Climate comparison

Greenhouse gases, land, and water for common foods. Swap one building block and see the difference.

Comparisons use published LCA data. Not a personal footprint calculator.

Example result

Pulses (lentils and similar) instead of Beef (beef herd): 98% less Greenhouse gases (per 100 g protein)

Beef (beef herd)49.9 kg CO₂e
Pulses (lentils and similar)0.84 kg CO₂e

Fixed example for search engines. Values from curated LCA data.

Metric
Basis

Swap a building block

Pick a dish preset, choose one block, replace it with a plant food.

Block to swap

Result

Pulses (lentils and similar) instead of Beef (beef herd): 98% less Greenhouse gases (per 100 g protein)

Beef (beef herd)49.9 kg CO₂e
Pulses (lentils and similar)0.84 kg CO₂e

Lower by 49.1 kg CO₂e

About 409 (km by average car) (Equivalence: European Environment Agency: average CO2 emissions from new passenger cars about 120 g/km (fleet order of magnitude used for illustration).. As of September 22, 2026.)

Ranking

Foods sorted by the selected metric and basis.

  1. Nuts0.26 kg CO₂e
  2. Peas0.44 kg CO₂e
  3. Pulses (lentils and similar)0.84 kg CO₂e
  4. Groundnuts1.23 kg CO₂e
  5. Wheat and rye1.29 kg CO₂e
  6. Maize1.79 kg CO₂e
  7. Oatmeal1.91 kg CO₂e
  8. Tofu1.98 kg CO₂e
  9. Potatoes2.71 kg CO₂e
  10. Onions and leeks3.85 kg CO₂e
  11. Eggs4.21 kg CO₂e
  12. Root vegetables4.3 kg CO₂e
  13. Brassicas4.64 kg CO₂e
  14. Poultry meat5.7 kg CO₂e
  15. Fish (farmed)5.98 kg CO₂e
  16. Rice6.27 kg CO₂e
  17. Citrus fruit6.5 kg CO₂e
  18. Pig meat7.61 kg CO₂e
  19. Cow milk9.5 kg CO₂e
  20. Bananas9.56 kg CO₂e
  21. Cheese10.8 kg CO₂e
  22. Apples14.3 kg CO₂e
  23. Beef (dairy herd)16.9 kg CO₂e
  24. Prawns (farmed)18.2 kg CO₂e
  25. Tomatoes19 kg CO₂e
  26. Lamb and mutton19.9 kg CO₂e
  27. Beef (beef herd)49.9 kg CO₂e

Ready comparisons

Data: Poore and Nemecek (2018), processed by Our World in Data. CC BY 4.0. As of September 21, 2026. About the data · CC BY 4.0

Questions

Where do the numbers come from?
Curated life-cycle assessment data with sources and dates in the dataset.
Is this personal advice?
No. It compares typical impacts per food, not individual diets.