A new 20-year study of diets of individuals who live in 149 countries published in Nature Food (2026) has found that young individuals (aged 11 to 19 years old) have the highest individual carbon footprints from food, while aging populations (persons aged 60 years and older) are driving the largest overall increase in diet carbon emissions. The larger diet-related carbon emissions of seniors (older individuals) are due to their greater numbers. (Li et al., 2026; Bryce, 2026).
Which age group has the most climate-intensive diet?
“Your age shapes your diet’s impact will be—and while older people drive overall emissions increases at global scales, it’s surprisingly the youth who have a higher individual footprint, a new study finds.”
The Nature Food research “brought together a multinational team who say their work indicates that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t be effective in tackling dietary impacts: instead we need tailored approaches that target different age groups, they believe.”
“The research draws on data from 149 countries, from the period spanning 2000 and 2019, and evaluates dietary emissions linked to 141 commonly-consumed foods. What makes this study different from most others like it is that it looked at how much of each product was consumed across more than 20 age groups.” (Bryce, 2026; Li et al., 2026)
“Key patterns emerged. Chief among these is that across the 149 countries overall, seniors—people aged 60 years or more—were responsible for most of the emissions growth linked to food. However, this wasn’t because older people individually ate more greenhouse gas-intensive diets, as is often assumed. Instead, the larger dietary contribution of older folks simply comes down to their greater numbers. That’s because many of the 149 countries included in the study—mainly high and middle-income nations—now have aging populations.”
“In fact, it was teenagers, aged 11 to 19 years, and young adults aged 20 to 29, who were responsible for consuming more greenhouse gas-intensive meals at the individual level. Meat and dairy were the main drivers of increased emissions in diets across all age groups. But in young people’s diets the presence of meat and dairy was especially pronounced, and hiked up their per capita emissions impact.” (Bryce, 2026; Li et al., 2026)
“The researchers say this partly reflects young people’s higher energy requirements. But it also reveals increasing lifestyle-related dietary preferences for animal-based foods. This trend is becoming more pronounced in lower-middle-income countries, where changing dietary traditions and increasing per capita food intake seem to be fueling a greater appetite for dairy and meat.”
“In these countries, young people actually turned out to be the main contributors to total dietary emissions too, because youth tend to make up the majority of those populations.” (Bryce, 2026; Li et al, 2026)
“This complex picture suggests we’ll need a more nuanced approach if we’re going to try and encourage people to make more sustainable food choices. For young people, the research team underscores the value of education and behavioral change through school and restaurant environments that mainly attract youth.” (Bryce, 2026; Li et al., 2026)
“For older people, despite not having the highest per capita footprint, there are still dietary emissions reductions to be made across this group, and these could have huge potential considering its size.”
“One delicate factor to navigate is that in some lower-middle-income countries, there’s an association between increased meat and dairy consumption and nutritional gains.” (Byrce, 2026; Li et al., 2026)
“So, balancing sustainability with health in these places may in fact require a slower shift in food systems, to increase access to a diversity of nutrient-rich foods, not just dairy and meat.”
“For now, the researchers simply want us to consider this other, overlooked factor in what shapes global dietary emissions: “Who we are, as much as what we eat, is becoming a defining factor in future climate trajectories,” they say.” (Byrce, 2026; Li et al., 2026)
References
Li, Y., Yan, J., He, P. et al. Youth lead current dietary emissions while seniors increasingly drive total emission growth. Nature Food. 2026;7:688–700. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01383-4
Bryce E. Which age group has the most climate-intensive diet? Anthropocene Magazine. August 7, 2026. Available at: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.anthropocenemagazine.org%2F2026%2F08%2Ffrom-young-to-old-which-age-group-actually-has-the-most-climate-intensive-diet%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C832cea015ada4218f90408def6f38c5a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C639219723042198037%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YJIZg8lNW3SzW1IjzEFrl4ZnJxQGRGf9n9NvWjXtSdY%3D&reserved=0
Sustainable RDN 