What we eat has a big impact on our carbon footprint and our health. The global food system is responsible for around a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions and it’s a similar amount in most people’s personal carbon footprint. Within that animal products are the most carbon intensive. Here are some ways you can eat a mainly plant based diet to reduce your carbon emissions and improve your health: Eat more fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds. As well as being healthy these foods have a lower carbon footprint than animal products. You can start by trying out some new plant based foods, experimenting with weeks where you try to eat no more than one animal product a day and go from there. You don’t need to switch to a fully plant based diet for significant carbon savings.
DID YOU KNOW?
With every meal you have an opportunity to make swaps to cut carbon. For example spaghetti bolognaise has a carbon footprint of 3.4kg for each portion. Swapping beef for plant based mince and lentils and choosing a plant based parmesan cheese can reduce this by almost 80%! However, you don’t have to cut out meat totally for big carbon savings. Swapping half the beef for meaty substitutes like mushrooms or plant based mince will still lead to big carbon savings.
Eat less meat, fish and dairy. The other side of eating more plants is that we need to eat less meat, fish and dairy as these foods typically have a higher carbon footprint. Red meat in particular has a high carbon footprint because of the land needed for cattle, the feed required to bulk them up and the methane they release as they digest their food. Just cutting out red meat can lead to a 25% cut in your diet carbon footprint but you don’t have to stop totally to still see some big benefits. Mainly plant based is an increasingly popular diet type with big carbon cuts.