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Production of fish meal and plant-based feed proteins continues to increase to meet the growing demand for seafood, leading to impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Microbial proteins such as single-cell proteins (SCPs) have been introduced as feed alternatives since they can replace current fish feed ingredients, e.g., soybean, which are associated with negative environmental impacts. Microbial protein production also enables utilization of grain processing side-streams as feedstock sources. This study assesses the environmental impacts of yeast-based SCP using oat side-stream as feedstock (OS-SCP). Life-cycle assessment with a cradle-to-gate approach was used to quantify global warming, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, terrestrial acidification, land use, and water consumption of OS-SCP production in Finland. Dried and wet side-streams of oat were compared with each other to identify differences in energy consumption and transportation effects. Sensitivity analysis was performed to examine the difference in impacts at various locations and fermentation times. Benchmarking was used to evaluate the environmental impacts of OS-SCP and other feed products, including both conventional and novel protein products. Results highlight the importance of energy sources in quantifying the environmental performance of OS-SCP production. OS-SCP produced with dried side-streams resulted in higher global warming (16.3 %) and water consumption (7.5 %) than OS-SCP produced from wet side-streams, reflecting the energy and water requirements for the drying process. Compared with conventional products, such as soy protein concentrates, OS-SCP resulted in 61 % less land use, while exacerbating the environmental impacts in all the other categories. OS-SCP had more impact on global warming (205–754 %), water consumption (166–1401 %), freshwater eutrophication (118–333 %), and terrestrial acidification (85–340 %) than other novel products, including yeast protein concentrate, methanotrophic bacterial SCP, and insect meal, while lowering global warming (11 %) and freshwater eutrophication (20 %) compared with dry microalgae biomass.

F The modern food system is characterized with high environmental impact, which is in many cases associated with increased rates of animal production and overconsumption. The adoption of alternatives to meat proteins (insects, plants, mycoprotein, microalgae, cultured meat, etc.) might potentially influence the environmental impact and human health in a positive or negative way but could also trigger indirect impacts with higher consumption rates. Current review provides a condensed analysis on potential environmental impacts, resource consumption rates and unintended trade-offs associated with integration of alternative proteins in complex global food system in the form of meat substitutes. We focus on emissions of greenhouse gases, land use, non-renewable energy use and water footprint highlighted for both ingredients used for meat substitutes and ready products. The benefits and limitations of meat substitution are highlighted in relation to a weight and protein content. The analysis of the recent research literature allowed us to define issues, that require the attention of future studies.

openaire: EC/H2020/819202/EU//SOS.aquaterra Global food systems face the challenge of providing healthy and adequate nutrition through sustainable means, which is exacerbated by climate change and increasing protein demand by the world's growing population. Recent advances in novel food production technologies demonstrate potential solutions for improving the sustainability of food systems. Yet, diet-level comparisons are lacking and are needed to fully understand the environmental impacts of incorporating novel foods in diets. Here we estimate the possible reductions in global warming potential, water use and land use by replacing animal-source foods with novel or plant-based foods in European diets. Using a linear programming model, we optimized omnivore, vegan and novel food diets for minimum environmental impacts with nutrition and feasible consumption constraints. Replacing animal-source foods in current diets with novel foods reduced all environmental impacts by over 80% and still met nutrition and feasible consumption constraints. The environmental impacts of more sustainable diets vary across regions. Using linear optimization, this study compares the reductions of global warming potential, water use and land use associated with the replacement of animal-sourced foods with novel or plant-based foods in European diets. Three diet types were considered to meet nutritional adequacy and consumption constraints.

The current animal-based food systems are being challenged by environmental, social and economic sustainability issues. A systemic transformation from conventional agriculture to a more sustainable cellular agriculture utilising cell-cultivation technologies to produce animal products has been proposed. The aim of this study is to explore the political and policy stakeholders’ perceptions about cellular agriculture; how they perceive of the current food system and its potential transformation into a cellular agricultural system. The qualitative data comprises 13 interviews conducted with representatives of German stakeholders. The data were analysed with the Transformative Innovation Policy approach. Perceptions of the transformative potential of cultured products were classified into drivers and bottlenecks that either advance or hinder the progress of cellular agriculture in Germany. The results show that the political and policy stakeholders are aware of the changes that are needed, but anticipate that large-scale transformation to the cellular agriculture system may not be a plausible solution in the near future.

Many life cycle assessment (LCA) studies comparing environmental impacts of different beef production systems are incomplete as they exclude biodiversity impacts and soil carbon stock changes. This study aims to assess the environmental impact of ruminant production on semi-natural grasslands or so-called high nature value (HNV) farms at the European level. We collected data for 24 HNV farms in Europe (in Finland, Estonia and France). The studied farms are extensive beef, sheep and goat production systems. We used LCA to assess the potential environmental impact of HNV farms according to global warming potential (GWP100), eutrophication, fossil fuels and water use, by using the Solagro carbon calculator and OpenLCA software. Results showed that HNV farming systems have the potential to maintain unique biodiversity, act as carbon sinks, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce nutrient losses and water use while producing animal-derived food. There were significant differences between HNV farms among countries in their greenhouse gas emissions at the farm level (tCO2eq ha-1) and N inputs (kg N ha-1). Better regional understanding of the environmental impact performance of HNV farming systems in relation to sustainable ruminant production will be achieved as the undergoing study progresses.

Sustainable diets are key for mitigating further anthropogenic climate change and meeting future health and sustainability goals globally. Given that current diets need to change significantly, novel/future foods (e.g., insect meal, cultured meat, microalgae, mycoprotein) present options for protein alternatives in future diets with lower total environmental impacts than animal source foods. Comparisons at the more concrete meal level would help consumers better understand the scale of environmental impacts of single meals and substitutability of animal sourced foods with novel foods. Our aim was to compare the environmental impacts of meals including novel/future foods with those of vegan and omnivore meals. We compiled a database on environmental impacts and nutrient composition of novel/future foods and modeled the impacts of calorically similar meals. Additionally, we applied two nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methods to compare the meals in terms of nutritional content and environmental impacts in one index. All meals with novel/future foods had up to 88 % less Global Warming Potential, 83 % less land use, 87 % less scarcity-weighted water use, 95 % less freshwater eutrophication, 78 % less marine eutrophication, and 92 % less terrestrial acidification impacts than similar meals with animal source foods, while still offering the same nutritional value as vegan and omnivore meals. The nLCA indices of most novel/future food meals are similar to protein-rich plant-based alternative meals and show fewer environmental impacts in terms of nutrient richness than most animal source meals. Substituting animal source foods with certain novel/future foods may provide for nutritious meals with substantial environmental benefits for sustainably transforming future food systems.

Cultured meat, fish, or dairy produced in vitro are discussed as one of the most substantial disruptions the food sector might encounter in the coming decades. These cultured proteins are proposed as a potential solution to the detrimental effects industrial food farming and fishing have on the environment and animal welfare as they would allow people to continue consuming meat, fish, or dairy products while at the same time substantially reducing the burden for the planet. For most people, however, this technology is still unknown, and it is largely unclear how they position themselves toward it. This paper presents the results of a representative survey (N = 3,864) in three Nordic countries (Norway, Denmark, and Finland). After briefly introducing the technological background, respondents spontaneously assessed their general attitude toward cultured proteins, their willingness to try them, and the likelihood that changes in 24 features of cultured protein would improve the respondents' attitude toward cultured protein products. The results showed that people in the studied countries have a neutral to a slightly positive view of cultured protein products. More familiarity seems to improve acceptance. Males, younger people, and vegans/vegetarians are particularly positive. The anticipated attitude change profiles showed that meat-eating identity, social norms, environmental concern, and country yielded the clearest profile differences, whereas health identity, age, innovativeness, income, education, and gender have smaller effects. People on a vegan or vegetarian diet cared less about most of the positive and negative aspects of cultured proteins compared to meat-eaters, with the exception of environmental and ethical aspects.

A novel food such as plant cell culture (PCC) is an important complementary asset for traditional agriculture to tackle global food insecurity. To evaluate environmental impacts of PCC, a life cycle assessment was applied to tobacco bright yellow-2 and cloudberry PCCs. Global warming potential (GWP), freshwater eutrophication potential (FEUP), marine eutrophication potential, terrestrial acidification potential (TAP), stratospheric ozone depletion, water consumption and land use were assessed. The results showed particularly high contributions (82–93%) of electricity consumption to GWP, FEUP and TAP. Sensitivity analysis indicated that using wind energy instead of the average Finnish electricity mix reduced the environmental impacts by 34–81%. Enhancement in the energy efficiency of bioreactor mixing processes and reduction in cultivation time also effectively improved the environmental performance (4–47% reduction of impacts). In comparison with other novel foods, the environmental impacts of the PCC products studied were mostly comparable to those of microalgae products but higher than those of microbial protein products produced by autotrophic hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria. Assayed fresh PCC products were similar or close to GWP of conventionally grown food products and, with technological advancements, can be highly competitive.

Purpose Beef and dairy production systems produce several by-products, such as fertilizers, bioenergy, hides, and pet foods, among which the environmental impacts arising from production should be allocated. The choice of allocation method therefore inevitably affects the results of life cycle assessment (LCA) for milk and beef. The aims of this study were to map out the different allocation methods used in dairy and beef LCA studies and to clarify the rationale for selecting a certain method. Methods A literature review was conducted to identify the different allocation methods used in LCA studies of milk and beef production and the products using beef by-products as a raw material. The justifications for the use of different methods in the studies were also collected. To map out the perspectives of LCA practitioners and further clarify the reasoning behind the use of certain allocation methods, a mixed method survey with quantitative questions and qualitative explanatory fields was sent to the authors included in the literature review. Results and discussion The literature review showed that the most commonly used allocation method between milk and meat was biophysical allocation, which is also the recommended method in LCA guidelines of milk production. Economic allocation was the second most common method, although the rationale for using economic allocation was weak. By-products, such as inedible body parts, were not considered in milk studies and were taken into account in only a small number of beef studies. This might be because most of the studies have cradle-to-farm gate system boundaries. According to the survey, a significantly higher share of LCA practitioners would allocate impacts also to these by-products. Conclusions The allocation is usually done between milk and meat, and other by-products are not taken into account. Since these materials are an unavoidable part of production and there are numerous uses for them, these outputs should be recognized as products and also taken into consideration in LCA studies.

Students are important stakeholders in school food programs. Yet children’s daily experiences and voices are often overlooked in advocacy around school food. In Canada, where the federal government recently expressed interest in creating a National School Food Program, nearly no research has documented the first-hand experiences of children during lunch. This ethnographic study draws on data collected during 36 lunchtimes in three Canadian schools during a transitional period in a school district’s lunch program. The findings unwrap the powerful role of students’ perceptions of and relationships to food in shaping their social interactions, and their sense of care, connection, and identity. Classroom observations coupled with photos of school lunches demonstrate the wide diversity of foods eaten at school and the nuanced, complex, and sometimes divergent meanings children give to food, school lunch and the people involved in preparing, serving, supervising, and sharing lunchtime experiences. Students demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the food choices and attitudes of their peers and actively marked out their identities vis-à-vis food. Students frequently talked about food as a site of care and support, and both the social relationships and care work that played out were a major part of school lunch experiences. Understanding the intricacies of children’s school lunch experiences, including the relationships, meanings, and values that shape school lunch, will be critical for creating robust school food programs and policies in Canada that better serve the needs of children and reduce rather than reproduce existing health and social inequalities.

Ovalbumin (OVA) produced using the fungus Trichoderma reesei (Tr-OVA) could become a sustainable replacement for chicken egg white protein powder—a widely used ingredient in the food industry. Although the approach can generate OVA at pilot scale, the environmental impacts of industrial-scale production have not been explored. Here, we conducted an anticipatory life cycle assessment using data from a pilot study to compare the impacts of Tr-OVA production with an equivalent functional unit of dried chicken egg white protein produced in Finland, Germany and Poland. Tr-OVA production reduced most agriculture-associated impacts, such as global warming and land use. Increased impacts were mostly related to industrial inputs, such as electricity production, but were also associated with glucose consumption. Switching to low-carbon energy sources could further reduce environmental impact, demonstrating the potential benefits of cellular agriculture over livestock agriculture for OVA production.

The aim of cellular agriculture is to use cell-culturing technologies to produce alternatives to agricultural products. Cultured meat is an example of a cellular agriculture product, made by using tissue engineering methods. This study aims to improve the understanding of the potential environmental impacts of cultured meat production by comparing between different bioprocess design scenarios. This was done by carrying out a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a bioprocess system using hollow fiber bioreactors, and utilizing bench-scale experimental data for C2C12 cell proliferation, differentiation and media metabolism. Scenario and sensitivity analyses were used to test the impact of changes in the system design, data sources, and LCA methods on the results to support process design decision making. We compared alternative scenarios to a baseline of C2C12 cells cultured in hollow fiber bioreactors using media consisting of DMEM with serum, for a 16-day proliferation stage and 7-day differentiation stage. The baseline LCA used the average UK electricity mix as the energy source, and heat treatment for wastewater sterilization. The greatest reduction in environmental impacts were achieved with the scenarios using CHO cell metabolism instead of C2C12 cell metabolisim (64–67 % reduction); achieving 128 % cell biomass increase during differentiation instead of no increase (42–56 % reduction); using wind electricity instead of average UK electricity (6–39 % reduction); and adjusting the amino acid use based on experimental data (16–27 % reduction). The use of chemical wastewater treatment instead of heat treatment increased all environmental impacts, except energy demand, by 1–16 %. This study provides valuable insights for the cultured meat field to understand the effects of different process design scenarios on environmental impacts, and therefore provides a framework for deciding where to focus development efforts for improving the environmental performance of the production system.

Novel food production technologies are being developed to address the challenges of securing sustainable and healthy nutrition for the growing global population. This study assessed the environmental impacts of microbial protein (MP) produced by autotrophic hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria (HOB). Data was collected from a company currently producing MP using HOB (hereafter simply referred to as MP) on a small-scale. Earlier studies have performed an environmental assessment of MP on a theoretical basis but no study yet has used empirical data. An attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) with a cradle-to-gate approach was used to quantify global warming potential (GWP), land use, freshwater and marine eutrophication potential, water scarcity, human (non-)carcinogenic toxicity, and the cumulative energy demand (CED) of MP production in Finland. A Monte Carlo analysis was performed to assess uncertainties. The impacts of alternative production options and locations were explored. The impacts were compared with animal- and plant-based protein sources for human consumption as well as protein sources for feed. The results showed that electricity consumption had the highest contribution to environmental impacts. Therefore, the source of energy had a substantial impact on the results. MP production using hydropower as an energy source yielded 87.5% lower GWP compared to using the average Finnish electricity mix. In comparison with animal-based protein sources for food production, MP had 53-100% lower environmental impacts depending on the reference product and the source of energy assumed for MP production. When compared with plant-based protein sources for food production, MP had lower land and water use requirements, and eutrophication potential but GWP was reduced only if low-emission energy sources were used. Compared to protein sources for feed production, MP production often resulted in lower environmental impact for GWP (FHE), land use, and eutrophication and acidification potential, but generally caused high water scarcity and required more energy.

This study aimed to identify and quantify phenolic and resin acid extractive compounds in Scots pine stemwood and sawmill residues in four climatic regions of Finland to evaluate their most optimal sources for bio-based chemical biorefining and bioenergy products. The sample consisted of 140 trees from 28 stands, and sawdust lots from 11 log stands. NMR for the overall extractive analysis and HPLC for the quantitative estimation of phenolic and resin acid compounds were employed. Correlation analysis, multivariate factor analysis, principle component analysis and multiple linear regression modelling were applied for statistical analysis. HPLC identified 12 extractive compounds and NMR five more resin acids. Pinosylvin (PS), pinosylvin monomethyl ether (PSMME), and partly neolignans/lignans occurred in the largest concentrations. Wood type caused the most variation, heartwood having larger concentrations than sapwood (sawdust between them). Regional differences in the concentrations were smaller, but factor analysis distinguished the northern and the southern regions into their own groups. The results indicated higher concentrations of PS, PSMME, and vanillic acid in southern regions and those of, e.g., PSMME glycoside, lignan 2, and neolignan 1 in northern regions. The rather low concentrations of extractives in stemwood and sawdust imply value-added products, efficient sorting and/or large raw material volumes.

This report is the outcome of a consensus-building project to agree on best practices for environmental and nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methodology, and identify future research needs. The project involved 30 nutritional and environmental LCA researchers from 18 countries. It focused on the assessment of food items (as opposed to meals or diets).Best practice recommendations were developed to address the intended purpose of an LCA study and related modeling approach, choice of an appropriate functional unit, assessment of nutritional value, and reporting nLCA results. An nLCA study should report the quantities of as many essential nutrients as possible and aim to provide information on the nutritional quality and/or health impacts in addition to nutrient quantities. Outstanding issues requiring further research attention include: defining a minimum number of nutrients to be considered in an nLCA study; treatment of nutrients to limit; use of nutrient indexes; further development of Impact Assessment methods; representation of nutritional changes that may occur during subsequent distribution and food preparation in cradle-to-gate nLCA studies; and communication of data uncertainty and variability. More data are required for different regions (particularly developing countries); for the processing, distribution, retail, and consumption life cycle stages; and for food loss and waste. Finally, there is a need to extend nLCA methodology for the assessment of meals and diets, to consider further how to account for the multi-functionality of food in a sustainability framework, and to set nLCA studies within the context of environmental limits.These results provide a robust basis for improving nLCA methodology and applying it to identify solutions that minimize the trade-offs between nourishing populations and safeguarding the environment.

Food systems present a nexus of challenges and potential solutions to the unsustainable global crises of the Anthropocene. Most of humanity interacts with multiple food systems as a result of being involved in our highly globalized, extractivist, and productivist paradigm. This chapter explores Agroecological Symbiosis as a situated example of a food-system (re)design aimed at fostering sustainable interactions from environmental, economic, and sociocultural perspectives. This chapter contributes to our understanding of sustainability through the many emergent and interconnected elements of food systems. We ground the theoretical enquiry in lived experience by drawing parallels to the real world case example of Agroecological Symbiosis. In light of the complexity and interconnectedness of food systems, careful contextualization is needed to enact meaningful sustainable transitions in food systems. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to food systems (re)design, and a variety of actions along the whole food system are required.

Municipal sewage contains significant embedded resources in the form of chemical and thermal energy. Recent developments in sustainable technology have pushed for the integration of resource recovery from household wastewater to achieve net zero energy consumption and carbon-neutral communities. Sewage heat recovery and fit-for-purpose water reuse are options to optimize the resource recovery potential of municipal wastewater. This study presents a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) focused on global warming potential (GWP), eutrophication potential (EUP), and human health carcinogenic potential (HHCP) of an integrated sewage heat recovery and water reuse system for a hypothetical community of 30,000 people. Conventional space and water heating components generally demonstrated the highest GWP contribution between the different system components evaluated. Sewage-heat-recovery-based district heating offered better environmental performance overall. Lower impact contributions were demonstrated by scenarios with a membrane bioreactor (MBR) and chlorination prior to water reuse applications compared to scenarios that use more traditional water and wastewater treatment technologies and discharge. The LCA findings show that integrating MBR wastewater treatment and water reuse into a district heating schema could provide additional environmental savings at a community scale.

Background and Objectives: Drought occurs more frequently in Northern China with the advent of climate change, which might increase the mortality of tree seedlings after afforestation due to hydraulic failure. Therefore, investigating water relations helps us understand the drought tolerance of tree seedlings. Electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is widely used to assess the responses of plant tissues to stress factors and may potentially reveal the water relations of cells. The aim of this study is to reveal the relationships between EIS and water related parameters, produced by pressure&ndash, volume (PV) curves in lacebark pine (Pinus bungeana Zucc.) seedlings reacting to drought stress. Materials and Methods: Four-year-old pot seedlings were divided into three parts (0, 5, and 10 days of drought) before planting, the treated seedlings were then replanted, and finally exposed to post-planting drought treatments with the following soil relative water contents: (i) adequate irrigation (75%&ndash, 80%), (ii) light drought (55%&ndash, 60%), (iii) moderate drought (35%&ndash, 40%), and (iv), severe drought (15%&ndash, 20%). During the post-planting growth phase, the EIS parameters of needles and shoots, and the parameters of PV curves, were measured coincidently, thus, the correlations between them could be obtained. Results: The extracellular resistance (re) of needles and shoots were substantially reduced after four weeks of severe post-planting drought stress. Meanwhile, the osmotic potential at the turgor-loss point (&psi, tlp) and the saturation water osmotic potential (&psi, sat) of shoots decreased after drought stress, indicating an osmotic adjustment in acclimating to drought. The highest correlations were found between the intracellular resistance (ri) of the shoots and &psi, tlp and &psi, sat. Conclusions: EIS parameters can be used as a measure of drought tolerance. The change in intracellular resistance is related to the osmotic potential of the cell and cell wall elasticity. Extracellular resistance is a parameter that shows cell membrane damage in response to drought stress in lacebark pine seedlings.

Pallets are the tiny cogs in the machine that drive transportation in the global economy. The profusion of pallets in today’s supply chain warrants the investigation and discussion of their respective environmental impacts. This paper reviews the life cycle assessment studies analyzing the environmental impacts of pallets with the intent of providing insights into the methodological choices made, as well as compiling the inventory data from the studies reviewed. The study is a meta-analysis of eleven scientific articles, two conference articles, two peer-reviewed reports, and one thesis. The review was implemented to identify the key methodological choices made in those studies, such as their goals, functional units, system boundaries, inventory data, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) procedures, and results. The 16 studies reviewed cumulatively analyzed 43 pallets. Mostly pooled (n = 22/43), block-type (n = 13/43), and wooden (n = 32/43) pallets with dimensions of 1219 mm × 1016 mm or 48 in. × 40 in. (n = 15/43) were studied. Most of the studies represented pallet markets in the United States (n = 9/16). Load-based (e.g., 1000 kg of products delivered), trip-based (e.g., 1000 trips), and pallet-based (e.g., one pallet) functional units were declared. A trip-based functional unit seems the most appropriate for accounting of the function of the pallets, as its purpose is to carry goods and facilitate the transportation of cargo. A significant amount of primary inventory data on the production and repair of wooden and plastic pallets are available, yet there are significant variations in the data. Data on pallets made of wood–polymer composites was largely missing. Publishers version

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The globally growing demand to produce more food with fewer inputs, less energy, and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions challenges current agricultural practices. Recycled fertilizers made of various side streams and types of biomass have been developed mainly to improve nutrient recycling in food systems. However, the knowledge of the impacts of different recycled fertilizers on GHG emissions and energy use is lacking. There is also a need for developing environmental assessment methods for quantifying the impacts of recycling processes, particularly in terms of choosing reasonable methods for co-product allocation. The aims of this study were to address the above mentioned research gaps by i) assessing energy use and GHG emissions of various recycled fertilizers, ii) comparing the recycled fertilizers with mineral fertilizers, and iii) comparing the impacts of using different co-product allocation methods for the recycled fertilizers. Attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used for estimating energy use and GHG emissions of recycled fertilizers, including ammonium sulfate, biogas digestate, and meat and bone meal, using kg of nitrogen in the fertilizers as a functional unit. In addition, the energy use and GHG emissions of oat production when using the recycled and mineral fertilizers were quantified. The data were obtained from field experiments, LCA databases, published literature, and fertilizer companies. The life-cycle energy consumption and GHG emissions of recycled fertilizers were found to be lower than that of mineral fertilizer, but also differences between recycled fertilizer products were notable. The biggest differences between fertilizers occurred in manufacturing and transportation. However, this conclusion is highly sensitive to several decisions, such as data sources and LCA methods used. Handling the raw materials of recycled fertilizers as by-products instead of residues adds burdens from primary production to fertilizers. Also handling the materials as waste increases the impacts due to burdens from the recycling process. Since the raw materials of fertilizers have only little economic value, applying economic allocation results to significantly lower impacts than mass allocation. Consequential LCA studies would be needed to improve the understanding of the wider impacts of recycled fertilizers, e.g. considering the benefits of avoided waste management processes. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article examines how future diets could reduce the environmental impacts of food systems, and thus, enable movement into the post-Anthropocene. Such non-anthropocentric diets are proposed to address global food systems challenges inherent in the current geological epoch known as the Anthropocene&mdash, a period when human activity is the dominant cause of environmental change. Using non-anthropocentric indigenous worldviews and object-oriented ecosophy, the article discusses changes in ontologies around diets to consider choices made in the present for sustainable future food systems. This article conceptually addresses, how can pre-Anthropocene ontologies guide an exit of current approaches to diets? Considering temporality, what post-Anthropocene ontologies are possible in future diets for sustainable food systems? Through the ontological positions defining three distinct temporalities, considerations for guiding future diets in(to) the post-Anthropocene are proposed. Indigenous ontologies are presented as pre-Anthropocene examples that depict humans and non-humans in relational diets. Underlying Anthropocene ontologies define current unsustainable diets. These ontologies are described to present the context for the food systems challenges this article aims to address. A post-Anthropocene illustration then employs object-oriented ecosophy along with indigenous ontologies as theoretical foundations for shifting from the dominant neoliberal paradigm in current ontologies. Ontologically-based dietary guidelines for the post-Anthropocene diet present the ontological turns, consideration of temporality, and outline technological orientations proposed for sustainable future food systems. This is a novel attempt to integrate non-anthropocentric theories to suggest possible futures for human diets in order to exit the Anthropocene epoch. These non-anthropocentric ontologies demonstrate how temporal considerations and relational worldviews can be guidelines for transforming diets to address public health concerns, the environmental crisis, and socioeconomic challenges.

Sustainability transformations call forth new forms and systems of knowledge across society. However, few tools and processes exist for promoting dialogue among different interests and normative stances in knowledge co-creation. In this article, we build on the notion of thought collectives to argue that understanding and moderating normative tensions are necessary if sustainability science is to provide successful solutions. Drawing on an analysis of the normative tensions between rival high-tech and low-tech thought collectives in the mobility and food production sectors, we discuss three strategic approaches: applying common evaluative frameworks, building contextual convergence and embracing complexity. We argue that these strategies indicate a need to distinguish different kinds of reflexivity in managing tensions among thought collectives. As a practical conclusion, we establish sets of reflexive questions to help sustainability scientists deploy the knowledge management strategies discussed.