Cheese vs Tofu: carbon footprint

Cheese or Tofu? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.

Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.

Cheese is the heavier choice, about 7.6× Tofu.

Swap Cheese for Tofu and you cut about 20.72 kg a kilo, near 87% off.

Per kilo, that gap is a 121 km drive in a diesel car.

Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.

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.

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Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.