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SparkCalc

Food Carbon Footprint Calculator

Example: Two beef meals a week: about 1 tonne of CO2e a year

How much does your plate warm the planet? Enter a typical week of meals, from burgers and cheese to rice, coffee and bananas, to see your weekly and yearly food emissions, which few foods cause most of them, and what one swap would save.
Last reviewed by SparkCalc editorial team · October 2026
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Meat and fish

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Dairy and eggs

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Plant protein

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Grains and potatoes

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Fruit and vegetables

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Coffee, chocolate and wine

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Try a swap

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Calculation results updated

Emissions by food, per week

Share by food group

Your day vs typical diets

Your Food Footprint per Year

Per Week

Biggest Source

Your Swap

Same as Driving

Same as Flying

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Related Calculators

You might also find these calculators helpful: your whole ecological footprint, how many trees it takes to offset emissions, the carbon footprint of a flight, and Water Footprint Calculator.

How to use this calculator

  1. Choose pounds and miles or kilograms and kilometres.
  2. For each food, enter how many servings you eat in a typical week. Each field shows its serving size.
  3. Say whether your beef mostly comes from beef cattle or from dairy cows. If you are not sure, keep beef herd.
  4. Pick a swap, such as two beef servings for chicken, to see what it would save.
  5. Read your weekly and yearly total, the foods that cause most of it, and the driving, flying and tree equivalents.

How We Calculate This

Each food's footprint is the global mean greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of product from Poore and Nemecek (2018), Science, as published by Our World in Data. The figures cover land-use change, farming, animal feed, processing, transport, retail and packaging, measured in CO2 equivalents over 100 years. Weekly footprint = Σ (servings per week × serving weight in kg × kg CO2e per kg). Serving weights are typical portions: 100 g of raw meat or fish, 250 ml of milk, 30 g of cheese, one 50 g egg, 60 g of dry beans or lentils, 75 g of dry rice, 2 slices (70 g) of bread, 80 g of vegetables, and 12 g of ground coffee per cup. The wheat and rye figure is per kilogram of bread. Yearly figures multiply by 52 weeks. Driving uses the EPA figure of 0.393 kg CO2e per mile for an average gasoline passenger vehicle. Flying uses the UK government (DESNZ 2022) long-haul economy factor of 147.87 g CO2e per passenger-km, including the extra warming effect of emissions at altitude, over the 5,540 km great-circle distance from New York (JFK) to London (Heathrow). Trees use the EPA estimate of 60 kg CO2 a year for a medium-growth urban tree seedling over its first 10 years. Typical diets come from Scarborough et al. (2014), a UK study of 55,504 people standardised to 2,000 kcal a day, which uses different emission data, so the comparison is approximate. The swap simulator replaces up to the number of servings you entered for the first food.

Methodology last reviewed: October 2026. How SparkCalc works

Sources: Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992 · Our World in Data: Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food product (Poore and Nemecek, 2018) · Our World in Data: You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local · Scarborough, P. et al. (2014). Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Climatic Change, 125, 179-192 · U.S. EPA: Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, Calculations and References (miles driven, urban tree seedlings) · Our World in Data: Carbon footprint of travel per kilometer (UK DESNZ conversion factors 2022)

A few foods make up most of the total

In most mixed diets, beef, lamb and cheese cause well over half of food emissions while being a small share of the plate. A 100 g serving of beef-herd beef is about 10 kg CO2e. The same weight of chicken is about 1 kg, tofu 0.3 kg and beans 0.1 kg (for 60 g dry). That is why one swap can matter more than dozens of small changes elsewhere.

What you eat matters more than food miles

Transport is a small share of most foods' footprints, because nearly all food moves by ship or truck. Land, feed and methane from cattle dominate instead. Local beef still has a far higher footprint than imported beans. The exception is air-freighted produce, which can have high transport emissions.

Why the same food can vary so much

Poore and Nemecek collected data from about 38,700 farms in 119 countries. The figures here are global means, but producers of the same food can differ up to 50-fold. Beef from dairy herds, pasture quality, rice paddy water management and tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses all shift the numbers. Use the results to compare choices rather than as an exact audit.

Key terms

CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)
Methane and nitrous oxide from farming converted to the amount of CO2 that would cause the same warming over 100 years, so all gases add up in one number.
Land-use change
Carbon released when forest or grassland is cleared for farming. It is a large part of the footprint of beef, chocolate, coffee and palm oil.
Beef herd vs dairy herd
Beef cattle are raised only for meat. Dairy-herd beef comes from cows that also produced milk, so their emissions are shared and the beef footprint is lower.
Life-cycle assessment
Counting emissions at every stage from farm to shop: land, farming, feed, processing, transport, retail and packaging.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the carbon footprint of beef compared with chicken?

In the largest study of farms worldwide (Poore and Nemecek, 2018), beef from a dedicated beef herd averages 99.5 kg CO2e per kg, about 10 kg per 100 g serving. Chicken averages 9.9 kg CO2e per kg, about 1 kg per serving. Swapping two beef meals a week for chicken saves roughly 930 kg (2,050 lb) of CO2e a year. Beef from dairy herds averages 33.3 kg per kg, because the cows also produce milk.

What is the average carbon footprint of a diet?

A study of over 55,000 people in the UK (Scarborough et al., 2014) found about 7.2 kg CO2e a day for high meat eaters, 5.6 kg for medium, 4.7 kg for low meat eaters, 3.9 kg for fish eaters, 3.8 kg for vegetarians and 2.9 kg for vegans, standardised to 2,000 kcal. That is roughly 1 to 2.6 tonnes a year. Your result uses a different method, so treat the comparison as approximate.

Does eating local food cut emissions much?

Usually less than people expect. In Poore and Nemecek's data, transport is under 10% of the footprint of most foods, and for beef it is about 0.5%. What you eat matters far more than how far it travelled. The main exceptions are foods flown by air, such as some berries, asparagus and fresh fish.

Why is coffee or chocolate so high per kilogram?

Coffee (28.5 kg CO2e per kg) and dark chocolate (46.7 kg per kg) are often grown on land cleared from tropical forest, and that land-use change counts towards their footprint. A cup of coffee uses only about 12 g of coffee, so it is about 0.34 kg of CO2e per cup, before any milk.

How accurate is this calculator?

It uses global average footprints per food. Real farms vary widely: Poore and Nemecek found impacts can differ up to 50-fold between producers of the same food, so your actual footprint could be much higher or lower. It covers food production up to the shop, not cooking, refrigeration or waste at home. Use it to compare foods and swaps, not as an exact personal audit.

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References