Potatoes vs Tofu: carbon footprint

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

Potatoes runs about 0.46 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.

Tofu is the heavier choice, about 6.9× Potatoes.

Swap Tofu for Potatoes and you cut about 2.7 kg a kilo, near 85% off.

Per kilo, that gap is a 16 km drive in a diesel car.

Potatoes: Cheap on carbon, heavy on calories. Storage is the main cost once it's grown.

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.