Archive for the ‘Food Data’ Category
Carbon Footprint per Calorie
Posted by Alex Loijos | 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!
Over 95 foods assessed!
Posted by admin | Filed under Food Data, Uncategorized
Here is a Blist Spreadsheet that displays the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of 96 food products. It includes dairy products, five types of grain, seven meats, nine oils, 12 nuts/seeds/beans, 22 veggies, 21 fruits, and other miscellaneous foods.
The Blist format allows you to play with the numbers. To compare different foods, click on the “Columns” tab, and click “Sort…”.
In order to compare different types of oils, for example, you would first drag “Category” to the box on the left, then drag in “Grams CO2e per Serving”. You can select “ascending” or “descending” for each sorted column. Scroll down to the “Oil” category, and you can compare the carbon footprint of different oils! Try the same for meats, veggies, fruits, or compare your favorite foods. Keep in mind that the serving size varies for different foods, and this strongly affects the numbers.
Click here if you would like a straight-up HTML version of the data.
If you would like permission to edit the document, please e-mail me!
To see the science behind the numbers, read the methods paper.
Welcome to change!
Posted by admin | Filed under Food Data
From the farm to the table, food production has a profound impact on the planet, the environment and people. It is clear that unless we change our practices, more then our lifestyles are in danger. This change needs to start at home - people’s preferences and purchases define what farms produce and how they go about growing it. Although there is already some awareness of this problem, and some willingness to change, individuals often feel disconnected from the problem and unable to change it. How is someone in a supermarket to know the environmental impact of the food they eat? FoodPrint!
View all of the Foods!
