Carbon-Counting Our Food for a Healthy Earth
10–30% of the average US household’s carbon budget is attributable to the food they eat [1]. In many ways, it is the carbon line-item most easy to immediately change, the very next time you shop, as opposed to housing and transportation carbon expenses which present more expensive or intimidating lifestyle changes. How can policy we help people make such a change? Simple: by providing them with the information necessary to make climate-aware buying decisions at the point of purchase through carbon-aware food labeling.
Enabling Values-based Consumer Buying Decisions
“We’re not trying to tell the American public what to eat — they can eat anything they want — but those interested can now have specific information about the contents of the foods they buy.”
The above quote was provided to the New York Times by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs upon the publication of the draft regulations for the first nutrition labeling regime in 1973 [2]. Just as in 1973, interested consumers today need certain specific information to make informed decisions, and we are blindly engorging the earth’s atmosphere in the absence of it.
Like everyone’s eventual and sorrowful epiphany that frozen yogurt is in fact not a low-calorie alternative to ice cream, most consumers would be surprised to learn that one serving of beef generates 6.62 pounds of CO2-equivalents, while one serving of cheese generates 2.5 pounds [3]. When standing in the snack aisle considering how an item that’s 350 calories might add an incremental portion to your waistline, 6.62 pounds of CO2e simply feels heavy. It is visceral. It is illuminating.
Even climate conscious people may pride themselves on opting to buy a Prius instead of a Camry (much less a Hummer), but the carbon savings of a Camry-to-Prius switch per hundred miles driven equates to only 2.11 servings of beef. And if you have that Prius, sure, you can avoid generating some carbon if you ride your bike the five miles there and back to Burger King instead of driving (1.68 pounds CO2e saved by avoiding driving), but you’ll actually avoid more CO2 by ordering an Impossible burger versus a beef burger once you’re there [4]. Simply put meat is astonishingly carbon-intensive, particularly beef which accounts for 4% of retail food supply by weight by comprises 36% of food-related greenhouse gas emissions [5]
As a further resource, the FDA could deploy an easy-to-use website or app that would help consumers quantify just how that product’s mass of carbon-equivalents equates to real-life offsets. There is nutritional precedent at https://www.choosemyplate.gov/. For example, upon scanning the UPC for a package of beef burgers it would explain with visualization that it will take 46 days for a mature Douglas Fir, a species of tree local to me in the Pacific Northwest, to process a single serving’s worth of carbon, or 67 days for a Live Oak were I living in Texas [6].
The Problem of Transportation Costs
Unfortunately, labeling at the point of production does not fully account for the meaningful carbon costs of distribution, including transportation to the point of sale and subsequent retail allowances. However, the costs of transportation are not standard across retail outlets, and therefore would require custom labeling at each retailer, which would dramatically increase the costs of this information campaign.
Moreover, on average the production phase comprises 83% of total food-related carbon costs [7]. Considering that labeled calorie information is legally permitted to by up to 20% less than actual laboratory-validated amounts, this amount of error is entirely reasonable. Moreover, production information alone would be instrumental in steering a consumer’s decisions between major food groups: purchase a little less meat, a little less cheese.. even if labeling as proposed cannot allow consumers to discern between a package of beef sourced 100 miles versus 2,000 miles away.
Unfortunately, this pragmatic sacrifice does a disservice to producers with local distribution; however, retailers at their election could highlight distribution facts in addition to the mandated carbon information, just as some restaurant menus include maps of their partnered local farms.
Voluntary Labeling by Climate Conscious Producers
At a time when the EPA is discouraged from even using the phrase “climate change” [8] and many legislators will not even utter the word “carbon” except in derision, any formal regulation is a pipe dream. Moreover, the powerful meat and dairy industries can be expected to oppose any new labeling requirements that might shine light on the now hidden costs of their products. However, motivated and environmentally conscious producers may find it in their interest to voluntarily provide this valuable information. With enough voluntary adoption, consumers may start to wonder why certain packages have not participated, and avoid those products as a result. This is in fact how the voluntary nutrition labeling regime initiated by the FDA in 1973 blossomed into mandated labeling for all regulated food groups by 1990 [9].
Conclusion
Ultimately, many consumers are aware enough to understand what a calorie is, and what it means for their health. Although our society is still coming to grips with what a pound of CO2e is and how to make decisions based on it, consumers desperately need information to help them make purchases consistent with our values. Absent calorie information, we risk making our bodies slow, heavy, and sick. Similarly, with each carbon-blind purchase we risk doing the same to our precious Earth.
[1]: Jones C., Kammen D. (2011) “Quantifying Carbon Footprint Reduction Opportunities for U.S. Households and Communities.”
[2]: Lyons, Richard. (1973). “FDA Proposes Sweeping Change in Food Labeling.” The New York Times.
[3]: University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems citing Heller et al
[4]: Peters, Adele. “Here’s how the footprint of the plant-based Impossible Burger compares to beef.” Fast Company.
[5]: Heller et al. “Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates of U.S. Dietary Choices and Food Loss.”
[6]: US Environmental Protection Agency. “Method for Calculating Carbon Sequestration by Trees in Urban and Suburban Settings.”
[7]: Weber et al. “Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States.”
[8]: Milman, Oliver. “US federal department is censoring use of term ‘climate change’, emails reveal.” The Guardian.
[9]: Skrovan, Sandy. “The origins and evolution of Nutrition Facts labeling.” Food Dive.
