UGC NET Sustainable Food Systems, Diets & Food Loss: practice questions

1 · Sustainable and healthy diets: planetary health diet and critiques · medium

Which set lists the six environmental systems for which the EAT-Lancet Commission set food-production boundaries?

1. Air quality, noise, ozone depletion, ocean acidity, plastic pollution, soil erosion and light pollution
2. Energy use, packaging, transport, food waste, water quality and labour standards
3. Forest cover, fish stocks, coral reefs, wetlands, glaciers and desert area
4. Greenhouse gases, cropland use, freshwater use, nitrogen, phosphorus and biodiversity loss

2 · Sustainable and healthy diets: planetary health diet and critiques · easy

At 14 g of red meat per day, how much red meat would a person eat in a year?

1. 14.0 kg
2. 5.1 kg
3. 0.5 kg
4. 51.1 kg

3 · Food loss and food waste: definitions and measurement · medium

Under the UNEP Food Waste Index, which destination is NOT counted as food waste?

1. Diversion to animal feed
2. Landfill
3. Anaerobic digestion
4. Composting in municipal plants

4 · Food loss and food waste: definitions and measurement · hard

Why does ranking wasted foods by environmental impact rather than mass change priorities?

1. Vegetables have larger footprints per kg than meat, so mass understates them
2. Environmental impact is always proportional to mass, so the ranking cannot change
3. Animal products weigh less than wasted vegetables but carry much larger footprints per kg
4. Mass-based rankings already include greenhouse gas emissions by definition in the FLW Standard

5 · Packaging and its trade-offs · easy

For high-impact foods such as meat and cheese, how does the climate footprint of packaging usually compare with that of the food?

1. Packaging is the largest share
2. Packaging and food are always equal
3. Packaging is a small share of the total
4. Packaging has no footprint at all

6 · Food security, nutrition and sustainability trade-offs · medium

Which SOFI estimate describes global hunger in 2023?

1. Between about 713 and 757 million people
2. Between about 70 and 75 million people
3. Between about 2.0 and 2.5 billion people
4. Exactly 1 billion people

7 · Alternative proteins: evidence on footprints · medium

Why do insects convert feed to body mass more efficiently than cattle?

1. They photosynthesise part of their energy needs through their wings, as plant leaves do
2. They require no protein in their diet and live on cellulose alone
3. They are reared outdoors without housing, so energy use is zero
4. They are cold-blooded and so spend little feed energy on maintaining body temperature

8 · Alternative proteins: evidence on footprints · hard

What do PDCAAS and DIAAS measure?

1. The greenhouse gas footprint per gram of protein in a food
2. Protein quality, combining amino acid composition with digestibility
3. The share of a food's energy that comes from protein
4. The allergenic potential of proteins in novel foods

9 · Alternative proteins: evidence on footprints · medium

Which protein option has the lowest environmental footprint in most comparative studies?

1. Cultivated meat
2. Plant-based burger analogues
3. Farmed shrimp
4. Pulses such as lentils, beans and peas

10 · Food system transformation pathways · medium

According to Springmann and colleagues (2018), what is needed to keep the food system within environmental limits?

1. Technological improvement alone, since diets cannot change in time to meet the 2050 boundaries
2. Dietary change alone, since production is already sustainable
3. A combination of dietary change, technological improvement and food loss and waste reduction
4. Food waste reduction alone, since it removes all excess demand