Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** food systems are challenged to…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** food systems are challenged to supply sufficient, affordable, and healthy food for the growing population within the environmental limits. In the meantime, the food systems alone are responsible for about 1/3 of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally sincefood systems require large natural resource inputs. Hence, the development of novel foods and technologies such as plant-based food presents an opportunity to produce nutrient-rich proteins without compromising the global ecosystem. Understanding of sustainability of plant-based food can be challenging as different stakeholders hold different opinions and limited work has been devoted to fully assessing the sustainability of plant-based food from environmental, economic, and societal metrics in a holistic approach. To address this challenge, we propose to develop a life-cycle sustainability assessment framework to comprehensively evaluate the sustainability of plant-based food by integrating the environmental, economic, and societal impacts. The outcome of this project could provide guidance on the overall sustainability of plant-based food and prioritize research efforts for further commercialization.