The impact of substituting animal with plant protein foods in adults’ self-selected diets on environmental, nutritional, and health outcomes: A systematic review of modelling studies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A growing body of evidence supports the shift towards plant-based diets to improve environmental sustainability and human health. However, less is known about the extent to which benefits can be achieved through simple food substitutions and potential synergies and trade-offs that occur when plant protein foods displace animal-sourced foods. We aimed to conduct a systematic review of studies that modelled replacements of animal with plant protein foods in self-selected diets on environmental, nutritional, and health outcomes. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and EMBASE in April 2024 (updated in November 2025). Eligible studies reported on diet-related environmental impacts, percentage of the population meeting recommendations for nutrients of concern or to limit, or disease burden outcomes from modelled substitutions of meat or dairy with plant protein foods in self-selected diets. Eighteen studies were included (16 of the 2662 articles retrieved from the original search and 2 additional studies from the updated search). Five studies reported outcomes across multiple domains, and the rest for one domain. Replacing red and processed meat with plant protein foods led to the greatest share of reductions in environmental impacts, while also modestly improving nutrient intakes and preventing deaths. Dairy substitutions reduced intakes of saturated fat, but also calcium and vitamin A, and depending on whether replacement foods were fortified, iodine and vitamin D. Improvements to health outcomes in the dairy scenarios were attributed solely to increases in plant protein foods. Simple substitutions of animal with plant protein foods, particularly red and processed meat, promote healthier and more sustainable diets, but policies to facilitate dietary change must address potential pitfalls for nutrients of public health concern, depending on the types of animal-sourced foods replaced. CRD42024536095. • Food substitutions are a strategy to improve human and planetary health. • Co-benefits from substituting red and processed meat with plant protein foods. • Trade-offs with calcium and vitamin A when dairy is replaced with plant protein foods. • Nutritional outcomes depend on whether replacement foods are fortified. • Policy makers should facilitate dietary change while mitigating potential trade-offs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".