Food footprint explorer
How much do different foods cost the planet? Compare 38 foods using the largest database of farm-level environmental impacts ever compiled. The gaps between food types are usually much larger than the differences between farms.
Greenhouse gas emissions
kg CO₂e per kg
| Rank | Food | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beef (beef herd) | 99.5 |
| 2 | Dark chocolate | 46.7 |
| 3 | Lamb & mutton | 39.7 |
| 4 | Beef (dairy herd) | 33.3 |
| 5 | Coffee | 28.5 |
| 6 | Prawns (farmed) | 26.9 |
| 7 | Cheese | 23.9 |
| 8 | Fish (farmed) | 13.6 |
| 9 | Pork | 12.3 |
| 10 | Poultry | 9.87 |
| 11 | Eggs | 4.67 |
| 12 | Rice | 4.45 |
| 13 | Peanuts | 3.23 |
| 14 | Cane sugar | 3.2 |
| 15 | Tofu | 3.16 |
| 16 | Milk | 3.15 |
| 17 | Oatmeal | 2.48 |
| 18 | Tomatoes | 2.09 |
| 19 | Beet sugar | 1.81 |
| 20 | Beans, lentils & other pulses | 1.79 |
| 21 | Wine | 1.79 |
| 22 | Maize | 1.7 |
| 23 | Wheat & rye | 1.57 |
| 24 | Berries & grapes | 1.53 |
| 25 | Cassava | 1.32 |
| 26 | Barley | 1.18 |
| 27 | Other fruit | 1.05 |
| 28 | Peas | 0.98 |
| 29 | Soy milk | 0.98 |
| 30 | Bananas | 0.86 |
| 31 | Other vegetables | 0.53 |
| 32 | Cabbages & broccoli | 0.51 |
| 33 | Onions & leeks | 0.5 |
| 34 | Potatoes | 0.46 |
| 35 | Apples | 0.43 |
| 36 | Nuts | 0.43 |
| 37 | Root vegetables | 0.43 |
| 38 | Citrus fruit | 0.39 |
Compare two foods
Pick any two foods to see how many times larger one footprint is than the other.
Beef (beef herd) has 56× the greenhouse gas emissions of Beans, lentils & other pulses.
What the data shows
- Beef from dedicated beef herds emits about 100 kg CO₂e per kilogram — roughly 100 times more than peas and 30 times more than tofu.
- Lamb and beef need the most land, more than 300 m² per kilogram, mainly for pasture and feed crops. Plant proteins need a small fraction of that.
- Cheese has a larger footprint per kilogram than pork, poultry or eggs, because it takes many litres of milk to make each kilogram.
- Water tells a different story: nuts, rice and cheese withdraw a lot of freshwater, so where and how foods are irrigated matters.
- Per 100 g of protein, beef from beef herds emits about 50 kg CO₂e, tofu about 2 kg and peas less than 0.5 kg.
- Coffee and dark chocolate are high per kilogram but are eaten in small amounts, so serving sizes matter when you compare a whole diet.
Method and data
Values are global averages from Poore & Nemecek (2018), who compiled data from about 38,700 farms in 119 countries, as published by Our World in Data. Emissions include land-use change, farming, processing, transport, packaging and retail. Real products vary by farm and region; use these figures to compare food types, not individual brands.