Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat, to reduce your carbon footprint
Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.
This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our entries on Environmental impacts of food production and CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
What is the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of our diet?
I have shown previously that what we choose to eat has the largest impact, making a bigger difference than how far our food has traveled, or how much packaging it’s wrapped in. This is because only a small fraction comes from transport and packaging and most of our food emissions come from processes on the farm, or from land use change.
Regardless of whether you compare the footprint of foods in terms of their weight (e.g. one kilogram of cheese versus one kilogram of peas); protein content ; or calories, the overall conclusion is the same: plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint.
As an example: producing 100 grams of protein from peas emits just 0.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq). To get the same amount of protein from beef, emissions would be nearly 90 times higher, at 35 kgCO2eq.