Impacts of Reducing UK Beef Consumption Using a Revised Sustainable Diets Framework

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper addresses an important topic and the use of the case study approach is a useful way to show the strengths and limitations of the possible indicators. However at times I found it difficult to understand the research and was looking for more explanation than the authors provided.  While the case study was on reducing beef consumption, I consider it also important to focus on what the beef may be replacing when looking at overall sustainability of the diet. For some of the dimensions, a comparison did take place with a focus on legumes, but not always.

 

Abstract

It would be sufficient to state there are three existing sustainability frameworks and remove the references.

The aim indicates that there is a focus on replacing beef with legumes, but this is not always clear in the body of the paper when each measure was assessed.

Be clear about the terminology used: measure, metric, dimension – what is the difference between these? For example there are 8 dimensions but table 1 is headed measures and metrics.

 

Introduction

Line 77 – close bracket

91: The authors refer to ‘below ….’ but it is not clear where in the paper this argument for measures or metrics not being usable occurs.

 

Food Nutrient Adequacy

If comparing beef and legumes, is bioavailability accounted for in this assessment?

113: The importance of red meat also differs widely by culture and religion.

127: I have seen studies that look at GHG emissions and whether changes to the diets to improve sustainability can still meet Nutrient Reference Values. I’m not sure that the statement that studies just focus on calorie or protein is correct.

3.1.1 When referring to ‘red meat’ be clear if this includes processed meat or not.

3.1.2 Explain PAN, NBS and DNS

Three alternative dietary scenarios are referred to. How were these constructed? Did the authors construct these diets themselves for use the diets constructed by Chaudhary (of which there is little information)? It states that these scenarios exclude food from animal sources but one is a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet so contains eggs and dairy. More detail if required in this section to understand the diets and how they are assessed.

3.1.3. The information describing nutrient qualifying scores and Nutrient Balance Scores could be moved to 3.1.2 as this is methodology.

Line 162: I do not understand why the PAN score ‘may’ decrease – is this dependent on future calorie intake in these countries?

164: The authors state that the HGD improves the adequacy of many nutrients. What is this compared to, the current diet of these countries?

170: The findings indicate a possible increase in micronutrient deficiencies – what sort of diet was this compared to. If the specific foods that beef replaces are not specified, then this how can you compare? Or is this simply listing the micronutrients that beef is higher in compared to other foods – if so then simply state this.

 

Ecosystem stability

185: State how many sub-indicators remain.

It would be helpful to have the sub-indicators listed in a table. Could these be added to table 2?

 

Affordability and availability

To me an indicator that is titled ‘affordability’ should attempt to answer the overall question of whether reducing beef and increasing legumes changes the cost of a diet. A definition of affordability used in the context of this framework would be useful.

 

Social cultural wellbeing

This dimension discusses changes in employment by reducing beef consumption but does not discuss changes if legume consumption increases. Would this have implications on employment or labour conditions in other countries? There is discussion on animal welfare but no mention that there would be no animal welfare issues if beef was replaced by plant foods (unless animals are used in the production of crops such as ploughing).

 

Resilience

3.5.2 comments that freshwater withdrawal rate and ecological footprint can improve if reduced beef consumption but no mention is made of how this would change if more plant based foods like legumes are consumed. Reducing consumption of any food will improve resilience.

 

Waste and loss reduction

414: intext citation is in the wrong place

419: open bracket

422: Why is beef consumption considered partly or totally overconsumed based on overall calories rather than the amount of beef consumed?

428: A reduction in beef purchase ….

 

Table 5: If possible, in the headings, have the complete word on one line. (e.g. consumption )

Table 6: Headings: Food (capital F)

 

Culturally acceptable

I thought that culturally acceptable would be a lot broader than consumer preferences so I don’t consider that the title is appropriate. Culturally acceptable should consider ethnicity, religious preferences, social aspects etc

472: The study of Green et al is described. Was the red meat replaced with any particular foods, or more plant based foods in general?

 

Conclusion

This is a useful study as researchers consider how to assess and monitor the sustainability of diet changes and other aspects of diets, particularly unintended consequences. It would be useful to discuss the strengths and limitations of the framework used in this study and to make recommendations on how to improve the methodology, key missing information, indicators not assessed etc.

 

References

Some of the references do not have a publisher, weblink or journal name (e.g. 22, 60,66

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall the manuscript “Impacts of reducing UK beef consumption using a revised sustainable diets framework” is of a good quality and relevant, and constitute an interesting contribution to the field of sustainable food consumption and production.

The authors have adapted mostly Gustafson’s et al. (2016) new methodology to quantitatively characterize the performance of national food systems, based on a concept of sustainable nutrition security. In this assessment seven metrics are used, each of them cavers combination of multiple indicators. A novelty in the article is the study of the applicability of this method at the scale of an individual policy (UK) and on the example of specific product (beef).

While the paper is interesting, there are several areas I believe the paper could be improved.

In the article there is no information about the development of red meat and beef consumption in the UK, the level of consumption and its diversification in population groups, the dynamics of changes and the evaluation of these data in comparison with other European countries. These data should be the background for the analysis. Abstract: 8 food system metrics that have been chosen to assess sustainability should be included with an indication of where the benefits can be obtained. Table 1: In my opinion, there is no point in writing the same metrics in columns 1, 3 and 4 (plus (8) from Drewnowski). My proposal: show Gustafson et al. metrics in the first column, their indicators in the second column, and in the third – new indicators included in Chaudhary et al. methodology. The metrics analysed by Drewnowski could be written as a paragraph in the text. It should be further noted that ‘culturally acceptable’ from his paper   is included as an eighth metric in the own research. These changes will allow the reader to follow the development of the method.  Chapter 3.1.1. Reading this chapter you will find that red meat is an important source of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids. The authors should be more precise (vitamin D is mainly in offal, SFAs content in red meat?, energy value of red meat?, L 132 – which B vitamins?, L 136-137 – which nutrients?, L138-139 – what about vitamin E and K?) and avoid repetition (L130-132 and 135-136, L133 and 139 – combine them). It is also worth showing the nutrient composition of beef compared to other types of red meat. Chapter 3.2.1. and 3.2.2. Indicate which sub-indicators have been used in the calculations.

 

L 76-77: correct sentence

L 112: in addition (lowercase letter)

L 116:  adjust the title of the table accordingly to its new content

L 133: The reference [18] doesn’t contain the information on vitamin D intake; what is the right source? 

L 151, 180, 181, 191, 308, 312, 384: Chaudhary et al. [1]

L 415, 260, 251, 179, 174, 152, 125, 78, 37, 29: Legumes - According to FAO (1994) the term pulses refers to dried seeds of legumes, i.e. the plants whose fruit is enclosed in a pod, so it exclude green peas and fresh beans which are classified as vegetables. (Peanuts and soybean are also excluded from the group of pulses as they are used mainly for processing: soybean for oil and fodder production, and peanut for oil and peanut butter production). Using this distinction, please judge whether the term legumes is correctly used.

L 206-207: ‘UK crop supply’ means domestic production or total supply as the result of the food balance? ‘animal products’ – together red meat, poultry, milk, eggs? What part goes for beef production/cattle farming?

L 217: Table 2 –indicate the source [28] for ‘non-renewable energy use’; I didn’t find the Supplementary file for this table (only the pathogenic agents table is included)

L 221-263: the sources used in this chapter must be indicated in the references

L 423-424: If 80-100 g means daily overconsumption of beef, does this mean that 29.2 - 36.5 kg is yearly overconsumption? This makes it all the more reasonable to highlight the issue of beef consumption in the UK (as it was stated in the Comment 1).

L 408 and 426: compare CO2 eq with CO2e in L 203 and 204

L 435 Table 5: Column 3 is redundant because it contains only repetitions of columns 1 and 2.

L 384: Gustafson et al. [2]

L 447-484: the sources used in this chapter must be indicated in the references

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has undoubtedly an important intention - to try to translate the theoretical level of studying the problem of red meat consumption and analyzing her environmental impacts into an empirically applicable approach. However, the research methodology should be clearly stated and the cultural acceptability part should be amended / revised. 

Publishing an article also requires a refinement of the citation style - in its current form, the article inappropriately combines the Harward style with the prescribed citation by reference to the source number (specifically omit the year of writing the article). In many places (where are in actuall version only authors names), there is a need to add a reference to the article number (see examples below too).

Careful editing of the article is also important, as it contains many minor errors (missing or excess brackets, dots, etc.), see examples below.

Examples of errors and samples of text editing:

often missing dot in al

consumption in the UK (for example see [6,7] reduction in beef consumption; this will be substituted by increased consumption of general plant‐based foods, with a focus around legumes. - missing )

Acceptability. Overall scores for... several times there is excessive hard space in the text, eg here before Overall

"in this indicatorso further determination by this indicatoris not possible." - missing spaces in the text

"(as reported in Adak et al  in beef consumed..." -  missing [44]

using the methods presented by Chaudhury et al.. there is excessive point and missing [1], in resources description is Chaudhary (which is correct); six other "Chaudhury et al" in text

due to discards fr [62] om fresh beans - from is correct

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author's response indicates that they have added the following information (italics) into the paper but I can't see this. If the authors did intend for this to be added, please do so. Alternatively the response may have simply been to clarify my question but not required in the paper.

472: The study of Green et al.et al is described. Was the red meat replaced with any particular foods, or more plant based foods in general?

We have clarified the concern with the following:

“Economic demand systems which are based on purchasing data will help capture the consumer preferences via our purchasing patterns. However, the data will be aggregated, which means that we cannot estimate individual preferences using these price elasticities. Nevertheless, capturing consumer preferences via elasticities is one approach for measuring culturally acceptability with regards to different food groups. There are other approaches which would elicit preferences such as qualitative studies.

Green et al.et al is an example of using own price elasticities which unfortunately do not capture the substitutions. “

Author Response

Thank you for your comment, We had not added the text to the document, but now have done so to avoid confusion. We have added the text as footnotes.

Reviewer 3 Report

Please correct following formal inaccuracies: 

There is still mixture of citation styles in the head of the Table 1. Dimensions, measures, and metrics proposed in Chaudhary et al.[2], Gustafson et al., [3] ),
146 and Drewnowski [4], compared with our “hybrid” metrics.: 

(Chaudhary et al. 2018) [2]  (Drewnowski 2017)[4] (Gustafson et al.
2016) [3]

The same is content of Table 2: Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Ecosystem Stability indicators, Table 3: Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Resilience indicators, Table 4. Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Food Safety indicators

there must be lower indexes: Comprised of the following sub-indicators: PM2.5 exposure, PM2.5 exceedance, CO2 emissions intensity, methane emissions intensity, N2O emissions intensity, SO₂ emissions intensity, NOx emissions intensity.; in text are other cases, e.g. "From the tonnages provided in table 6, we calculated that household beef waste alone embodies 1,479,168 tonnes of CO2e per year"

"Among the 25 defined pathogenic agents listed by Adak et al," and in any similar cases - there is still missing . (spot) after al and missing citation with number in the same place

missing citation: "Cultural acceptability has been identified by Drewnowski"

 

Author Response

Thank you for the additional comments and suggestions! 

 

There is still mixture of citation styles in the head of the Table 1. Dimensions, measures, and metrics proposed in Chaudhary et al.[2], Gustafson et al., [3] ),

146 and Drewnowski [4], compared with our “hybrid” metrics.: 

(Chaudhary et al. 2018) [2]  (Drewnowski 2017)[4] (Gustafson et al.

2016) [3]

+This has been edited.

The same is content of Table 2: Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Ecosystem Stability indicators, Table 3: Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Resilience indicators, Table 4. Assessment of reduction of UK beef consumption on Food Safety indicators

+This has been edited.

there must be lower indexes: Comprised of the following sub-indicators: PM2.5 exposure, PM2.5 exceedance, CO2 emissions intensity, methane emissions intensity, N2O emissions intensity, SO₂ emissions intensity, NOx emissions intensity.; in text are other cases, e.g. "From the tonnages provided in table 6, we calculated that household beef waste alone embodies 1,479,168 tonnes of CO2e per year"

+This has been edited.

"Among the 25 defined pathogenic agents listed by Adak et al," and in any similar cases - there is still missing . (spot) after al and missing citation with number in the same place

+This has been edited.

missing citation: "Cultural acceptability has been identified by Drewnowski

+This has been edited.