116. Ruminant Impacts on Land Use Alignment and Dietary Sufficiency Under Diverse Food Consumption and Land Use Scenarios.

Abstract The alignment of U.S. agricultural land use with healthy diets has been questioned, particularly as related to the production of animal sourced foods. We explored the degree to which protein source influences dietary nutrient adequacy and land alignment with U.S. agricultural land use to explore how diets differing in protein source influence nutritional sufficiency and agricultural feasibility. The study relied on simulation of 44,000 dietary profiles representing 304,000 unique daily food combinations. Simulated weekly dietary patterns resulted in mean nutrient adequacy ratio (MAR) of 0.919 and ranged from 0.795 and 0.992. Land use alignment was skewed with the mean correlation of 0.085 and median of -0.248. 206 of the 44,000 weekly dietary patterns had greater than 80% alignment with the current land use and yielded a MAR of greater than 95%. Ruminant-derived proteins were key to dietary scenarios resulting in high MAR and land alignment, largely because of their reliance on grazing land. When grazing and hay lands were excluded from the assessment, the mean land use alignment was -0.378, and the maximum was 0.139. Collectively, these data point to a need to expand our consideration of nutritional and food system complexity and values when exploring alignment between agriculture and healthy diets.