Traditional diets are those historically eaten by endogenous populations. Well known traditional diets include the Nordic, the Mediterranean and the Eskimo diet. Traditional diets vary around the World, some being high in starches, some being high in proteins, some being high in fat, and some being a combination of the three. However, although their composition varies they all have one thing in common. Because the diets developed before industrialisation, processing of the food is limited and they tend to use foods that are available locally to the populations. Much has been said about the health benefits of eating traditional diets due to the unprocessed and unrefined nature of the food they contain. However, less is made of the environmental benefits of consuming traditional diets. The fact that the foods from traditional diets developed before transportation became extensive and before storage of food through refrigeration became available, it was essential for populations to eat foods that were locally available.
Consuming locally grown produce may considerably reduce the impact that a population has on the environment. This is largely because the energy required for the transport and storage of food is considerable. Comparisons have been made between the environmental impact of traditional diets with more conventional Western diets. For example, in one study1 researchers compared the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the New Nordic Diet with the average Danish diet. The New Nordic Diet is a diet based on the traditional Nordic diet and includes commodities that are in season. It contains high amounts of locally grown vegetables, legumes, roots, fish, whole grain products, nuts, fruits and berries. The average Danish diet in contrast is a more contemporary Danish diet, not dissimilar to a typical Western diet in that it contains high amounts of meat and animal produce. The two diets are however similar in energy and protein content. The diets were assessed for their composition, transport and type of production.
When transport and diet composition were taken into account, the New Nordic Diet reduced environmental impact on all 16 impact categories. In addition, the socioeconomic cost of adopting the New Nordic Diet was estimated to be 266 Euros per person per year, equivalent to a 32 % reduction in the environmental cost of the diet. When organic produce was considered for both diets, the environmental savings of the New Nordic Diet were diminished, with only 10 of the 16 categories showing decreases in environmental impact. This relates to the fact that some organically grown produce is more energy demanding and uses more land than conventionally grown alternatives. Shifting the produce to organic therefore reduced the socioeconomic savings associated with the New Nordic Diet to 42 Euros per person per year. These results therefore suggest that even in organic produce is eaten, the New Nordic Diet has a reduced impact on the environment compared to the contemporary Danish alternative.
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