Low-meat and no-meat diets are increasingly acknowledged as sustainable alternatives to current Western food consumption patterns. Concerns for the environment, individual health or animal welfare are raising consumers’ willingness to adopt such diets. Dietary shifts in Western countries may modify the way human-environment systems interact over distances, primarily as a result of existing trade flows in food products. Global studies have focused on the amount of water, land, and CO₂ emissions embodied in plant-based versus animal-based proteins, but the potential of alternative diets to shift the location of environmental impacts has not yet been investigated. We build on footprint and trade-based analyses to compare the magnitude and spatial allocation of the impacts of six diets of consumers in the United States of America (USA). We used data on declared diets as well as a stylized average diet and a recent dietary guideline integrating health and environmental targets. We demonstrate that low-meat and no-meat diets have a lower demand for land and utilize more crops with natural nitrogen fixation potential, yet also rely more widely on pollinator abundance and diversity, and can increase impacts on freshwater ecosystems in some countries. We recommend that governments carefully consider the local impacts of the alternative diets they promote, and minimize trade-offs between the global and local consequences of dietary shifts through regulation or incentives.

低肉饮食和无肉饮食被认为是当前西方食品消费方式的可持续替代品。对环境，个人健康或动物福利的关注提高了消费者采用这种饮食的意愿。西方国家的饮食变化可能会改变人类与环境系统远距离相互作用的方式，这主要是由于食品现有贸易流的结果。全球研究集中于水，土地和CO _2的量植物性和动物性蛋白质所产生的碳排放量，但是替代饮食改变环境影响位置的潜力尚未得到研究。我们以足迹和基于贸易的分析为基础，比较美利坚合众国（美国）六种饮食对消费者的影响的大小和空间分配。我们使用了已宣布饮食，程式化平均饮食和结合健康与环境目标的最新饮食指南的数据。我们证明，低肉和无肉饮食对土地的需求较低，并且利用了更多具有天然固氮潜力的作物，但也更加广泛​​地依赖于传粉媒介的丰度和多样性，并可能在某些国家增加对淡水生态系统的影响。