Fight Climate Change with Food

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” —NASA, Scientific Consensus

Climate Change and Our Food Choices

“The wonderful thing about food is you get three votes a day. Every one of them has the potential to change the world.” —Michael Pollan

Our global food system is intimately connected to climate change. Food systems account for 25-30% of human-created greenhouse gas emissions.¹ The livestock sector alone contributes 14.5% of emissions—more than the entire transportation sector.^2,3 At the same time, global food security is increasingly threatened by climate change—through higher food prices, productivity losses, reduced nutritional quality, greater distribution of pests and diseases, and increasing extreme weather events.¹ Poor and vulnerable individuals across the globe are most affected by these threats.¹ You can use the posters, graphics, and high and low carbon footprint icons below by accessing our evidence-based toolkit here.

The chart above illustrates the carbon footprint of a standard 4-ounce serving of different menu options. A 4-ounce serving of cheese would be typical in a cheesy main dish, like a quesadilla or pizza. Yogurt is typically consumed in larger portions.

The stoplight color-coding is based on the Planetary Health Diet developed by the EAT-Lancet Commission. In our stoplight scorecard, a 4-ounce serving of green foods contributes up to a quarter (0-25%) of your daily dietary carbon footprint, yellow contributes 26-50%, and red contributes >50%.

Minimize Your Carbon Footprint

You can look for the green earth icon to identify low carbon footprint foods and the red earth icon to identify high carbon footprint foods at all UCLA Dining residential restaurants.

Minimizing the carbon footprint of your food can make a meaningful impact on climate change and our planet. A carbon footprint includes every step in a food’s life cycle—the growing, harvesting, processing, and distributing of food around the world. Each step involves using resources and releasing greenhouse gases, which are quantified in carbon-equivalent units (CO₂-eq).⁴ Clearing forests, raising livestock, and using fossil fuels for fertilizers and machinery contribute a large share of emissions in the food system.¹

In general, animal-based foods have a larger carbon footprint than plant-based foods. That’s because growing food to feed animals requires many more resources than eating food directly. Plus, ruminant animals like cows produce methane (mostly by burping) and nitrous oxide (from manure), greenhouse gases 56x and 280x more potent than CO₂, respectively.^1,5

Reducing your meat and dairy intake is an impactful way to minimize your carbon footprint—especially if you’re a big meat eater. In fact, studies modeling a variety of climate change mitigation strategies indicate that shifts to diets with less meat and dairy—and much less beef—are crucial for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions within safe limits.^5,6,7

Criteria for Low and High Carbon Footprint Icons

Low Carbon Footprint options are less than 25% of the daily carbon footprint target and include:

Vegan items
Or one of the following:
Vegetarian menu items with only one of the following:
- 1.5 ounces or less of cheese
- 2 whole eggs or less or 4 ounces or less of liquid eggs (1 large egg is about 2 ounces.)
- 6 ounces or less of yogurt
Items with 8 ounces or less of mollusks (clams, mussels, oysters, scallops)
Items with 4 ounces or less of certified sustainable fish. All UCLA purchases of these fin fish species are certified sustainable and harvested using low carbon footprint methods (e.g., pond aquaculture):
- Catfish
- Char
- Cod
- Sablefish
- Smoked salmon
- Sea bream
- Sole
- Swai
- Trout

High Carbon Footprint options are more than 50% of the daily carbon footprint target and include:

Items containing beef, bison, or lamb
Items containing 3.5 ounces or more of cheese

Can our food choices really impact climate change?

Yes! Let’s do the math. Under President Obama’s Climate Action Plan to meet the Paris Climate Accord, the United States aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 326 million metric tons per year (17% below 2005 levels).⁸ On a per capita basis, this amounts to 2,764 grams CO₂ per person per day.

Let’s do some burrito calculations:

1 beef burrito with cheese, sour cream, and rice = 3,493 grams CO₂-equivalent
1 veggie burrito with beans, guacamole, and rice = 355 grams CO₂-equivalent

The difference is 3,137 grams CO₂, which meets our 2,764 target (plus 14% more).

Let’s see how the Impossible™ burrito fares:

1 beef burrito with cheese, sour cream, and rice = 3,493 grams CO₂-equivalent
1 Impossible™ burrito with guacamole and rice = 581 grams CO₂-equivalent

The difference is 2,911 grams CO₂, which meets our 2,764 target (plus 5% more).

In other words, you could meet the per capita CO₂ reduction target just by choosing the veggie or Impossible™ burrito instead of the beef burrito each day. Choosing to swap the veggie or Impossible™ burrito for the beef burrito just twice a week would get you 32% or 30% towards the total per capita target, respectively.

What diet is best for climate?

While a vegan diet offers the biggest drop in carbon emissions, studies indicate that reducing—rather than eliminating—meat and dairy intake is also a viable strategy for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions within safe limits.^5,6,7 This kind of lower carbon footprint diet is called a “Flexitarian” pattern—with more plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes; less meat, dairy, and sugar; and much less ruminant meat, including beef, bison, and lamb.^1,5,6,7

Learn more in this interactive feature from The New York Times.

Impossible™ Foodprint Project

In Fall 2019, the Impossible™ Foodprint Project was launched at one of our most popular quick-service restaurants, Rendezvous West. The project involved introducing Impossible™ plant-based meat, promoting Impossible™ with information about food and climate change, and labeling all Low Carbon Footprint options at Rendezvous West. Results show, compared to Fall 2018:

-A 54% increase in Low Carbon Footprint food choices.
-An 8% decrease in the mean carbon footprint of each entrée sold.

When considering all entrées sold for Fall, 2019, this totals a decrease of approximately 16.4 metric tons of CO2—the equivalent of driving 42,000 miles! You can see the full research here and the toolkit to implement these ideas and use the posters, graphics, and icons here.

Based on the favorable response from students, we are continuing to introduce new, delicious Low Carbon Footprint menu options, including the Spiced Red Lentils and tofu-based Sofritos at Rendezvous West. The new High Carbon Footprint logo was also inspired by the project.

Did you know?

Of all mammals on Earth, 60% are livestock, 36% are humans, and only 4% are wild animals.⁹

Hungry for more?

Take the Foodprint class! C&EE 19: Foodprint: Connections Between Food and Environment (Prof. Jennifer Jay)

Read about how UCLA students reduced their foodprint after taking the Food Cluster class in this peer-reviewed article

Check out these great resources below, curated by our friends at Harvard:

Peer-reviewed journal articles linking food choices and climate change:

Reports on dietary sustainability and food system justice issues:

Organizations of interest:

Books:

References:

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — IPCC Climate Change and Land Report (2019)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), GHG emissions by livestock
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data
4. Heller, M. C., & Keoleian, G. A. (2014, October). Greenhouse gas emissions of the US diet: aligning nutritional recommendations with environmental concerns. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the Agri-Food Sector (pp. 9-10).
EAT-Lancet Commission – Summary Report of the EAT–Lancet Commission (2019) (PDF)
Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B. L., Lassaletta, L., … & Jonell, M. (2018). Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature, 562(7728), 519.
Hedenus, F., Wirsenius, S., & Johansson, D. J. (2014). The importance of reduced meat and dairy consumption for meeting stringent climate change targets. Climatic change, 124(1-2), 79-91.
Jay, J. A., D’Auria, R., Nordby, J. C., Rice, D. A., Cleveland, D. A., Friscia, A., … & Reynolds, J. R. (2019). Reduction of the carbon footprint of college freshman diets after a food-based environmental science course. Climatic Change, 1-18.
Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(25), 6506-6511.