Sources

Most numbers come from published studies. The few that are our own estimates are labelled as such.

How the figures were built

Boundary and unit

Every food figure is kg CO₂e (GWP100) per kg of food as sold, from farm to retail. It includes land-use change, farming, processing, packaging, transport and retail.
It excludes cooking and household food waste.
Figures are global averages, not specific to any country or farm.

Where the food numbers come from

Counting foods…

Judgement calls

Beef mince is the average of the beef-herd and dairy-herd figures, because UK mince mixes both.
Bacon, ham, pork sausages and salami are Poore & Nemecek pork scaled by the processed-to-fresh ratio in the Danish database, to keep one consistent source.
Turkey, duck and chicken thigh use the Poore & Nemecek poultry figure, which doesn't split poultry types.
Dairy derivatives (yoghurt, cream, butter, ice cream, soft and feta-style cheeses) are scaled from Poore & Nemecek milk and cheese using rough multipliers. We didn't use the Danish dairy values because they look inconsistent with the other sources.
Milk chocolate is dark chocolate scaled by cocoa content (30/70).
Tempeh uses dried soybeans as a proxy. Seitan uses wheat × 1.5 for gluten yield.
Brewed coffee and tea are worked back from beans and leaves: 10 g of coffee and 2 g of tea per 250 g brewed.
Where sources disagree, we use Poore & Nemecek when it has the food. Farmed salmon is 13.63 kg CO₂e per kg there, against 1.99 in CONCITO. Wild fish comes from CONCITO, so it looks low by comparison.

Composite dishes

A dish figure is the sum of (ingredient grams × ingredient kg CO₂e per kg) ÷ total ingredient grams. Weights are raw, as bought. Cooking energy and waste are excluded.

See the 14 dish recipes

Cheese pizza slice: dough 60 g, canned tomato 25 g, mozzarella 35 g
Beef burger: beef mince 115 g, bun (bread) 60 g, lettuce 15 g, tomato 25 g, cheese 15 g
Chicken curry and rice: chicken 120 g, canned tomato 80 g, onion 40 g, coconut milk 50 g, rapeseed oil 10 g, rice 75 g
Veggie chilli and rice: dried beans 40 g, canned tomato 120 g, peppers 60 g, onion 40 g, rice 60 g
Salmon sushi (8 pieces): rice 90 g, farmed salmon 60 g, cucumber 30 g, avocado 30 g
Spaghetti bolognese: pasta 90 g, beef mince 90 g, canned tomato 120 g, onion 40 g, carrot 30 g
Fish and chips: cod 150 g, flour 30 g, potatoes 250 g, rapeseed oil 30 g
Chicken sandwich: bread 80 g, chicken 60 g, lettuce 15 g, mayo 10 g, tomato 20 g
Tofu stir-fry and rice: tofu 120 g, broccoli 80 g, rice 75 g, soy sauce 10 g, rapeseed oil 8 g
Cheese omelette: eggs 120 g, cheese 30 g, butter 5 g
Porridge with milk, or with oat milk: oats 40 g, milk or oat milk 200 g, sugar 5 g
Falafel and hummus wrap: tortilla 60 g, falafel 80 g, hummus 30 g, lettuce 20 g, tomato 30 g
Beans on toast: canned beans 130 g, bread 80 g, margarine 5 g

Diet averages and their boundaries

Scarborough et al. (2023) uses LCA data from 570 studies. Its boundary runs from production to retail, including land-use change. It excludes cooking and household waste. Its LCA data differ from Poore & Nemecek, so a plate summed from our foods won't exactly reproduce these diet numbers.
UK average is a proxy: we use the medium-meat diet group. We didn't find an official kg-per-day figure in a primary source.
Global average: 26% of 52.3 Gt CO₂e (about 13.6 Gt) ÷ about 6.96 billion people (2010) ÷ 365 days ≈ 5.35 kg per person per day. It's production-based and includes non-edible by-products and waste.
US average is from Heller et al. (2018): production emissions only, using US-specific LCA factors. It likely understates compared with the UK figure.
EAT-Lancet planetary health diet (3.27 kg per day) is our estimate. The Commission sets intake targets but no emissions figure, so we multiplied its reference intakes by our factors. The intake figures used here haven't yet been checked against the paper.

Equivalents

Car: the UK government factor for an average petrol car, tailpipe only: 0.1645 kg CO₂e per km, so 1 kg ≈ 6.08 km.
Phone: the US EPA figure for one smartphone charge: 0.0124 kg CO₂e, so 1 kg ≈ 80.6 charges.

Known gaps

We found no usable air-freight factor, so air-freighted produce isn't separated.
Palm and soybean oil aren't included, for the same reason.
Tree nuts: Poore & Nemecek's "nuts" figure counts tree carbon uptake, and the CONCITO figures for individual nuts don't, so they differ widely.
Dry foods are per dry kg, and their portion labels say so. Plant milk values are per litre, treated as per kg.

Sources

Food emissions

Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers

Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. · 2018 · Science 360(6392):987–992

Meta-analysis of 38,700 farms and 1,600 products. Global means per kg of product, farm to retail, read from Our World in Data's CSV (year label 2010). Plant milks are per litre, treated as per kg.
The Big Climate Database (Den Store Klimadatabase) v1.2, GB version

CONCITO with 2.-0 LCA consultants · 2025

Sheet "GB" (UK retail scenario), column "Total kg CO2-eq/kg". 540 foods, cradle to retail, including indirect land-use change. Our fallback for foods not in Poore & Nemecek. Its dairy values look low next to Poore & Nemecek, so we derive dairy items from Poore & Nemecek instead.
Life cycle assessment of green beans air-freighted from Kenya/Uganda to the UK vs UK-grown (cradle to regional distribution centre)

Milà i Canals, L. et al. · 2008

Air-freighted green beans from Kenya/Uganda: about 11 kg CO₂e per kg. Secondary citation: we haven't yet read the original paper, so treat the figure as indicative. The linked report is a related Defra document.

Diets and averages

Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts

Scarborough, P., Clark, M., Cobiac, L., et al. · 2023 · Nature Food 4, 565–574

EPIC-Oxford, 55,504 adults, diets standardised to 2,000 kcal a day, GWP100, median of the Monte Carlo results (Table 3). Covers production to retail; excludes cooking and household waste.
Food production is responsible for one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions

Ritchie, H. (Our World in Data), based on Poore & Nemecek 2018 · 2019

Food is about 26% of 52.3 Gt CO₂e global emissions (about 13.6 Gt). Livestock and fisheries 31%, crops 27%, land use 24%, supply chain 18%. Source for the global average diet.
Greenhouse gas emissions and energy use associated with production of individual self-selected US diets

Heller, M.C., Willits-Smith, A., Meyer, R., Keoleian, G.A., Rose, D. · 2018 · Environmental Research Letters 13:044004

NHANES 2005–2010 one-day recall. Average US diet production emissions: 4.7 kg CO₂e per person per day (95% CI 4.6–4.8). US-specific LCA factors, so not directly comparable with UK figures.
Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Willett, W. et al. · 2019 · Lancet 393:447–492

The Commission gives daily intake targets but no per-person emissions figure. The 3.27 kg CO₂e per day planetary health figure is our estimate: its reference intakes multiplied by our factors. Based on a 2,500 kcal reference diet. The intakes haven't yet been checked against the paper.

Equivalents

UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting 2024 (condensed set v1.1)

UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) / DEFRA · 2024

"Passenger vehicles", "Average car", petrol: 0.16450 kg CO₂e per km, tailpipe only (excludes well-to-tank).
Greenhouse Gases Equivalencies Calculator – Calculations and References

US Environmental Protection Agency · 2024

One smartphone charge: 0.019 kWh × US marginal grid factor = 0.0124 kg CO₂e.

gobble.earth estimates

gobble.earth derived emission factors

gobble.earth data team · 2025

Factors we derived from the sources above using documented scaling rules, such as brewed coffee from beans, dairy derivatives from Poore & Nemecek milk and cheese, and processed pork from Poore & Nemecek pork. Treat as estimates.
gobble.earth composite dish recipes

gobble.earth data team · 2025

Each dish is the weighted average of its ingredients' factors. These are illustrative single recipes, not measured products. Cooking energy is excluded.

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