The 2021 annual ASABE conference tool place between 12 to 16th July virtually. Graduate students at Miezah had the opportunity to make a poster presentation under the ASABE Special Interest Poster Session.
Presentation Topic: Food Choices Overview Dashboard (F-COD): A toolbox for selecting a healthy and environment sustainable and food.
Abstract
Chronic diseases account for about 40% of global death annually. The high prevalence of chronic diseases has inexplicably linked with the food choices and dietary patterns of consumers. Furthermore, food expenditure by consumers has been identified as a key contributor to environmental concerns such as climate change. Recent studies have also mapped out the environmental impacts of consumer choices, with evidence showing that a simple shift to low carbon food choice will reduce GHGEs from the food system. However, consumers lack the capability to assess the impact of their food expenditure on GHGEs as well as evaluate the nutritional implications and economic cost of these decisions. Here we describe Food Choices Overview Dashboard (F-COD), an intuitive and transparent toolbox that simultaneously maps out the environmental food prints as well as nutritional implications of consumers diet choices. At heightened concerns for healthy diets as well as environmental care, linking nutritional impacts to environmental repercussions using consumer food expenditure data and extending to include the economic weight of such decisions will be key to achieving a sustainable food system. The tool takes as input the user’s health background, allows the user to make a food choice, then maps out the collective environmental impact, nutritional implications and the associated economic burden of the selected diet combinations. F-COD runs on digital devices and has been carefully grounded in the best science.