We all need to eat, but the way we do it could use some work. The global food system is responsible for between a quarter and a third of planet-heating emissions, which means 86ing some of our foodways is key to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. The most straightforward solution experts have put on the table? Adopting more plant-rich diets, particularly in the U.S. and Western and Northern Europe, where individual “foodprints” tend to be highest.
Making a dent in your daily dietary emissions can seem daunting if you think the only effective approach is to go totally vegan—a famously carbon-busting move. But in reality, there are a number of meaningful changes and swaps you could make. “We have lots of options available to us for reducing our [dietary] carbon footprint,” says Anna Grummon, an assistant professor of pediatrics and health policy and the director of the Stanford Food Policy Lab. If your starting point is an omnivorous diet, here are the tweaks that will get you the most mileage, ranked in ascending order of potential carbon savings.
Swap your dairy or bevs
You can take a decent bite out of your emissions by just changing the types of yogurt or milk you eat. A 2023 study in Nature Food that Grummon led and Rose co-authored found that swapping regular yogurt or milk for an almond- or soy-based version would snip dietary emissions by 8%, on average. (The study didn’t examine the impact of substituting cheese, Grummon says, since people weren’t widely consuming plant-based cheeses in 2018, the latest year for which data was available.) Even if you don’t ditch dairy, swapping juice for whole fruit can have a similar impact.
Ditch (or ease up on) beef
Swapping out beef alone constitutes most of the carbon savings of adopting any climate-friendly diet. One 2020 study found that if American adults who are open to dietary change subbed beef for plant proteins, their dietary emissions would dip 40%, on average—and just swapping burgers for wings can shave 36%. Not keen to give up all your steak frites? There are proportional benefits of simply easing up on the red stuff. If folks trade just half their beef intake with plant protein, they’d cut 20% off their foodprint—or 18% if poultry was their replacement of choice.
Why is beef so much worse for the climate than, say, chicken or turkey? For one, larger animals require more land and more food, and converting ecosystems into pasture creates huge emissions. For another, cows (and other ruminants like sheep and goats) burp out the especially potent greenhouse gas methane, thanks to the machinations of their digestive systems. Replacing ruminant meat is the dietary tweak with the biggest carbon bang for your buck.
Go veggie
Going vegetarian is a majorly impactful move, says Diego Rose, a professor and the director of the nutrition program at Tulane University who co-authored a 2023 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition comparing the climate impacts of six popular American diets. A veggie diet creates 48% fewer emissions than an omnivore diet, on average. Nearly all meat and seafood is more carbon intensive than eggs and dairy. Pork and farmed fish, for instance, both produce almost three times the planet-warming gases as eggs; farmed shrimp is almost six times worse. The good news? This diet still includes cheese, despite its high average planet-warming potential.
Go vegan
A fully plant-based diet has “the least footprint that we see,” says Rose. Vegan foodprints were 69% lower than the average omnivore’s, according to his 2023 study—and also lower than those of paleo or keto diets. This vast difference in climate impact boils down to livestock: Animal agriculture creates the majority of food-system emissions, despite providing just 18% of the world’s calories. The reason? You need to grow food to feed the animals, which uses up more resources and more land.