Planet-friendly grocery shopping choices go beyond cutting meat

It’s one of the most impactful climate decisions we make, and we make it multiple times a day.

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The UN estimates about a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the main driver of climate change, come from food. That pollution can come from several links in the food supply chain: How farmland is treated, how crops are grown, how food is processed and how it's ultimately transported.

Maybe you've already heard the short answer to minimizing your diet's impact on the planet: eat more plants and fewer animals. The data backs up that suggestion. Emissions from meat-rich diets are four times higher than that of vegan diets.

But so much focus on meats overshadows many other food choices that also impact the environment and can contribute to global warming. Here is a look at other important grocery store decisions:

Proteins

Swapping one serving of chicken per day for beef cuts a diet’s emissions nearly in half. Ruminant animals such as cows, sheep, and goats are the top drivers of emissions.

Those animals “are associated not only with nitrous oxide emissions, but they’re also related to direct methane emissions because they burp them up while they digest food,” said Marco Springmann, professorial research fellow in climate change, food systems and health at University College London.