This year, the columnist made a roast lamb for his annual Christmas meal, which worked out to half the carbon footprint of the roast beef he typically makes. — MIKE TINNION/Unsplash
There may be a new style of dining menus available soon for consumers. They may seem implausible now, they probably would not be popular with many restaurateurs, and even dining clients may not like them. But they would appear to be necessary sooner or later.
Many modern menus now have information about stuff such as allergies and some also indicate the calorific values of various dining options. A rarer few more additionally show the fat, salt and sugar content of menu options, and the overall intent of these modern menus is to provide diners with as much dietary information as needed for consumers to decide on the best choices for their diets.
The missing info on menus
However, menus are still missing some vital information which is becoming important and relevant to our lifestyles now and into the future. A paper published at the end of 2022 reports on a trial where consumers were presented with the carbon costs of their menu options, and it offered some interesting outcomes. But before that, here is some background why this paper may be significant.
As we all know, science indicates that the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) in our planet’s atmosphere is contributing to global warming, with several extreme climate events already linked to such increase in global temperatures. And the current trajectory is for the number and severity of extreme weather events to increase each year going forward.
There is also a significant economic cost associated with climate change as well. At present, flooding in the EU is costing over 5 billion Euro (RM23 billion) per annum, with forest fires adding another 2 billion Euros (RM9 billion) of losses a year. These costs will only rise as the climate becomes even more extreme. In several parts of the EU, it is now already impossible to obtain flood or fire insurance.
A kilo of Brussel sprouts accounts for only 750 grams of GHG. — EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA/Pexels
The situation is even worse in other parts of the world, especially where there are poorer infrastructures for dealing with fire, flood or droughts. Between 2016 to 2018, where data is now available, calculations shows that climate-linked disasters cost USD650 billion (RM2.8 trillion) globally, or roughly USD217 billion (RM954 billion) a year. The recent disasters of 2022 will certainly exceed that past annual global loss.
The costs for dealing with climate change is roughly comparable to the current and future expected losses, except of course, spending money on fixing the climate is a positive contribution to the economies of the world, where losses are simply destroyed assets such as land, biodiversity, crops, livestock, homes and human lives.
A 2016 estimate from the UN stated the world needed to spend between USD140-300 billion (up to RM1.3 trillion) per year by 2030 and between USD280-500 billion (up to RM2.2 trillion) a year by 2050 to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C by 2050; i.e., by having net zero carbon policies globally.
However, it looks certain that the world will not meet this crucial 1.5°C target. Very few large industries apparently care, and there are not enough government initiatives to make such climate targets mandatory for businesses or citizens. Hence, it looks like it is up to ordinary people to exert the necessary pressure to make industries change their current production models.
Which returns us to the subject of new restaurant menus which indicate the carbon footprint of what we are eating. The paper, ‘Effect of Climate Change Impact Menu Labels on Fast Food Ordering Choices Among US Adults - A Randomized Clinical Trial’ published on 27 December 2022 was thought-provoking, because it indicated that ordinary people can be concerned about sustainability and global warming if the impact data is presented simply and clearly.
The paper covered a study of 5,049 people of various age groups, who were presented with different menus including either food items with a high climate impact, or items with a low climate impact. When participants were made aware of high climate impact items (indicated with red impact labels), 23.5% more people chose alternative lower climate impact items instead. When presented with the menu with items indicating a low climate impact (shown with green impact labels), 9.9% more participants chose those items instead of other menu options.
So the study suggested that around a quarter of diners (in a fast food setting) would switch to more climate-friendly menu options if they were aware of the climate damage of red-coded foods. Highlighting the climate benefits of some foods seemed to sway only 10% of diners in the study.
The other interesting result is that people who chose the climate-friendly, sustainable options also rated their choices as healthier than the less climate-friendly items. This indicates that there is also a perception (which is very usually true) that sustainable foods are also better for health.
What about supermarkets?
Extrapolating the study results to larger venues where food is purchased by the public, it is plausible some conscientious food producers would also start adding labels which indicate the carbon footprint of their products. There is already standards in many parts of the world which require white goods such as refrigerators and washing machines to indicate their energy efficiency, so it is a relatively small step to transfer this requirement to the foods and products sold at supermarkets.
In the future, the columnist envisions that supermarket aisles will include information about the carbon footprint of different foods. — KEVIN MALIK/Pexels
It is also feasible that supermarkets may one day have aisles or sections denominated by the climate-friendly nature of the products, which can be attractive to conscientious shoppers in a hurry.
In the future, marketing can help promote items where the carbon footprint of the food product is minimal or even negative; eg, those food items which remove more carbon from the atmosphere than the weight of the food itself. Examples are seaweed, algae, some specialist beers, some types of shellfish, certain vegetables/fruits, etc. One day it may also include currently fanciful foods such as faux “meat” made from hydrogenotrophic bacteria (see my previous article titled ‘Meat from air’.
Informative labelling can also help with our current selection of foods. For example, producing a kilo of beef may contribute as much as 221 kilos of GHG into the atmosphere, if one includes the gases emitted by rotting manure and damaged pastures. However, it has to be acknowledged steps have been taken to reduce GHG related to beef production.
Introducing small amounts of a seaweed-based compound known as bromoform can reduce the methane emissions from cattle by up to 98%. Such information can be displayed for consumers at shops and supermarkets. So if people still need to eat beef, people can choose the less damaging meat by looking at the carbon impact labels.
What about homes?
We can already monitor the carbon footprint of our food at home right now. The base information is readily available on the Internet, simply by searching for “food carbon footprint”. The mild problem is that the GHG values suggested by various sites vary a lot, but one can always select the dataset that feels more comfortable. It does not really matter, because what matters is that one makes the effort to realise the carbon footprint of food at home so that something can be done to reduce it.
So, as an example, we had a 2 kilo roast lamb for Christmas dinner, and the carbon footprint worked out to be 41.651 kilos for the dish.
However, in the past, we would normally have the same amount of roast beef which would have worked out to have a footprint of 86.661 kilos of GHG (according to the website I used). But for our next family roasts, it will now be more likely to be poultry, where a 2 kilo chicken would cost only 9.412 kilos, or a duck which would have added 10.109 kilos of GHG, both a reduction of over 75% of the GHG of the roast lamb.
The additional sides such as potatoes, long beans, Brussels sprouts, wine, etc, all came to around 8 kilos of GHG for a family dinner for six. Most impressive was Brussels sprouts where a kilo of sprouts accounted for only 750 grams of GHG. Close was the red wine which cost 2.777 kilos for 2 litres.
Next year, the columnist will be making a roast chicken for his holiday meal as the carbon footprint is nearly eight times less than that of roast beef. — TIM DOUGLAS/Pexels
Looking at things quantitatively this way, one becomes aware very quickly of the impact of food on our planet’s warming problem. A single, simple family dinner had caused almost 50 kilos of GHG to be pumped into the atmosphere, and that is not counting the transport costs to stock and refrigerate the food in the shops, the energy needed for cooking the dinner, nor the resources needed to dispose of the wastes afterwards. It is now understandable why our food is the root cause of 34% of the GHG in our environment.
Simply not an option
Anything we can do to reduce GHG emissions can only be a step in the right direction, and therefore it can be important that we budget for the cost of GHG as well as money when one consumes food. Additionally, all of us together can influence food production by buying only foods with the least impact on our planet, and therefore making producers follow our demand patterns.
As an aside, 2022 was the hottest year on record for many countries in the EU, with 31 Dec 2022 hotter than usual by at least 8°C across all of France. This year may prove to be even hotter, with a winter heatwave causing at least seven European countries to set records for their warmest January temperatures in history already. This has been described as the “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology” and bodes ominously for the rest of the year.
The currently mounting number of climate extremes and tragedies caused by global warming suggests that doing nothing about it is simply not an option if one cares about future generations.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
