Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world

RESEARCH ARTICLE Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world Elissa M. Y. Cheng1, Carina M. L. Cheng2, Jacqueline ChooID1, Yanyun YanID1, Luis Roman CarrascoID1* 1 Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, 2 Department of Statistics and Data Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore * dbsctlr@nus.edu.sg Abstract Habitat loss for food production is a key threat to global biodiversity. Despite the importance of dietary choices on our capacity to mitigate the on-going biodiversity crisis, unlike with spe- cific ingredients or products, consumers have limited information on the biodiversity implica- tions of choosing to eat a certain popular dish. Here we estimated the biodiversity footprints of 151 popular local dishes from around the world when globally and locally produced and after calorical content standardization. We find that specific ingredients (beef, legumes, rice) encroaching on biodiversity hotspots with already very high agricultural pressure (e.g. India) lead to high biodiversity footprint in the dishes. Examples of high-biodiversity-footprint popu- lar dishes were beef dishes such as fraldinha (beef cut dish) originating from Brazil and legume dishes such as chana masala (chickpea curry) from India. Regardless of assuming locally or globally produced, feedlot or pasture livestock production, vegan and vegetarian dishes presented lower biodiversity footprints than dishes containing meat. Our results dem-

onstrate the feasibility of analysing biodiversity footprint at the dish level across multiple countries, making sustainable eating decisions more accessible to consumers. Introduction The world’s biodiversity is undergoing a sixth mass extinction event with the average verte- brate extinction rate 100 times higher than the background rate [1]. This unprecedented rate of species extinctions is primarily driven by habitat loss resulting from expanding agriculture [2]. With the rising human population and economic growth expected to increase the demand for food up to 70% by 2050, the problem will be further exacerbated [3]. Transitioning towards sustainable diets—diets that reconcile environmental protection with food security and a healthy lifestyle for present and future generations—has been identi- fied as a critical condition to conserve the world’s extant biodiversity [4]. With the food con- sumption of an average household contributing 20–30% of their final environmental impacts (including ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, abiotic resource depletion and ecotoxicity) [5], sustainable food systems are essential to ensure the economic, social-cultural, and environmental welfare for the future [4]. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296492 February 21, 2024 1 / 15 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Cheng EMY, Cheng CML, Choo J, Yan Y, Carrasco LR (2024) Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. PLoS ONE

19(2): e0296492. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0296492 Editor: Terence Sunderland, University of British Columbia, CANADA Received: May 27, 2023 Accepted: December 14, 2023 Published: February 21, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Cheng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: L.R.C. and Y.Y. received funds from the Ministry of Education of Singapore. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.