These Simple Food Choices Can Drastically Reduce Your Environmental Impact

To make the biggest impact on your carbon footprint with the smallest effort, simply eat less beef and lamb. You don’t need to eliminate them from your diet entirely—any reduction in your daily intake of beef or lamb will make a significant dent in the climate cost of what you eat, as it has a 50% higher “carbon cost.”

Red meat has a large carbon foot print because of the vast amount of land and water necessary to raise the animals, not to mention the methane they release when they burp and fart. According to research from the UC Davis team, a serving of beef emits about 330 grams of carbon, comparable to driving a car about three miles.

Here is how a serving of other foods fared in the study:

• A serving of chicken is 52 grams of carbon, equivalent to driving a car about half a mile.
• Fish is 40 grams, or about 0.36 miles of driving.
• Veggies 14 grams, or about 0.13 miles.
• Lentils equal 2 grams, or about 0.02 miles (about 100 feet).

As you can see red meat has an outsized impact on emissions compared to other foods. Even eating pork would reduce your emissions over three times compared to beef, and over four times compared to lamb, according to a report from the Environmental Working Group (page 19).

How to adopt a climate-friendly diet

If you think following a specific diet will make it easier to eat with the climate in mind, consider the Mediterranean diet. Already popular for its health benefits, this diet has plenty to offer in terms of variety without including red meats.

Here is an overview of what following a Mediterranean diet looks like, from Lifehacker’s senior health editor Beth Skwarecki. And according to Healthline, here is the variety of food included:

• Vegetables: tomatoes, broccoli, kale, spinach, onions, cauliflower, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips.
• Fruits: apples, bananas, oranges, pears, strawberries, grapes, dates, figs, melons, peaches.
• Nuts, seeds, and nut butters: almonds, walnuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almond butter, peanut butter.
• Legumes: beans, peas, lentils, pulses, peanuts, chickpeas.
• Whole grains: oats, brown rice, rye, barley, corn, buckwheat, whole wheat bread and pasta.
• Fish and seafood: salmon, sardines, trout, tuna, mackerel, shrimp, oysters, clams, crab, mussels.
• Poultry: chicken, duck, turkey.
• Eggs: chicken, quail, and duck eggs.
• Dairy: cheese, yogurt, milk.
• Herbs and spices: garlic, basil, mint, rosemary, sage, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper.
• Healthy fats: extra virgin olive oil, olives, avocados, and avocado oil.

This diet is perfect if you want to reduce your emissions without overhauling your entire lifestyle—and while eating locally and seasonally is great, the best part is that if that stresses you out, you can still eat more environmentally consciously with a Mediterranean diet.