Root vegetables vs Tofu: carbon footprint
Root vegetables or Tofu? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Root vegetables runs about 0.43 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.
Tofu is the heavier choice, about 7.3× Root vegetables.
Swap Tofu for Root vegetables and you cut about 2.73 kg a kilo, near 86% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 16 km drive in a diesel car.
Root vegetables: 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.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.