Not all meat is created equal

A new report issued by the Environmental Working Group calculates the carbon footprint of meats, cheeses, and a smattering of other foods.

The results are good news for those who avoid red meat as well as vegans. They are not good news for vegetarian cheese lovers like this blogger.

Special shout-out to those of you who eat baby sheep: You suck! Lamb is the single most carbon-intensive meat, pound for pound. Beef takes a not-so-close second.

Cheese comes out ahead of pork, farmed salmon, chicken and canned tuna. Curiously, milk and yogurt fell among low-impact foods like nuts and peanut butter, broccoli, tofu and beans. The difference stems from the reduced water weight of cheese.

What it means, in practical terms:

  • Eating one less burger a week, is like driving 320 miles less over the course of a year or line-drying your clothes half of the time.
  • If a family of four skips steak once a week, they may as well have left the car in the garage for three months.
  • If everyone in the U.S. gave up meat and cheese one day a week, it would be the equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road for a year.

Eating meat and dairy produced in more eco-friendly ways will lighten your load on the planet. And simply eating less meat and cheese will lighten your load on the bathroom scale.

Categories: green eating