New Year’s Resolutions:  Healthy Eating Through a Climatarian Diet

New Year’s resolutions are popular each January, with people trying things like “dry January,” “veganuary,”  increased exercise, or healthy eating.  In the UK, weight loss ranks as the number one resolution individuals made for 2024.  As the first month of the year wraps up, we know many individuals seek inspiration to sustain their resolutions further into the year.  Therefore, it’s worth discussing how a climatarian diet can have a positive effect on both your health and the planet!

Those who want to eat healthy or lose weight can find added motivation by knowing that healthy eating also tends to be planet-friendly eating.  Many of the foods recommended as best for your health by food researchers tend to have a lower Carbon Cost than foods researched to have negative health consequences.

Food is a Core Part of Your Annual Carbon Cost

Carbon Cost is a way of accounting for how our choices generate the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.  To help consumers compare the carbon footprint of different activities in their lives, we convert the greenhouse gas emissions, measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), into car mile equivalents.  Those car miles represent the equivalent distance you could drive an ordinary petrol car that would release the same emissions as a given activity or product.

Related:  Read our Introduction to Carbon Cost and how we calculate car mile equivalents for our British readers.

Food is a great place to cut your personal Carbon Cost.  You can make substitutions to your diet more easily and quickly than changing your car, home furnace, or electricity provider. Even small changes in your diet, maintained over a whole year, can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. These dietary changes also tend to save you money.  Moreover, according to the latest research, those same small changes can significantly improve your health.

If you are an average U.K. resident, all your activities and purchases in a year have a total Carbon Cost equal to 39,000 car miles (i.e. 8,676 kg of CO2e of emissions).  About 12,000 of those car miles (i.e. 2,620 kg of CO2e in emissions) are just from food. That’s roughly 30% of our annual emissions footprint and more than the emissions from any other single source.

The Carbon Cost Pecking Order of Food

The Carbon Cost of different food items varies depending on whether the food is plant- or animal-based, how the land is cultivated, whether fertiliser is used, and other factors. But in general, there is a simple hierarchy to the carbon footprint of different food groups. Nearly all foods that come from animals, including eggs, dairy, fish, poultry, pork, and beef, have a higher Carbon Cost than food that comes from plants  However, among the animal products, red meat, such as beef and lamb, has far and away the highest carbon cost.

To help consumers understand the Carbon Cost of their food choices, we put together this chart that shows the car mile equivalents for a typical serving size of various foods commonly eaten in the UK.

Illustration of the Carbon Cost of typical foods found in a British diet.

The Climatarian Diet is Healthy and Carbon-Friendly

Some people assume that to lower the Carbon Cost of eating, you need to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet.  That is not our philosophy at Cherwell Collective.  We know that such diets are difficult and not pragmatic for most people.  That’s why we tout a climatarian diet (a variation on what some call a “flexitarian” or reducitarian diet). 

The climatarian diet is about enjoying delicious food while keeping an eye toward lowering your yearly emissions footprint. A key to the climatarian diet is reducing consumption of animal products, especially red meat, without needing to cut it out altogether. The climatarian diet also encourages eating more in-season fruit and veg.

Let’s explore some scenarios where you can reduce your animal-food consumption and rack up a lot of Carbon Cost savings each year.  We will see that many of these substitutions are also great for your health, according to the latest research.  Let’s consider options like a vegetarian English breakfast, adopting “meatless Mondays”, or vowing to keep one meal per day free of red meat.

Shifting to a Meat-Free Traditional English Breakfast

We love a traditional English breakfast.  It’s a hearty start to any day.  Unfortunately, this meal has a substantial daily Carbon Cost.  We broke down all the food items typically served, their emissions in grams, and the resulting Carbon Cost in car mile equivalents.  In total, the full English breakfast represents about 10.5 car miles of emissions, more than half of which come from the bacon and the sausage links alone.

Chart: Carbon Cost of a Traditional English Breakfast

Food Item Serving	Emissions Footprint	Car Miles
2 sausage links (92 grams)	920 grams CO2e	4.2 miles
Rasher of bacon (48 grams)	480 grams CO2e	2.2 miles
2 medium eggs (100 grams)	400 grams CO2e	1.8 miles
Medium tomato (123 grams)	307 grams CO2e	1.4 miles
½ cup baked beans (127 grams)	54 grams CO2e	0.2 miles
Tablespoon of butter	118 grams CO2e	0.5 miles
2 slices toast	50 grams CO2e	0.2 miles
Full English Breakfast	2,328 grams CO2e	10.5 miles

A modified version of the traditional English breakfast might replace the processed meats (bacon and sausage) with an individual-sized cup of yoghurt. A 150-gram container of Greek or Icelandic yoghurt has roughly the same amount of protein as the bacon and sausage in a traditional English breakfast. However, the yoghurt has a Carbon Cost of just 1.7 miles (375 grams of CO2e). That lowers the Carbon Cost of this breakfast from 10.5 miles to 5.8 miles.

This modest adjustment to an English breakfast saves 4.7 car miles of emissions per day or 1,715 car miles yearly.  Moreover, if you’re eating a full breakfast each day, you’d also save 69,350 calories per year with this switch. That’s roughly 1.4 stone (about 9 kg or 20 lbs) with this one change!

Recent research also suggests that reducing the consumption of processed and nitrate-cured meats, such as bacon and sausage, has significant health benefits. In November 2023, the research journal BMC Medicine reviewed 37 separate health studies. They found that replacing just one serving of processed meats per day with whole grains, nuts or beans was associated with a 23% to 36% lower risk of conditions such as stroke, heart attack or coronary heart disease, a 22% lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, and a 21% lower risk of early death.

Meatless Monday

What kind of Carbon Cost savings could you accumulate if you participated in the increasingly popular “Meatless Mondays”? Let’s imagine how you might make a few adjustments to the three main meals of the day:

• Breakfast: Eat the modified English Breakfast as described above (yoghurt cup replaces bacon and sausage): Carbon Cost savings of 4.7 car miles per meal.
• Lunch: Replace a ham and cheese sandwich with a sandwich or wrap that includes four tablespoons of hummus spread (957 g CO2e vs. 102 g CO2e): Carbon Cost savings of 3.9 car miles per meal.
• Dinner: Replace a 150-gram boneless beef roast at dinner with a 150-gram filet of salmon (3,750 g CO2e vs. 505 g CO2e) Carbon Cost savings of 14.7 miles per meal.

Adopting a Meatless Monday habit in this scenario saves 23.3 car miles of emissions every Monday, or 1,212 car miles per year. For those with resolutions to lose weight, it also saves 631 calories per day, 32,812 calories per year, or about two-thirds of a stone (about 4 kg or 9 lbs).

Eating more legumes, like the chickpeas in the hummus that we used to replace the ham and cheese, is linked in research to improved blood sugar levels and reduced risk of coronary heart disease.  Legumes are also high in fibre, which research shows helps slow digestion and reduces calorie intake. Meanwhile, replacing red meat with salmon provides your diet with more omega-3 fatty acids, which can improve blood cholesterol levels, reduce inflammation, and reduce blood pressure. 

Incorporate Meat-Free Alternatives to One Meal Per Day

If you are a heavy consumer of red meat, you can have a big climate impact by choosing to forgo red meat either for lunch or dinner every day – a “meatless meal” seven days of the week. Such a change could be enough to cut roughly 3,650 car miles’ worth of emissions. This is nearly 10% of your total annual Carbon Cost eliminated through one change, and without going totally vegetarian or vegan.

When you start thinking like a climatarian, you have a range of possible pathways to reduce your carbon footprint.  For instance, a small cheeseburger made only with beef has a Carbon Cost of about 10 miles.  But we make a version in our Climatarian Café that is made with half the beef and half minced mushrooms for a Carbon Cost of 6 miles.  Meanwhile, if you were to use one of the plant-based burgers such as Impossible Burger or Beyonce Mince, you could further cut the cheeseburger Carbon Cost to just 3 miles.

Unlike burgers made entirely from beef, those that include mushrooms or the legumes found in an Impossible Burger or Beyond Mince contain fibre.  Fibre consumption has numerous benefits, including maintaining a healthy weight, regulating blood sugar levels, and living longer. Climatarian eating is healthy, and healthy eating is climatarian.

Climatarian Diet Gets Two Birds With One Stone

As you can see, these climatarian diet options allow you to keep eating animal products, including dairy, eggs, fish, and occasionally meat.  At the same time, the reductions in meat consumption lower your daily emissions footprint and benefit your health. 

Cherwell Collective wishes you a great 2024.  No matter what your resolutions are for this year, we hope lowering your Carbon Cost is on the agenda!

Related: Learn about our annual Carbon Cost of Food Week.

---

Research Notes

Note: The average Carbon Cost of a resident of the U.K. is derived from consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions of 8,676kg CO2e, according to the U.K. Office of National Statistics.  This includes both domestic activities and imported goods. In the UK, 48% of consumption-based CO2 emissions come from imported items such as food and clothing produced overseas.

Research estimates for the greenhouse gas footprint of different food items vary slightly from source to source.  Wherever possible, we use research specific to food produced in the United Kingdom within 300 miles of the grocery store where it is sold.  Cherwell Collective utilises a variety of different sources for our Carbon Cost calculations.  These include Poore and Nemecek (2018), Petersson and Castaldi (2021), or, when appropriate, by averaging the data from several footprint calculators:

• Carbon Cloud
• My Emissions
• Zero Food Print
• Plate Up for the Planet
• Tuco Greenhouse Gas Footprint Calculator