Dietary Intake Assessment and Environmental Impact Scoring of Diets Linked for First Time

DIEM quantifies environmental footprint of dietary patterns in real-time, empowering consumers to align food choices with personal and planetary health.

The DIEM system represents the first opportunity for an app that can assess current dietary intake and assign environmental impact and diet quality scores simultaneously and instantaneously.”

— Dr. David L. Katz, MD, MPH

DETROIT, MI, UNITED STATES, November 12, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- For the first time, dietary intake assessment and environmental impact scoring have been integrated into a single, real-time platform. Published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers from Diet ID and independent experts introduce DIEM (Dietary Impacts on Environmental Measures), a novel scoring system that quantifies the environmental footprint of overall dietary patterns by combining four key metrics: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, nitrogen inputs, and water use.

The research, led by Dr. David L. Katz and colleagues, addresses a critical gap in consumer decision-making: while individual foods' environmental impacts are documented, comprehensive scoring of overall dietary patterns has been unavailable—until now. DIEM provides consumers with an actionable, unified environmental impact score for their complete dietary pattern, generated instantaneously alongside traditional measures of diet quality.

"We manage what we measure," said Dr. David L. Katz, founder and CEO of Diet ID and lead author of the study. "Providing quantitative scores for the environmental impact of one’s current diet, and a selection of personalized goal diets, in real time creates an opportunity to address personal health, personal preference, and planetary health—all together. This represents a fundamental shift from awareness to an opportunity for immediate action—giving people the power to reduce their dietary environmental footprint while improving their diet quality in support of personal health goals."

The environmental impacts of food production are substantial, with agriculture accounting for significant portions of greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and land use globally. Dietary patterns that support human health also tend to minimize environmental burdens, yet consumers have lacked practical tools to quantify and act on this connection. DIEM fills this gap by aggregating environmental data horizontally across multiple impact categories and vertically from individual foods to complete dietary patterns.

The DIEM scoring system leverages validated environmental impact databases from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and published water scarcity footprint data, combined with Diet ID's proprietary mapping of approximately 50 diverse dietary patterns. Each dietary pattern includes full nutrient-level analysis and objective diet quality scoring using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) 2020. Environmental impact scores are then calculated and scaled to overall dietary patterns based on their caloric composition.

Testing across the Diet ID platform confirmed expected patterns: DIEM scores were highest for meat-centric diets (such as Paleo), intermediate for standard American dietary patterns, and lowest for plant-based diets. Within each diet type, environmental impact scores decreased as diet quality improved, with higher-quality diets relying more on whole plant foods and less on ultra-processed foods and animal products, particularly beef.

Dr. Gidon Eshel, Professor of Environmental Physics at Bard College and co-author of the study, emphasized the methodological significance of the work: "DIEM represents a significant advance in translating complex environmental data into actionable consumer information. By aggregating four critical environmental metrics—greenhouse gas emissions, land use, nitrogen inputs, and water scarcity—into a single, dimensionless score, we've created a tool that makes the environmental cost of dietary choices as clear and comparable as nutritional information. The system's ability to scale from individual foods to complete dietary patterns while maintaining scientific rigor is what makes it uniquely powerful for driving real-world behavior change."

"The DIEM system represents the first opportunity for an app that can assess current dietary intake and assign environmental impact and diet quality scores simultaneously and instantaneously," explained Dr. Katz. "Users can compare their current diet to a range of personalized goal diets—each matched to their health objectives and cultural preferences—and immediately see both the nutritional quality and environmental footprint of each option."

The DIEM system can be integrated into digital platforms, including Diet ID's one-minute image-based dietary assessment, which generates comprehensive nutritional data including HEI-2020 scores and estimates of up to 150 nutrients. DIEM scores are then appended to each dietary pattern, allowing users to select options that align with both their personal health goals and environmental values.

Research suggests that awareness of food-related environmental impacts remains limited among consumers, and while awareness alone may not drive behavior change, it is certainly necessary. The DIEM system aims to bridge the gap between knowledge and action by making environmental impact as visible and actionable as calorie counts or nutrition labels.

"In an era where the clock on climate change is ticking ever louder, the ability to make informed, impactful choices about what we eat provides one of the more accessible avenues for meaningful climate action," noted Dr. Katz. "Dietary shifts are among the few important impacts on climate and planetary health that are fully actionable by individuals."

The name "DIEM" was inspired by the Latin phrase "carpe diem"—seize the day—reflecting the urgency of planetary health imperatives. With each passing day, opportunities to preserve ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate stability diminish, making immediate action critical.

The DIEM metric generates scores on a relative 10-point scale for ease of interpretation, derived from robust, peer-reviewed environmental impact measures. The scoring system is designed for public use and integration with dietary guidance tools, serving as both a cue to action and a practical basis for blending personal and planetary health considerations in dietary goal-setting.

Future research using the DIEM system will demonstrate whether and how quantitative information about the environmental footprint of dietary options influences consumer behavior in both the short and long term. The system is now available through the Diet ID platform for research institutions, healthcare providers, and wellness programs. The DIEM innovation is U.S. Patent pending.

About Diet ID
Diet ID is a digital health platform that provides validated, comprehensive dietary assessment and behavior change tools for healthcare, wellness, and research organizations. Founded by Dr. David L. Katz, Diet ID uses a patented image-based approach to measure diet quality in about a minute. The platform generates objective diet quality scores using the Healthy Eating Index 2020, along with estimates of food group servings and up to 150 nutrients. Diet ID has been validated in multiple peer-reviewed studies, has been issued 3 U.S. patents to date, and is used by leading health systems, research institutions (including the NIH), and wellness programs. For more information, visit www.dietid.com.

Rachna Govani
Diet ID
+1 855-610-8753
rgovani@dietid.com

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