Abstract
Diets across age groups vary in both nutritional quality and greenhouse gas emissions, yet their relationship remains poorly understood in the context of population aging and evolving dietary patterns. We evaluated dietary emissions associated with 141 products across 22 age groups in 149 countries from 2000 to 2019, combining age-specific dietary intake from the Global Dietary Database with a consumption-based emission inventory derived from FAOSTAT. We quantified changes in emissions alongside shifts in nutritional quality and examined contributions of demographic and dietary factors. Adolescents and young adults generally had the highest per capita dietary emissions, while seniors contributed most to global emission growth, particularly in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Increased meat intake was a leading contributor to rising emissions and frequently coincided with declining nutritional quality. These findings highlight the need for dietary-emission mitigation efforts across age groups that account for demographic shifts, nutritional needs and national development contexts.
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Data availability
Data for emissions from agricultural land use and land use change, on-farm agricultural production and post-farm processes, and for physical food consumption, are curated by the FAO and can be freely obtained from FAOSTAT63, available from ref. 20. Data on food loss and waste rate are retrieved from FAOSTAT63 and ref. 18. Dietary intake data for different food categories by age are obtained from the GDD1,8,17. Population data used in this study are obtained from the World Population Prospects of the United Nations66. Supplementary figures and tables used in the analysis can be found in the Supplementary Information files. Supplementary datasets supporting the analyses of this study are provided with the paper. Additional detailed results are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The code developed for data processing in R is provided as Supplementary Code files
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Global Dietary Database (GDD) team for their assistance and guidance regarding data access and use during the early stages of this study
Funding
Y.L. discloses support for this study from the New Chongqing YC Project (grant number CSTB2025YCJH-KYXM0032), funded by the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Science and Technology, and the Chongqing University Hongshen Start-up Grant. Y.S. discloses support for this study from the Horizon Europe Project EU-CHINA-BRIDGE (grant number 101137971), supported by UKRI grant 10132630 at the University of Birmingham. K.H. discloses support for this study from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme Project PANTHEON (grant number 101137905). P.P. discloses support for this study from the European Research Council (ERC) Project BeyondSDG (grant number 101077492). Y.L. and J.Y. acknowledge support from the China Scholarship Council PhD Program. P.H., S.F. and F.R. declare no relevant funding.
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Authors and Affiliations
Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region’s Eco-Environment, Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
Yanxian Li
College of Environment and Ecology, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
Yanxian Li
Fudan Tyndall Center and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Air Quality and Environmental Health, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Jin Yan
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Pan He
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Pan He
Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES), Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG), University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands
Prajal Pradhan, Franco Ruzzenenti & Klaus Hubacek
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany
Prajal Pradhan
Business School, Soochow University, Suzhou, China
Shuai Fang
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Yuli Shan
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Contributions
Y.L., Y.S. and K.H. designed the study. Y.L. performed the analysis with support from J.Y., P.H. and S.F. on analytical approaches and visualization. Y.L. took the lead in writing, with contributions from P.H., P.P., F.R. and K.H. Y.S. and K.H. supervised and coordinated the overall study. All co-authors reviewed and commented on the paper
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Supplementary Data 1
Supplementary datasets containing age-specific dietary emission results and uncertainty ranges analysed in this study
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Step-by-step R scripts and README documentation describing the analytical workflow and data-processing procedures
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Li, Y., Yan, J., He, P. et al. Youth lead current dietary emissions while seniors increasingly drive total emission growth.
Nat Food7, 688–700 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01383-4
Received:25 June 2025
Accepted:05 June 2026
Published:22 July 2026
Version of record:22 July 2026
Issue date:July 2026
DOI
:https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01383-4
