A. Relevance and sustainability context
A.1 Policy relevance
The "Food and Nutrition Strategy" for Germany (adopted in 2024) emphasizes that food is central to good health and well-being, and food choices help protect the environment and climate. Dietary behaviour changes -- due e.g. to increasing food prices or changes in supply -- need to be monitored in order to ensure food security. Policy makers need information on the nutritional situation of the population in order to keep up-to-date on and be able to react in a timely fashion to critical trends.
Meat consumption in Germany well exceeds dietary recommendations. The 2024 Bioeconomy Monitoring Report showed that it was at least 3 times higher than recommended in 2022. This is both associated with negative health impacts as well high levels of resource use (in particular land and water) and climate emissions. Findings of the 2024 Bioeconomy Monitoring Report showed that the agricultural biomass footprint could be reduced by 13 %, the agricultural land footprint by 14 % and the climate footprint by 17 % compared to a reference scenario in 2050, if dietary recommendations for meat consumption by 2050 were met. This makes reducing meat consumption one key strategy to reduce Germany's pressures on natural resources, possibly also opening potentials for more innovative applications of biomass in the future bioeconomy. It is thus highly relevant to reaching the goals of the National Bioeconomy Strategy and the international Sustainable Development Goals (especially SDG 12 on responsible consumption and SDG 2 on zero hunger).
The indicator is also classified under social norms. Trends in meat consumption also depict the German population's willingness to engage in changed behaviours, especially as more information and public awareness of health and environmental impacts related to high consumption grows.
A.2 Sustainability and / or comparative evaluation options
It is recommended to include the comparative dietary recommendations in the indicator itself. In this way, the indicator can also be interpreted as "distance-to-targets" and German trends are put directly into the perspective of sustainability goals. It is suggested to use both the German dietary recommendations from the German Nutrition Society (DGE, see below) as well as recommendations for a planetary diet (which is healthy for all and within planetary boundaries) from academic sources (see below).
B. Data availability
B.1 Stage of development
It is considered an established indicator as it is based on national dietary monitoring – which is based on regular surveys and nutrition studies conducted on a continuous basis – and regular reporting for e.g. beef, pork and poultry trends as published by a German ministry (BLE – see below).
B.2 Data sources
National Nutrition Monitoring [Nationales Ernährungsmonitoring] (nemo) from Max Rubner Institute: https://www.mri.bund.de/de/humanstudien/laufende-humanstudien/nationales-ernaehrungsmonitoring-nemo/
Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMLEH) publishes an annual report since 2015 on "Germany: How it eats" based on a yearly survey of diets and food purchasing trends (https://www.bmleh.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/ernaehrungsreport-ueberblick.html) as well provides statistics in a more detailed way: https://www.bmel-statistik.de/ernaehrung/tabellen-zu-ernaehrung.
The Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) calculates the annual supply balance for meat (including e.g. beef, pork and poultry) and trends regarding the total consumption requirements and intake: https://www.ble.de/DE/BZL/Daten-Berichte/Fleisch/fleisch_node.html
Dietary recommendations from the German Nutrition Society (DGE) are available at https://www.dge.de, from Germany's Nutrition strategy at https://www.bmleh.de/DE/themen/ernaehrung/ernaehrungsstrategie/ernaehrungsstrategie.htm and related scientific studies behind the recommendations at e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313347. Dietary recommendations for e.g. the planetary diet are from sources like the EAT-Lancet Commission (a group of global scientists creating guidelines for healthy human diets and sustainable food production): https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet/.
B.3 Coverage over time and replicability
Data is available on an annual basis with e.g. a new calculation method from BLE (see above) from 2010 to 2025. Reporting from BMLEH (see above) is also annual since 2015. The dietary recommendations are updated intermittently.
B.4 Coverage across scales and sectors; compatibility
Detailed breakdowns across food categories are available. In addition, EU (in the context of EU Bioeconomy Monitoring) and international (e.g. FAOSTAT Food Balance Scheets ) reporting provide comparable indicators, such as "Daily calorie supply per capita by source". International and EU indicators may not be directly comparable with detailed German dietary-survey data from e.g. BMLEH and the National Nutrition Monitoring, as they are based on different methods (e.g. measuring food supply/availability rather than individual-level consumption). German national surveys provide more detail on food consumption, nutrient intake and population subgroups, while the international datasets provide cross-country comparability. For the national bioeconomy monitoring, the former is prioritized due to the aim of also showing social norms.
C. Considerations for operationalization
C.1 Feasibility: Fit for monitoring
The indicators are considered robust as they are well established in other reporting contexts (see above) and thus subject to many years of experience and improvement. The recommendations are also based on best available scientific evidence.
C.2 Institutions
See above with the Max Rubner Institute, BMLEH, BLE, DGE and EAT-Lancet Commission noted.
C.3 Future prospects
The future prospects are high as the indicator is already well established in other reporting contexts. The distance to targets may require more dedicated computational work as well as review of dietary recommendations and updates at a national and planetary scale.
C.4 Costs, considerations and reproducibility
The costs for replication of existing data are very low as the statistics are already openly available. An annual reporting of trends is suggested to show changes related to meat consumption. More invested work is needed to check and update dietary recommendations.
C.5 Potential for automation
High for statistics and trends (see comments directly above) but not for review and integration of dietary recommendations (especially for a planetary diet).
C.6 Presentation options and breakdown / sub-indicator needs
Similar to the Bioeconomy Monitoring Report 2024, it is suggested to show 2 charts depicting (1) trends for meat consumption of pork, poultry and beef (similar to BLE) and (2) distance-to-targets for different food groups compared to current dietary composition.
C.7 Potential for scenario integration
High and has been done in the 2024 Bioeconomy Monitoring Report.
C.8 Interlinkages and alignment with other monitoring activities
High alignment – see the data sources above and mention of e.g. National Nutrition Monitoring as well as EU Bioeconomy Monitoring and FAO monitoring.