Food is about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The good news: a few choices make most of the difference, and they're easier than you might think.
The same weight of different foods can differ nearly a hundredfold in its footprint. Beef and lamb come first by far: cattle and sheep need a lot of land and feed, and they release methane as they digest. Cheese, pork and chicken come next. Beans, lentils, tofu, grains, fruit and vegetables have the lowest footprints of all.
Across the world, animal farming uses about 83% of farmland, but gives us 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein.
Transport is usually a small part of a food's footprint: about 6% of food's emissions worldwide. Local beef still has a far higher footprint than lentils shipped from the other side of the world. The exception is food flown in by air, such as some berries, asparagus and green beans out of season.
| Food | kg CO₂e |
|---|---|
 Ground beef | 33.2 |
 Pork belly | 10.1 |
| Chicken breast | 6.8 |
 Cheddar cheese | 6.2 |
| Salmon | 5.8 |
| Rice | 2.8 |
 Egg | 2.5 |
| Milk | 1.5 |
 Chickpeas | 1 |
| Lentils | 0.9 |
| Banana | 0.9 |
| Tofu | 0.7 |
| Potato | 0.4 |
Ecobite's figures, from AGRIBALYSE 3.1.1 (ADEME) with our own minor changes. A kilo of each, as bought; ground beef raw; pork belly raw; chicken breast raw, boneless; salmon raw, fillet; rice dry; chickpeas dry; lentils dry. All 1,500 foods.
About a quarter of the emissions from producing food come from food that is lost on the way or thrown away at home. Planning meals, using leftovers and buying what you'll eat makes a real difference, whatever you eat.
You don't have to change everything. Half the mince in a bolognese swapped for lentils, a meat-free day or two a week, beans in a chilli: swaps like these cut the footprint of a meal a lot, and often its cost too.
Compare by the meal, not just by the kilo: foods give different amounts of nutrition, and a portion of cheese weighs far less than a portion of potatoes.
Every recipe and food in Ecobite shows its footprint and its nutrition rating, worked out from the same data, so you can see what a change does before you make it. Track your meals and watch your week add up, and use Magic swaps to find ingredients with a lower footprint. You decide what to eat; we show you the numbers.
Browse our recipesSources: Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360, 987–992 (food's share of emissions, farmland and protein, transport and waste). ADEME, AGRIBALYSE 3.1.1 (2023), for the footprint of each food.
