Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered

Your diet affects climate change. Here’s what you need to know about eating meat, dairy, seafood and produce, and preventing food waste.

Which foods have the largest impact on climate change?

Meat and dairy, particularly from cows, have an outsize impact, with livestock accounting for around 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year. That’s roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today.

In general, beef and lamb have the biggest climate footprint per gram of protein, while plant-based foods tend to have the smallest impact. Pork and chicken are somewhere in the middle.

So are you saying I should become a vegan?

If you’re interested in taking the plunge, a vegan diet does have the smallest climate footprint around.

Another approach would be to simply eat less meat and dairy, and more protein-rich plants like beans, legumes, nuts and grains.

Food waste is a major part of the problem. How can I waste less?

By some estimates, Americans end up throwing out roughly 20 percent of the food they buy. That means that all the energy it took to produce that food was wasted. If you’re buying more food than you actually eat, your climate footprint will be bigger than it needs to be.

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Updated April 15, 2022
Illustrations by Cari Vander Yatchi

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Article from The New York Times