TABLE 1.

Definitions and conceptual scope of terms used.

Pillars	Definition
Health	Outcomes related to diseases or human wellbeing that are associated with meeting nutrient needs, supporting physiological and cognitive growth and development, and promoting wellness [adapted from Nicholls and Drewnowski (14)].
Environment	The impacts on climate, ecosystems, and natural resources resulting from the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food commodities and products that underpin dietary patterns.
Social	The underlying conditions within, and the impacts of food supply chains on, stakeholders who are directly or indirectly affected by food system functions. Stakeholder groups include workers, value chain actors, local communities, consumers, society, and children (45). While the wellbeing of people is most focused-on, the wellbeing of animals is also a concern.
Economic	Outcomes related to economic access by consumers to desired foods, including affordability and relative food prices, as well as the cost of policy actions and the viability of the supply chains and institutions that support all food system functions.
Conceptual
Dietary pattern	“The quantities, proportions, variety, or combination of different foods, drinks, and nutrients in diets, and the frequency with which they are habitually consumed” (46).
Observed or approximated current diets	Diets based on self-reported food consumption data, including 24-h recall, food frequency questionnaires, etc. or food consumption proxy data, including food availability data (e.g., food balance sheets), often at a national level and downscaled to per capita, and food acquisition data, e.g., purchase surveys, often at the household level and adjusted to per capita.
Diet scores or indices	Diet scores or indices used to assess level of adherence to a benchmark (e.g., the Healthy Eating Index).
Dietary pattern archetypes	Reference diet archetypes (USDA Food Patterns, EAT-Lancet pattern, Mediterranean pattern) or patterns that are not necessarily evidence-based and/or may have wide variability in definition, including vegan or flexitarian.
Statistically estimated or modeled diets	Dietary patterns resulting from optimization methods (e.g., least cost diet methods and linear programming); or estimation methods that explain variation in patterns (e.g., factor analysis), aggregate individuals into groups with non-overlapping patterns (e.g., cluster analysis), or project current patterns into the future (e.g., simulation modeling).
Outcome	Outcomes were defined as “endpoints”: variables that were assessed to document the effect of exposure to a dietary pattern or change in dietary pattern. The endpoints represent measured or estimated various forms of positive and/or negative effects under each pillar.