What does this meal cost the planet?
Build a plate, then see the same plate with every animal ingredient swapped for its closest plant equivalent. Emissions, freshwater and land are cradle-to-retail global means from Poore & Nemecek's analysis of 38,700 farms.
Your meal
As built
16.65 kg CO₂e
- 3,013 litres of freshwater
- 53.00 m² of land for a year
- ≈ 98 km driven
Fully plant-based version
1.23 kg CO₂e
- 775 litres of freshwater
- 0.98 m² of land for a year
- ≈ 7 km driven
Swapping the animal ingredients saves 15.43 kg CO₂e — a 93% cut , 2,238 litres of water (about 34 showers) and 52.01 m² of farmland. Done once a week for a year, that is 802 kg CO₂e.
Emissions per kilogram of food
| Food | kg CO₂e / kg | Relative |
|---|---|---|
| Beef mince | 99.5 | |
| Lamb | 39.7 | |
| Cheese | 23.9 | |
| Fish (farmed) | 13.6 | |
| Pork | 12.3 | |
| Butter | 12.1 | |
| Chicken breast | 9.9 | |
| Olive oil | 6.0 | |
| Eggs | 4.7 | |
| Brown rice, cooked | 4.0 | |
| White rice, cooked | 4.0 | |
| Vegan cheese | 3.9 | |
| Plant-based burger patty | 3.5 | |
| Dairy yoghurt | 3.5 |
Questions
Where do the emissions figures come from?
Poore & Nemecek (2018) in Science, a meta-analysis of 38,700 farms in 119 countries. Values are global means of cradle-to-retail emissions per kilogram of food, including land-use change, farm, processing, transport, packaging and retail.
Isn't transport the biggest part of food emissions?
Rarely. Transport is typically under 10 percent of the footprint of most foods, and under 1 percent for beef. What the food is matters far more than how far it travelled, which is why swapping the protein beats buying local.
How much does one meal swap actually matter?
A single 150 g beef portion carries roughly 15 kg CO2e — comparable to driving around 60 km in an average petrol car. Replacing it with tofu or lentils removes about 95 percent of that.
Does grass-fed or local beef change the answer?
Not enough to close the gap. Even the lowest-impact 10 percent of beef producers emit several times more per gram of protein than the highest-impact producers of peas or tofu.