Tofu vs Tomatoes: carbon footprint

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

Tofu runs about 3.16 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tomatoes runs 2.09.

Tofu is the heavier choice, about 1.5× Tomatoes.

Swap Tofu for Tomatoes and you cut about 1.07 kg a kilo, near 34% off.

Per kilo, that gap is a 6 km drive in a diesel car.

Tofu: Tofu and soy milk hand you protein at a fraction of beef's footprint. The swap that actually moves the needle.

Tomatoes: About as low as food goes. Mostly the farming and getting it to the shelf.

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.