Table 3.

GHGE and CED of self-selected US diets (age 18+, n = 16 800) using average LCA impact factors.

		Consumed		Food loss contributions		Consumed + all losses
		Meana	SEa	Retail lossesb	Consumer lossesb	Meana	SEa
GHGE (kg CO2 eq. per capita)	per day	3.58	0.04	0.25	0.89	4.72	0.05
	per 1000 kcal	1.67	0.01	0.12	0.42	2.21	0.02
CED (MJ per capita)	per day	18.87	0.20	1.41	4.89	25.17	0.30
	per 1000 kcal	8.92	0.07	0.68	2.35	11.95	0.11

^aMean values are calculated using the average impact factor for each food in dataFIELD. SE=standard error of the mean, which takes into account variability in diets from one individual to the next, but not variability in the assessments of environmental impacts for a given food. (See figure 1 and accompanying discussion for low and high distributions that do take into account variability in these assessments for each food.) Calculations account for the complex survey design and sampling weights of NHANES.

^bFood losses based on USDA’s Loss Adjusted Food Availability dataset (see Methods).