Find out how your diet contributes to your carbon footprint and what dietary changes have the biggest impact.
Calculate Your Diet's Carbon Footprint
Annual Diet Carbon Footprint
Based on lifecycle emissions data from Poore & Nemecek (2018). Includes land use, farming, processing, and transport.
Food and Climate Change
Food production accounts for roughly 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Of that, animal products (meat and dairy) contribute about 60% of food-related emissions despite providing only 18% of global calories.
The Beef Problem
Beef has by far the highest emissions per gram of protein — roughly 20x higher than legumes. Cattle require large amounts of land, produce methane from digestion, and often replace forests that would otherwise absorb CO₂.
Biggest Dietary Changes for the Planet
Swapping beef for chicken cuts that meal's footprint by ~75%
Going fully vegan reduces food footprint by ~50–70%
Eating local has a smaller impact than you might think — transport is ~6% of food emissions
Reducing food waste is also high-impact — about 1/3 of all food is wasted
How Food Production Drives Emissions
Food systems — including agriculture, land use change, processing, packaging, and transportation — account for roughly 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to research by Poore and Nemecek (2018). The dominant driver is animal agriculture, particularly beef and dairy cattle. Cattle produce methane through digestive processes — a potent greenhouse gas roughly 80 times more warming than CO₂ over a 20-year period. They also require large amounts of land for grazing and feed crop production, often displacing forests that would otherwise store carbon.
Food Emissions by Category
The lifecycle emissions of different foods vary by orders of magnitude. Per 100g of protein, approximate emissions are:
Beef: ~50 kg CO₂e — the most emissions-intensive common food
Lamb: ~20 kg CO₂e
Pork: ~7.6 kg CO₂e
Chicken: ~5.7 kg CO₂e
Eggs: ~4.5 kg CO₂e
Tofu: ~2 kg CO₂e
Lentils and beans: ~0.9 kg CO₂e
These figures illustrate why reducing beef consumption is the single highest-impact dietary change for most people — beef produces roughly 20 times more emissions per gram of protein than legumes.
The "Eat Local" Myth
A commonly promoted piece of dietary advice is to "eat locally" to reduce food miles. The data tells a more complicated story: transportation typically accounts for only about 6% of food's total lifecycle emissions — far less than production. What you eat matters far more than where it comes from. A pound of locally raised beef still produces significantly more emissions than imported lentils. Local food has genuine benefits — freshness, supporting local farmers, reducing packaging — but "local" doesn't reliably mean "lower carbon."
Use our Carbon Footprint Calculator to see how your diet compares to the U.S. average and how dietary changes would affect your total footprint.
Practical Steps to Reduce Your Diet's Footprint
Reduce beef first: Even cutting from 5 servings per week to 1 makes a substantial difference — it's by far the highest-impact dietary change available.
Reduce dairy: Cheese and butter have high emissions relative to plant alternatives. Swapping dairy milk for oat or soy milk cuts that product's footprint by 60–80%.
Replace red meat with poultry or legumes: A beef-to-chicken swap reduces that meal's carbon footprint by roughly 75%; replacing with lentils or beans reduces it by over 90%.
Reduce food waste: About one-third of all food produced globally is wasted. Reducing household food waste is equivalent to cutting the emissions from all the resources that went into producing that food.
Don't stress about "local" vs "imported": Transport is only about 6% of food's emissions. What you eat matters far more than where it came from.