Carbon footprints of foods

I need to know your secret, when you find out. I have a bit of visceral to eliminate.

 

i'm not surprised. i don't usually eat much flower. half a low cal, low fat muffin in the morning, and some pretzels with a glass of wine before dinner.

 

as i said, i'm not sure why. when i was younger, my appetite was better? (or worse)

 

I say old chap, that does sound rather sparse!

 

i have had major weight loss and regain several times in my life, but this one feels different

 

We don’t burn off calories like we used to

 

we joined a csa, lots of veggies in summer. try to do as much as we can in winter. i have always loved salad, but snacks were my downfall.

exactly, that's the most astonishing thing. it is like my metabolism has changed

 

We sure blew Tochatihu,s Carbon footprints to hell, Sorryboutthat, It’s OK as he’s sleeping right now.
Gute Nacht.

 

he hasn't been around for 3 years, no worries, its iplugs thread now

 

That’s too bad, I loved all of his comments, anybody know why?

 

lost interest in carbon foodprints?

 

One doesn't need to totally get away from bread/grain products. There are better bread products out there. Start with whole grain wheats where that is the first ingredient and no flour is added in subsequent ingredients (got to read labels because most products advertised as whole grain are not).

Cereals are a really hard one because about 99% are really just candy with the ridiculous amounts of sugar in them. Some of the Great Grains cereals and stuff like Grape Nuts and generics of this are pretty good.

You could try working in some stuff like lentil soups and black beans. The former is pretty tasty when prepared right and both are high in fiber and low in simple sugars. You can combine black beans with whole grain rice, add some fresh chopped onions, cilantro, and green salsa, topped off with some cheese if not vegan, then add hotter salsa to taste and you've also got something good there.

 

The flip side to that in the case of flour and rice is the added minerals and vitamins. Many would likely be worse off nutritionally without them.

Which probably totally negated by putting corn syrup in everything.

 

Here's a good site. It has fewer foods, but differentiates by country: Food Carbon Footprint Index 2018 | nu3

Also, here's a pretty good study covering food groups/categories: Energy and nutrient density of foods in relation to their carbon footprint | The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition | Oxford Academic

Here's the meat of the study (pun intended):


tldr version:
Go vegetarian or (if you really want to be sustainable) vegan.

 

Thanks for posting the links/article.

Quite sympathetic towards the vegan/vegetarian spectrum, but it's somewhat complicated and even in this study (table from second link posted) a lot of important food group details are left out.

For example, one of the worst GHGEs per 100 kcal listed here is "processed vegetables" but they leave off fresh vegetables which is often a core diet vegan staple. Most fresh vegetables would also score poorly here (worse than meats) as their kcal/gram is very low compared to most other foods. On the other hand, they left out tree nuts which would have shown a very high kcal/gram and ranked outstanding as perhaps the lowest GHGE per 100kcal.

 

Yeah, I find the GHGE/kcal to be a bit misleading as I don't see that being the biggest factor people use to determine what they eat. It also ignores all the other reasons for eating fruits and vegetables (fiber, vitamins and minerals, etc).

Still, it gives a decent idea of the spread between different specific foods.

 

From a carbon footprint perspective, I'm fine with GHGE/kcal as the average human needs about 2000kcal/day to maintain a healthy and stable body weight

Agree that we also have to look at dietary choices from the standpoint of health which can lead to some interesting paradoxes. For example, a vegan getting most of his calories from fresh vegetables would have a high carbon footprint but be considered "healthy". Another vegan eating cakes, other sweets, chips, and raw sugar would have a low carbon footprint but be considered rather unhealthy.

Certainly it's very hard to eat enough green leafy vegetables to get to 2000kcal/day, so it comes down largely to what compromises the majority of a person's daily calories. A very large bowl of green lettuces still has <100kcal, so almost all calories will have to come from other things.

A healthy and low carbon 2000kcal vegan diet could consist of most calories from things like whole grain breads, nuts, lentils, and unprocessed healthy oils. Even non-vegans that throw in a couple hundred meat protein calories to this mix are doing quite well on both fronts.

Agree with vegetables and fruits for fiber. Though would not recommend a large portion of calories from fruits given their high glycemic loads, natural or not...

 

kale salad with chicken

 

A diet of sweet rolls, chips and chocolate seems to be quite the winner

Mike

 

works for me