Anya Doherty, founder and chief executive of Foodsteps, commented: “Making small changes to our daily diet could make a huge difference to our carbon footprint. We provide environmental impact assessments for food to turn into climate actions. We urgently need to decarbonise our food choices, and this can’t happen without food businesses leading the way and consumers making informed choices.”
Foodsteps has taken the data and recommended some easy low carbon food swaps based off their report findings:
Chocolate swaps: Swap milk chocolate (4.24 kg CO2e) for dark chocolate (3.03 kg CO2e) with carbon saving of 28.5%. This is due to the carbon intensive milk powder in milk chocolate.
Seafood swaps: Save 79% in carbon footprint savings by swapping prawns (22.70 kg CO2e) for cod (4.74 kg CO2e)
Dessert swaps: Swap baked vanilla cheesecake (4.15 kg CO2e) for a less carbon heavy alternative lemon sponge cake (2.74 kg CO2e), with a decrease of 34%
Pudding swaps: Swap dairy ice cream (5.46 kg CO2e) for custard (4.29kg CO2e) saving over 20%
Yogurt swaps: Swap dairy yogurt (1.96 kg CO2e) for coconut yogurt (1.63 kg CO2e) saving over 16%
Sausage swaps: Swap pork sausage (9.45 CO2e) vs plant-based sausages (2.34 CO2e) a massive saving of 75% less carbon footprint
Meat swaps: Swap pork (10.45 kg CO2e) for chicken (9.24 kg CO2e) for a carbon saving
Fruit swaps: The lowest carbon way to get your five a day pulled from the report: orange (0.45 kg CO2e), kiwi (0.99 kg CO2e), banana (0.86 kg CO2e), pineapple (0.55 kg CO2e) and apple (0.47 kg CO2e)
Vegetable swaps: An addition to your low carbon five a day pulled from the report: Potatoes (0.66kg CO2e), carrots (0.56 kg CO2e), pumpkins (0.45 kg CO2e), onions (0.6 kg CO2e), cauliflower (0.81 kg CO2e).
Wine swaps: Red wine (2.13 kg CO2e) replaces it’s heavier counterpart white wine (3.25 kg CO2e)
Oil swaps: Swap olive oil (4.73 CO2e) for rapeseed oil (3.56 CO2e)