Linking diet and planetary health: psychometric evaluation of the climatarian diet adherence scale

While the effects of different types of diets on health and their role in weight loss have been researched for many years, their impact on planetary health has been a subject of study for a much shorter time. The amount of clean water polluted, the amount of greenhouse gases generated, and the land required for the production of the food we consume are now also becoming increasingly important. This study aimed to develop a scale to assess adherence to the climatarian diet, a dietary pattern designed to minimize environmental impacts.

A 25-item draft that was developed by researchers was applied and submitted through a face-to-face survey for data collection. The healthy young adult volunteers participated from a Vocational School in Türkiye. data from 320 associate degree students meeting the inclusion criteria were analyzed from a population of approximately 1,000 students. Scale items measured students' adherence to climatarian diet. The items were evaluated with content validity following the Lawshe method. The Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test construct validity. Initially, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to assess the structure of the scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was subsequently used to validate the acquired component structure. Concurrent validity was evaluated using the Prevention with Mediterranean diet (PREDIMED) based assessment. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated for reliability. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows version 23.0 and AMOS 23.0.

The sample comprised 73.4% females with a mean age of 20.2 ± 3.2 years. After the factor analysis, the scale was divided into six sub-dimensions (food production, eco-friendly, plant-based nutrition, domestic food production, food waste, and environmental awareness/sustainability). The six-factor solution accounted for 59.26% of the total variance. The developed climatarian diet adherence scale (CDAS) showed good compliance statistics, as established with the confirmatory factor analysis fit indices (χ²/df = 2.226, CFI = 0.950, TLI = 0.939, NFI = 0.914, RMSEA = 0.059), and high reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.884).

The study provides initial evidence supporting the psychometric properties of the CDAS among young adults in the study population. For planetary health and our future, awareness of climatarian nutrition needs to be increased.