Food consumption patterns are changing globally in terms of both quantity and composition. These lifestyle-related changes will increase global food demand significantly, causing environmental stresses accounted for by the external inputs required for food production. Figure 1 shows the typical dietary patterns observed globally during the period of 1961-2007, and also projections up until 2050.
Global food consumption patterns from 1961 to 2007 can be represented by sixteen systematically derived dietary patterns (See Figure 1). The patterns differ in regard to the food composition and calories content. The quantities of total calories, animal products, sugar-sweeteners, vegetable oils and vegetables consumed have a positive and exponential relationship with Human Development, using HDI as an indicator. In this respect, the data shows an improvement in dietary trends, as Figure 1 demonstrates a general shift from lower towards higher calorie diets.
Figure 1: Number of people living on a certain dietary pattern for each year (1961-2007)
Interpretation aid and possible limitations
Figure 2 maps the dietary patterns observed or projected across the selected countries for a specific year. The dietary patterns differ in regard to the total calorie content and the composition, which is represented by colours. The dietary patterns are general cluster representations based on global food consumption data for the last 50 years. Therefore, an individual country's absolute food consumption for one year might deviate from the composition of the dietary pattern cluster to which it belonged for the specific year.
Figure 2: The sixteen dietary patterns observed globally for the period 1961 to 2007.
Method
We characterized dietary patterns using global data on total food consumption and food composition per country from 1961 to 2007. We used a self-organizing map (SOM) to cluster the data and obtain the typical dietary patterns. Data on the Human Development Index (HDI) from the HDI trend 1980-2007 was used to determine the relationship between HDI and food consumption associated with the dietary patterns. Based on this relationship and the HDI projection taken from Costa et al. 2011, we estimated future food consumption.
Reference
Pradhan P, Reusser DE, Kropp JP (2013) Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Diets. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62228. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062228
