A Fascinating In Depth Guide To Food’s Environmental Impact

We are all trying our best to make good choices that will have minimal impact on the environment. Now more than ever are people sensitive to the climate crisis.

Food production accounts for about 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. And within that, the emissions mostly come from agriculture in particularly livestock.

Environmentally speaking, a freegan diet would be the best bet. This is a person who eats discarded food and uses only discarded goods in order to reduce waste and reject consumerism. Hmmm… not sure I want to jump on that bandwagon just yet.

After hearing I shouldn’t eat beef or lamb or dairy or almonds or even avocados, I wonder “What CAN I eat”? Can a person survive on home grown kale only? What fun would that be?

So I set on a journey to discover what foods should I welcome into my diet and which ones should I minimize or avoid. And the solution that I will go with is not that bad.

The main things to consider when choosing environmentally friendly foods are: where was the food grown (not just location but what type of agriculture) and how much processing was involved.

The Environmental Working Group created a “Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health” which is a great guide for comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of various foods and comparing them to meat. They’ve compiled a very helpful chart that demonstrates the areas of production that account for the emissions which has been useful in determining when to consider local vs organic.

Eating Local Is Not Always Better

You might have learned that making the choice to choose local foods is better for the environment. While this can be true in many cases, it is not always true.

Eating local is good to support the local economy, local farmers and to get fresher food. The produce will be picked at it’s peak ripeness giving it more nutrients.

Eating local is good because it can reduce the emissions that would be incurred to transport food from far away. But transportation is not the main contributor to the environmental impact of food production.

As you can see from the chart below, the major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in food production are emissions from the farm or the farm that feeds animals or changes in land use.

Whether the farm is growing the food in question (cows, rice, chicken, dairy, sugar, coffee, tomatoes etc.) or the food that feeds the food in question (feed for livestock or poultry etc.), it has direct emissions. For example, cows emit methane, chickens produce manure that has emission. Even fertilizer has emissions associated with it.

A study was done that involved Google Street View vehicles equipped with methane detectors to find out the methane levels of fertilizer plants in the United States. It was found that the levels of methane were 100 times higher than the industry’s stated values.

Many fertilizers are nitrogen based and it has been found that these fertilizers are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions withing the food production industry. Nitrogen has an impact more than five times worse than carbon dioxide.

The land used to grow the food is often a bigger problem as areas of land are deforested or repurposed. Deforestation has it’s obvious impacts on the environment with the loss of trees that could sequester carbon and loss of habitat. But changing the purpose of land has inherent problems of water use, land erosion, weather patterns changing and increased fertilizers and pesticides required.

So, it is more important to choose food that has been sustainably raised/grown over possible local farms that have repurposed land or use fertilizers.

Sometimes when there is demand for a food that is out of season, people have a choice to purchase the local farmers crops that have been grown inside with heat and lights causing a higher carbon footprint than if it had been transported from further away.

Most transportation involved in food production is by land or boat. It is very rare that it will travel by air.

Foods With The Worst Impact On The Environment

I’ll start with the bad news. I’ve listed some common foods that have a negative impact on the environment. In moderation, these items might not be so bad but with the growing population and increased consumption habits in the developed world, the industries that produce the following food are not sustainable.

Beef

A list of the foods with the worst impact on the environment would not be complete without beef. I won’t dwell on this one too much as there are plenty of resources on the internet that layout the problems with the beef industry. The “Cole’s notes” are, forests are being cut down to grow the food for cows or the pastures for cow grazing. Cows emit methane and other polluting gases. Two thirds of all ammonia comes from cows.

Cows require a significant amount of grains which take pesticides and fertilizer but they also need antibiotics. Their waste is high in nitrous oxide which is almost 300 times more potent to greenhouse effects than carbon dioxide.

I can’t believe I am saying this but veal is better than beef (for the environment). The calves use less resources, eat less grain and require less water. Plus they generate less methane gas.

Lamb

Lamb is the worst food for the planet. It has a 50 percent higher footprint than beef! The good news is that it is not a widely consumed food, under one percent of the meat consumed by Americans is lamb.

But why is there hoofprint so high? Sheep are burpers – releasing methane into the atmosphere. Plus sheep have much less meat than cows and take up just as much land to grow and grow their feed.

Dairy Products

Of course dairy products are going to be a problem because you need to raise cows to get the dairy (see issues with beef above). Cheese is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. It takes ten pounds of milk to produce one pound of cheese. And to make a pound of butter, you need 21 pounds of milk!

Mozzerella is a lighter cheese and therefore requires less milk to produce so it is a better option than cheddar or an imported parmesan cheese.

Another favourite dairy product is yogurt. The production of yogurt has the same issues requiring cows milk but also has a toxic waste product of whey pollution. In 2008 there was a whey waste spill from a dairy farm in Ohio into a neighbouring creek that caused the death of more than five thousand fish.

Shellfish

Shellfish, lobster and crabs have the most carbon intensive fleets using more fuel with less volume caught. Although they account for only six percent of all the food fished, they are responsible for over 20 percent of all emissions.

The prawns that come from Madagascar, Thailand and Sri Lanka could be responsible for the destruction of mangrove swamps.

There are better methods of fishing that can improve the carbon emissions due to fishing crustaceans. The market for these more expensive seafood is growing as people are becoming more affluent and starting to move away from beef.

Chicken

The production of chicken typically uses 5 pounds of CO2 per pound of chicken. Although this is a smaller carbon footprint than that of beef or lamb, the processing of chicken is more water intensive.

Most of this carbon footprint is due to the feed grown for the chickens. These crops need land (mostly repurposed), fertilizers and pesticides.

As the demand for chicken increases in the American diet (due to decrease in beef consumption), family chicken farms are being replaced with large facilities processing hundred of thousands of chicken each year. These conventional chicken facilities have poor air quality and higher emissions of ammonia as well as large amounts of nitrogen filled waste products. Often the waste ends up in the surrounding waterways and soil. Nitrogen is close to 300 times more potent greenhouse effect than carbon.

Eggs

Eggs they have a large water footprint of 477 gallons of water for 1 pound of eggs. The production of eggs uses about the same amount of land per mass of protein as chicken – so the same issues exist for both (see above).

The feed grown for the chickens But the interesting thing about the production of eggs is that the birds grown in the caged factories need less feed. The cage free chickens need 14 percent more food. Unfortunately mortality rates for cage free chickens is higher than their caged counterparts. So perhaps cage free are not better than conventional eggs.

Organic chickens whose feed does not involved chemical fertilizers or pesticides eat about 20 percent more feed than the caged birds. This is a significant increase in food required but the emissions from fertilizer and pesticides is no longer an issue.

Farmed Salmon

Salmon farming is very destructive because the salmon are typically grown and fed in nets within the ocean close to the shore. Disease and parasites are common in these nets and can spread to wild fish. Dead zones can be created where the salmon waste falls to the ocean floor. Antibiotics are fed to the salmon which can later be found in the humans that eat them causing a risk of resistance to antibiotics.

Wild salmon have a natural pink colouring because of their diets. Farmed fish are naturally gray in colour so dye is added to the farmed salmon food to get the colour that wild salmon have from eating shell fish.

Pork

The greenhouse gas emissions from pork production is mostly due to emissions at the farm. The management of swine manure and the fuel combustion required to house them are 38 percent of emissions. Emissions due to processing the meat and the emissions due to cooking it account for about 13 percent each.

Asparagus

This one might surprise you, asparagus has a similar carbon footprint to that of cheese and more than pork. Asparagus is one of the few food products that is commonly transported by air. So if it is coming from a country far away, avoid it, but it is OK to consume local asparagus.

Coffee

This is the one that most people do not want to hear about. The coffee industry has been problematic for the environment because it is the cause of deforestation in many countries. It not only has a high carbon footprint because of the common agricultural methods used (involving pesticides and fertilizers) but it also has a very high water footprint. The water is particularly an issue because coffee is often grown in areas that have water scarcity issues.

Avocados

With an increased demand globally for avocados, many forests are being cut down to create avocado crops. These crops are typically problematic because they are a monocrop which is not good long term for soil quality. Fertilizers and pesticides are required to feed the trees causing the usual issues with the surrounding areas and emisssions.

Most of the world’s avocados are coming from Mexico and as a result there is a decline in monarch populations. Plus, those areas have issues with water scarcity. Avocados are thirsty crops with an average global water footprint of 1981 m3/ton. If you compare that to tomatoes of 194 m3/ton.

Bananas

Not all bananas are created equal. When shopping for a banana try to avoid the high carbon footprint conventional bananas (non organic Fairtrade). These conventional bananas are often heavily sprayed with pesticides and fungicides creating dangerous conditions for plantation workers and local flora fauna. Many forests have been cleared to created these mono crop banana forests that feed much of the world’s banana cravings.

Rice

Rice is a main part of the diet for hundreds of millions of people and it has a surprisingly high carbon footprint. The traditional method of making rice floods the crops to decrease the weeds. But this happens to also cause the release of methane gas as the water decays organic matter. Rice alone is responsible for 12 percent of global emissions of methane.

Growing rice also accounts for 33 percent of the world’s annual freshwater use. There is a new farming method called System of Rice Intensification (SRI) that uses less water to produce 50 percent more rice. Oxfam is on a mission to spread the new process to the rice making countries around the world to convert 25 percent of their rice by 2025.

Corn

The biggest issue with corn is that most of the corn grown in the United States is genetically modified. This causes issues for biodiversity because the absense of pests removes a source of food for other animals. Genetically modified crops can easily spread as their seeds travel in the wind and via birds. This spread can cause crops nearby to become genetically modified as well.

Palm Oil

You might think this is an easy one to avoid because who ever uses palm oil in their cooking? This cheap cooking oil is found in 10 percent of American groceries. The problem with palm oil is that there is an incredible amount of deforestation to keep up with global demand. 85 percent of the world’s palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia where they cut down 30 square miles each day. These are forests that can be sequestering carbon and providing life to tigers, bears, orangutans and other endangered species.

Wheat

White bread is more harmful to the environment because the flour is refined and it altered.

Fast Food

This concept of fast food is problematic for multiple reasons. The fast food industry is heavy in beef consumption. The annual greenhouse gas emissions from just cheeseburgers is just about the same as the emissions from 6.5 million SUVs.

High-fructose Corn Syrup

This is one of the worst. Corn is grown in a monoculture (it is not rotated and it is grown alone) which requires pesticides and fertilizer. Plus corn is a culprit for soil depletion. After the high water thirsty emissions heavy act of growing the corn, processing it to produce high-fructose corn syrup is also energy intensive.

Bagged Salad

This might seem a bit weird to have on the list but bagged salad has a high carbon footprint because it has higher rates of being wasted. It is often added to the grocery cart as an add on that sits in the fridge and gets slimy. Also, the lettuce in these bagged salads is often grown under LED lights.

Nut Butters

California is responsible for growing 80 percent of the world’s almonds. This has been a problem with the recent water shortages in this sunny state.

Cashews are commonly from Turkey, where they have child labour or human rights issues related to their cashew production.

Another issue with many nut butters is that often contain palm oil.

Peanuts might be the best nuts to consumbe because they use less water and they help replenish the nitrogen in soil when rotated with other crops.

Soy

Soy has had a reputation for years now as a problem because some genetically modified strains were developed to grow even when a weed killer (Roundup) is sprayed on them. So they started spraying Roundup on fields which proved to be problematic for soil health and bee populations. On top of that, these genetically modified seeds spread easily and cross bred with neighbouring fields.

If you choose to eat soy and soy products, try to get organic.

The soy products coming from Brazil and Argentina are causing deforestation. More deforestation!

Chocolate

I hate to put this one on the list because I love chocolate but it has a high carbon footprint. 90% of the original forests in West Africa are gone partially due to the demand for cheap cocoa [1]. Once again, conventional chocolate is produced with monocrops. It is water intensive and there is a high need for Fairtrade cocoa. Cocoa is the third most important Fairtrade certified product after coffee and tea.

Turkey

Most of the turkeys grown in the world are raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Turkeys have the sixth highest carbon footprint of any food with a total equal to the emissions of Sweden. Their waste is is a big problem for water and air pollution. Their waste contains poisons like nitrogen, phosphorus, hormones and antibiotics.

Even people living next to a CAFO have physical issues related to the turkey waste including chest tightness, wheezing, headaches, runny noses and burning eyes. They also have higher rates of depression and stress.

Good Foods With Minimal Environmental Impact

All food production has some sort of impact on the environment but some are better than others.

A big problem with the above foods that have a negative impact on the environment is land use. Forests being cut down to create the mono crops that need pesticides and fertilizers. Fertilizers and pesticides cause emissions. But there are many foods that are grown sustainably so that the land can continue to support food growth for years to come.

Reducing the amount of pesticide use is important. The clean fifteen are the crops that use the least amount of pesticide residue. The clean fifteen list for 2020 include:

• avocado
• sweet corn
• pineapple
• onion
• papaya
• sweet peas frozen
• eggplant
• asparagus
• cauliflower
• cantaloupes
• broccoli
• mushrooms
• cabbage
• honeydew melon
• kiwi

You will notice avocado on that list, although they don’t have a high amount of pesticide use, there were other negative environmental impacts associated with their production.

Here is a list of foods that you can consume guilt free because they can be sustainable. I haven’t included ALL the great sustainable foods there are, pretty much all local organic fruit and vegetables will be good, I’ve made a list of a few examples.

Lentils

Organic lentils are said to be moderately sustainable. They have a very low carbon footprint of 0.9 kg CO2e (compared to beef at 27 kg CO2e). If you stick to the organic lentils you can avoid the pesticide issues.

Although lentils have a high water footprint (5,874 litres for 1 kg of lentils) it does not cause significant damage to water, air soil or forests.

Mussels

Unlike other shellfish like shrimp, mussels have no negative impact on the environment. In fact one study came out that said eating mussels is better for the planet than being vegan! It is said that the mussels clean up the sea and do not negatively impact the surrounding environment.

Tomatoes

There are many different ways to grow a tomato and some are better than others but overall the average carbon footprint for tomatoes is low. The high end of the range is 2 kg CO2e and for the local organic non hot house variety about 0.4 kg CO2e.

Green Peas

I’ve included green peas in this list because peas nitrogen fixers and do not usually need fertilizers. They are also a protein substitute so you can consider them as part of a beef-less meal.

Broccoli and Cabbage

Once again, most organic local vegetables will have a low negative impact on the environment. Broccoli contains natural pesticides and it helps people expel harmful pollutants from our bodies.

Organic Fairtrade Bananas

I know bananas were part of my list of foods that have a negative impact on the environment. But if you can get organic Fairtrade bananas, you can avoid many of the emissions involved in conventional banana production like pesticide and fungicide spray and deforestation.

Otherwise bananas are great because they keep well, they have their own packaging (a thick peel) and they grow easily in sunny locations – no need for a hot house.

There are other ways to make sure you are minimizing your environmental impact through the food that you are consuming. Minimizing food waste is an important step. It is estimated that 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted each year around the world.

This is the food that is scraped off plates, the food that went bad in your house before you ate it and the food that does not get sold in the stores.

Veganism

Meat and dairy are some of the most harmful foods for the environment which may inspire people to explore the world of veganism. A vegan is a person who does not eat or use animal products (including honey and leather).

If you haven’t already explored the world of veganism, you might want to try out some vegan recipes at least once a week. If everyone in the United States ate only vegan just one day, one hundred billion gallons of water would be saved as well as 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide. If everyone made this swap to one vegan meal each week of the year, it would be equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road for a year in carbon emissions savings.

My absolute favourite vegan recipe book is “Oh She Glows Cookbook“. Each time I host a dinner with an Oh She Glows meals, I get so many compliments. Angela Liddon followed this book with a second one that is almost just as good! Her recipes are easy to make but have a complex blend of flavours that are delightful – and you feel great afterwards!

Another great resource for vegan recipes is the Forks Over Knives site where you can find awesome recipes like these Buffalo Cauliflower Pita Pockets. If you haven’t already seen the movie, Forks Over Knives is a life changing film exploring the health benefits of a plant based diet as well as the issues related to animal food production.

Eating Bugs

And if all else fails we can always resort to eating bugs. Surprisingly, 25 percent of the worlds population include bugs in their diets. Bugs contain protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins and essential minerals. They do not have a high carbon footprint as they are easy to farm with small water and energy requirements.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/20/to-eat-or-not-to-eat-10-of-the-worlds-most-controversial-foods

Asparagus Photo by Christine Siracusa on Unsplash

Mussels Photo by Diego Catto on Unsplash