sustainability |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10096749 |
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