Carbon Footprint per Calorie
Posted by admin | Filed under Food Data
We have new data that explores the impact per calorie of various foods. Click here to view and play with the spreadsheet. See our last post for instructions on how to sort the spreadsheet by the various column headings.
It is important to find a meaningful way to measure the carbon impact of foods, and it occurred to us that “impact per serving” values all servings in the same way, regardless of how nutritious the food is. One food may have more impact per serving than another, but less impact per calorie. One example of this difference can be seen with the first two foods on our list: almonds and apples. Almonds have an estimated 166g CO2e per serving, and apples have a lower impact of 107g. But since almonds are a high calorie food, they actually have less associated impact per Calorie (1.0 g CO2e per Calorie) than do apples (1.3 g CO2e per Calorie).
It is good to compare both measures, and neither is clearly superior in all cases. While calories are a quick indication of nutritional value, calories alone do not provide good nutrition. This measure ignores essential components of a food such as carbohydrates, fat, protein, fiber, and vitamins.
While Sunflower Oil has a low carbon footprint per Calorie, it is not recommended to eat only this to attempt to be environmentally conscious!
August 28th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Thanks for the comprehensive information. What is the source of the data for the blist spreadsheet?