The short-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on takeaway dietary pattern, its environmental footprints, and...

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the takeaway dietary pattern has led to significant shifts in dietary patterns. However, the precise details of these changes and their associated environmental and nutritional consequences remain unrevealed. Here, we address this knowledge gap through the text mining of 299.25 million takeaway product consumption records. Taking Beijing as a case study, we estimated the comprehensive shift in food takeaway diets. Overall takeaway consumption trends in 7 food categories-dairy (-27.90%), meat (-34.98%), grain (-32.46%), eggs (-19.51%), fruit (-25.46%), seafood (-38.21%) and soybean (-13.16%)-experienced significant declines, while the intake of oil (15.64%) and sugar (16.04%) saw an increase. The overall environmental impact demonstrated a reduction, with declines observed in carbon footprint (-34.35%), nitrogen footprint (-33.95%), phosphorus footprint (-32.67%), water footprint (-32.84%), and land use (-33.18%) compared to pre-COVID levels. Our results reveal a decrease in environmental impacts and a simultaneous alleviation of nutritional imbalances in total within the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the food takeaway industry. The findings contributed to understanding of shift in takeaway eating patterns caused by the pandemic, hold implications for environmental and nutritional consequences of takeaway diet patterns.