Protein quality in life cycle assessment
Life cycle assessment (LCA) of food often uses mass of food as a functional unit, i.e. environmental impacts are reported per kg of food. Another common functional unit is weight of protein contained in the food, which is important for comparing different sources of protein, notably meat and its alternatives. This paper goes one step further and examines how protein quality, as opposed to protein quantity, can be accounted for in food LCAs, by using a scoring system to reflect the availability and digestibility of indispensable (i.e. essential) amino acids.