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Finnish households put roughly one euro in five into foods the researchers call discretionary: confectionery, sweet baked goods, desserts, savory snacks, sugar, soft drinks, juices, alcohol, cocoa, coffee, and tea. Jelena Meinilä and colleagues at the University of Helsinki, Tampere University, and Natural Resources Institute Finland analyzed loyalty-card purchases from 22,901 S Group members and published the results in npj Science of Food in January 2026. The share held whether the household preferred red meat, poultry, fish, or plants. Those same baskets supplied almost 20 percent of total calories and 60 percent of added sugar.
The Budget Is the Footprint
The environmental load follows the volume. The paper reports that discretionary foods, aside from the protein sources themselves, accounted for 22 percent of spending and contributed up to 17 to 32 percent of environmental impacts. University of Helsinki’s summary put the climate share above one-fifth of the food basket’s impact, with additional loads on water pollution and land and water use. A single candy bar is small. The weekly total is not. Meinilä’s point is that the carbon argument has spent years on animal foods and left this category mostly unexamined. Cutting it would lower the footprint and raise the nutrient density of the same cart.
Protein Price Was Not the Barrier
The study also tested the claim that plant or fish protein is inherently more expensive. Per 2,500 calories, households that preferred red meat spent about €1.60 on protein sources. Plant-preferring households spent €1.50. The gap is small. Preference, habit, and what the store stocks mattered more than the unit price of the protein. Environmental differences between clusters were still driven mainly by the protein choice itself, with meat and fish contributing the most. Discretionary foods sat on top of that, large in every group.
Nutrient gaps tracked the protein preference in the expected directions. Plant-preferring baskets carried more fiber, folate, and iron and less saturated fat and salt. They also carried less vitamin B12 and vitamin D. Fish-preferring baskets were highest in those two. A plant shift without a plan for B12 and D is a trade, not a free upgrade.
The Pantry, Not the Willpower Lecture
The authors’ conclusion is that individual swaps will not move population numbers if the shelf stays the same. Reformulation, store layout, and pricing are the levers they name, with the updated Nordic and Finnish nutrition recommendations as the reference. That is the useful part of the paper for anyone outside Finland. The loyalty data describe what people actually bought, not what they said they ate. In an affluent market, the discretionary category is large enough to dominate both the sugar total and a sizable slice of the environmental total, regardless of the protein identity on the rest of the receipt.
The practical reading is narrow. Protein choice still moves the footprint. The snacks, sweets, and sweetened drinks move the calories, the sugar, and a fifth of the money. A plant-based burger with a sugary drink and a processed dessert does not clear the discretionary line. The cart that cuts that line, and covers B12 and vitamin D if the protein is plant, is the one the Finnish numbers actually support.
