Beet sugar vs Tofu: carbon footprint
Beet sugar or Tofu? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Beet sugar runs about 1.81 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.
Tofu is the heavier choice, about 1.7× Beet sugar.
Swap Tofu for Beet sugar and you cut about 1.35 kg a kilo, near 43% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 8 km drive in a diesel car.
Beet sugar: Growing the crop plus the energy to refine it. Not nothing, nowhere near beef.
Tofu: Tofu and soy milk hand you protein at a fraction of beef's footprint. The swap that actually moves the needle.
Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.