Food Carbon Footprint Calculator: Find Your Diet Emissions & Eat Green

Believe it or not, your food has a big impact on greenhouse gases and your food carbon footprint is bigger than you may know! It’s not only the plastics used to preserve and package products, beef and dairy production contribute a huge amount of CO₂ emissions (carbon dioxide greenhouse gas) to the environment. And the growing amount of CO₂ emissions continues to impact the planet by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

If you’re eating meat and cheese at every meal, your food footprint could be up to 30 percent of your total environmental impact!

Calculate your personal food carbon footprint here:

Everything you eat (veggies, meat, dairy, etc) had to be cultivated or raised, and shipped to you you, and therefore contributed to greenhouse emissions.

However, you can do something about the emissions produced by your diet, by using offset programs to erase the harmful CO₂ generated by food production, processing and transportation. The first step is to measure your food footprint.

Environmental Impact of Eating: What’s Your Food Footprint?

At first glance, eating green may seem complex, but in reality, it’s like many other health or sustainability journeys. Simply put, the more you know about your diet’s environmental impact (aka your food footprint), the more you can reduce it.

Food generation emits a large percentage of carbon dioxide (CO₂), whether that involves livestock management or agriculture. New studies show that more than a third of all GHG emissions are generated by food systems.¹⁶

For example, have you ever thought how much beef it takes to keep fast-food chain restaurants doors open? Or how much water, grain, and acreage it takes to raise the cows that most patties are made of?

On top of it all, sometimes forests are cleared for such farms and consumerism needs.

This cuts back extensively on the world’s tree population, significantly reducing its carbon dioxide-sequestering capacity. In fact, 80% of all global deforestation is a result of agricultural production.¹⁷

Then, the beef processing requires energy (and don’t forget plastic to keep it fresh), and transportation to your local restaurant or grocery store. All of that activity combines to make beef’s carbon footprint extremely high, at more than 2x as much kgCO₂eq per kilogram than the next largest food type.⁵ Consuming just one burger a month is equivalent to 32.6 pounds of CO₂eq, which is the same as charging 1,891 smartphones, or driving for 36.6 miles.⁷ Scientific studies have even shown that for the world to “remain within a safe operating space” with climate change, beef consumption in Western countries needs to fall by 90%.⁷

What’s the Carbon Footprint of Meat?

Raising livestock for meat is one of the most environmentally costly agricultural practices worldwide.^4,5,17,7

To elaborate, the average cow eats about 680 lbs of dry matter forage or 780 lbs of air-dried forage.¹ “Forage” typically includes:

• Maize
• Sorghum
• Rye
• Oats
• Melilotus

Researchers have suggested that a farmer’s emissions per hectare are influenced by the amount of land they dedicate to annual forage growth.

Farms with a ‘low/moderate’ amount of land area used for annual forage crops typically emit 18.28 kg CO₂e per kg of live weight (LW, the cow’s total body weight) sold.² On the other hand, farms that either avoid using any of their acreage for these crops or only designate a “very low” amount of space to them emit 21.29 kg CO₂e per kg of LW sold.

Note that these numbers are merely a reflection of how much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere for every individual kilogram of the animal’s weight. Also keep in mind that carbon dioxide is just one greenhouse gas of many that the agriculture industry contributes. Methane (CH4) is 86x more potent than carbon dioxide, and beef cattle produce 70% of it globally.⁷

Given how much forage a single cow can eat over its lifetime, the livestock sector’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can reach astounding levels.

Livestock GHG Emissions

Keep in mind that cows can weigh more or less than this 1,000-lb baseline. This means that its forage demand can rise or fall per acre, both individually and collectively, along with the rest of the herd of livestock.

For instance, imagine that a rancher has a herd of 30 cows. How long does the rancher need to raise those cattle? Well, experts say that the best age for slaughter is 12-22 months old.³ This will dramatically increase their forage demand, plus the amount of water required for maintaining the pasture and cattle and the amount of manure the herd excretes.

With more manure produced, more nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) gets released into the atmosphere. Methane, in particular, has a global warming effect that is 28 times higher than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is even worse. It has a 265 times larger global warming potential than carbon dioxide.⁴

Beef cattle account for about 45% of livestock’s CO₂ emissions. Dairy cattle are second to these animals at 26%, followed by:

• Buffalo: 12%
• Pigs: 7%
• Sheep: 4.5%
• Goats: 4%
• Chicken: 1.5%

Yet, cows aren’t the only source of meat in most omnivore diets. Here’s a snapshot of how much the protein portion of your dietary patterns contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions:⁵

• Beef (beef herd): 99.48 kgCO₂eq
• Beef (dairy herd): 33.3 kgCO₂eq
• Lamb and mutton: 39.72 kgCO₂eq
• Pig: 12.31 kgCO₂eq
• Poultry: 9.87 kgCO₂eq

Unfortunately, even so-called “eco-friendly” dietary habits impose negative impacts on ecosystems worldwide, especially in terms of deforestation.

What’s the Carbon Footprint of Veggies, Dairy and Fruit?

Meat isn’t the only type of food that produces carbon dioxide. Even foods you might not suspect, such as veggies, dairy, and fruit, have a carbon footprint.

Dairy is the biggest sneaky source of CO₂, since it also is a product of cows, like beef. In order to get the milk, the cows still need land and grain. This means that dairy, at 9.81 kg of CO₂ for every 2 pounds, actually has a similar carbon footprint as other meats, which produce 9.89 kg of CO₂ for every 2.2 pounds, on average.⁸ When compared to beef, though, dairy is still a much more environmentally-friendly option for protein.

Beef produces 44.92kg of CO₂ for every 2.2 pounds of meat, which is nearly 5x the amount that dairy does.⁸ With this in mind, dairy is a better choice, but can be made even better by choosing local dairy farms, which reduces the carbon footprint of transportation.

Also be aware of all dairy products, not just milk itself. For example, here are the carbon footprints of cheese:¹⁵

• It takes 21.65 lbs CO₂e to produce 2.2 pounds of processed cheese, a car driving equivalent of 22.75 miles, a relatively high carbon footprint
• It takes 21.62 lbs CO₂e to produce 2.2 pounds of natural cheese, a car driving equivalent of 22.5 miles, also a relatively high carbon footprint

With fruits and vegetables, the carbon footprint’s main source is transportation, since these are the food items that require the most intensive transportation methods. A recent study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology showed that most vegetables’ carbon dioxide output ranged from a low of .09kg of CO₂ to a high of 1.46kg… except for asparagus, which measured at 8.87kg of CO₂, nearly 6x the amount of GHG than the next-highest vegetable, and even higher than pork, veal, chicken, eggs, or milk.¹⁰

Upon further investigation, the scientists found that this was because tender produce requires air freight, which is very carbon-intensive. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shipping produce via plane takes 50 times the energy of shipping by sea, 33 times that of rail transport, and four times that of truck transport.¹⁰

In addition to this, unlike meat or dairy that can be produced year-round, produce is a seasonal crop. This means that in order to enjoy a ripe orange in the middle of winter, produce must be imported from a country in a very different climate zone. This results in a lot of miles, and a lot of CO₂, just to get those oranges to you. The average carbon footprint of ‘out-of-season’ oranges relative to ‘in-season’ oranges increases by 51%, 46%, 14%, and 24% for Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, respectively, reflecting how important seasonality is in calculating produce’s CO₂ emissions.⁹

Some of the produce frequently flown into the U.S. are:

• Bell peppers
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Raspberries
• Asparagus¹⁰

Because of this, buying produce locally and in-season has a dramatic impact on lowering your produce’s carbon footprint. By buying locally, you do not contribute to the carbon cost of transportation as much. Even though you may not have access to the specific vegetables or fruits you may want, buying seasonal produce is significantly better for the environment.

Even if it is difficult for you to find fresh produce in your specific town, you can make sustainable choices by getting as close to home as possible. Most produce requires to be labeled with their origin, and studies have shown that the carbon footprint of oranges delivered from California to New York City was .5 kgCO₂e/kg lower than those delivered from Mexico.⁹

Eliminating the transport of produce could save the CO₂e equivalent of driving 1,000 miles. So, even though fruits and veggies are the least carbon intensive food types, there is still a lot of CO₂ emissions to be saved by making green choices.¹¹

What’s the Carbon Footprint of Sugars and Alcohol?

Some other types of food that are not often thought of when discussing carbon footprints are sugar and alcohol. In fact, studies have shown that these produce a particularly high carbon footprint, especially since these two food types are often consumed at restaurants.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield and Kyoto’s Research Institute for Humanity and Nature found that the more a family consumes sweets, alcohol and food from restaurants, the higher their household carbon footprint.¹²

The study found that eating out releases 1697 pounds of greenhouse gases per household every year, whereas meat consumption contributes only 617 pounds per year. Households with a higher carbon footprint also spend three times more on alcohol and and twice more on sweets than households with a lower carbon footprint.¹²

The results were so significant that the researcher suggested, “if we think of carbon tax, it might be wiser to target sweets and alcohol if we want a progressive system.”¹²

So, by consuming less alcohol and sweets, and eating out less, you can considerably reduce your CO₂ footprint.

Food Footprint: Role of Deforestation and Habitat Fragmentation

When you calculate your food’s carbon footprint, you should consider the land used to produce your food.

Whether you are on a paleo diet, have a keto lifestyle, or eat according to a strictly vegetarian meal plan, your food needs space and energy to grow. Unfortunately, securing this space means land must be cleared.