Climate impact dataset for food services - follow-up

The Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) produced and published, in the earlier FoodGWP project commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MMM), an open dataset on the climate impacts of more than 1,200 food raw materials (Lindfors et al., 2024). The dataset was developed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and is compatible with the Fineli food composition database maintained by THL. This enabled the simultaneous examination of climate impacts and nutritional information, which is valuable for food service providers, researchers, and those evaluating sustainable food systems. In addition to the aforementioned scientific article, the dataset is openly available in the Fairdata.fi service: Climate impact dataset for food services https://doi.org/10.23729/85b4539f-335a-43d3-812f-ed72f6503164. It has also been implemented in enterprise resource planning systems used by food service operators.

This dataset focuses on raw materials. In practice, however, food services most often use a wide range of composite foods, semi-finished products and ready-made meals. In addition the meals and meal components served are based on recipes, where different ingredients are combined as described in the recipe. For food services, it is important that the dataset also covers semi-finished and ready-made foods as well as the most common dishes prepared from recipes, so that climate impact assessment is as practical as possible. Food services also use raw materials and food products that are not currently included in Fineli. For these products, climate impact estimates produced using the same methods are needed to ensure that the dataset remains compatible and meets the needs of food services.

The project Climate impact dataset for food services - follow-up (FoodGWP2) expands the dataset previously produced by Luke to also cover composite foods in Fineli and the most important raw materials not included in Fineli, so that the dataset can best serve food services and be widely adopted. This enables:

- efficient use of climate impact data in food services

- calculation of climate impacts of meals and menus based on raw materials in the enterprise resource planning systems used by food services

- consideration of climate impacts in menu planning and in the information provided to customers

improved usability of the dataset in research on sustainable diets and in policy work for sustainable food systems.