Beef produces 85 kg CO2e per kg of food. Tofu produces 2.9 kg CO2e per kg of food.

If the non-food products (which account for about 40% of the animal) are accounted for, the food-CO2 falls by ~40% to about 51.

This doesn't seem to take into account methane production and its effect on the climate either, which would probably put cows and pigs much higher.

Another "fun" chart on various food sources green house gas emissions adjusted per kilogram of food product.

Source

I love how the chart breaks cows into multiple categories making it look that much smaller even though it's still chart topping.

Edit: Oddly enough they're citing the same data in both the one I link and OP's link.

it's basic physics: animal products consume more energy (calories) than they produce in food because they exert energy on living - moving, eating, converting food to energy, etc.

Eating a plant directly (or with comparable processing to meat) means less wasted energy (as in calories burned compared to calories produced as food) simply because you're going one step higher (lower?) in the food chain to obtain that energy.

Would it make more sense to compare based on calories and not weight? Since you need to eat more tofu than beef for the same calorie intake. If my math is right, tofu is about 760 kcal per kg while beef is 2500 kcal per kg so that makes it ~34 grams of CO2 per kcal for beef and ~3 grams of CO2 per kcal for tofu.

Definitely tofu is still better obviously, just wanted to compare with that metric. Not sure if it makes more sense or not.

Isn't air travel and large ships far worse for the environment? I don't mean to derail a conversation, but I suspect that air travel and ocean liners have a significantly bigger impact and I don't see as much coverage on that issue.

I didn't realize that there was a direct correlation between CO2 expenditure during food production and the final product's flavour

I don't like tofu. I like other meat substitutes but idk tofu is not the greatest comparison to meat in my opinion

I'm all in for reducing beef consumption, not just because of the green aspect but also health... having said that, this is yet another fool's errand the masses have been set to follow:

1. we could curve global beef consumption significantly by realign massive sectors of the supply chain, agriculture and education OR
2. we could get rid of the Kardashian (sp?) that likes to take private jet hops to avoid minutes of traffic

I was curious and went looking because I suspected it was low emissions but not how low. Research seems to suggest Kangaroo meat is significantly lower GHG per kg than tofu!

In our calculations we use 1.30 CO2 equivalents for one kilogram production of kangaroo meat which is an average of the estimates reported in the literature

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308823/

Can I get some numbers on a bottle of Gochujang sauce?

this is based on the poore-nemecek study and should not be regarded as "true". it's "true if they methodology reflects reality" but it does not.

anywhere that compares by calorie? just curious

The carbon that we dig out of the ground and put in the air, that is the ony one relevant to global warming. Everything else is just a change of phases in a cycle.

Why is beef from a beef herd worse than beef from a dairy herd?

Beef and tofu and not nutritionally equivalent.

I freakin love tofu, air frying it is so tasty. I just wish it were cheaper.

So avoid beef, lamb, and mutton, got it.

Yeah but if you tell the factory farms to lower the beef number they'll just cram the same number of cattle into a smaller area.

I am all for meat free (or lab grown) alternatives and they're getting better but honestly in their current state if I had to eat tofu instead of beef I'd just eat neither. (Maybe I've just been unlucky and only tried really bad tofu?)

My beef also isn't genetically modified to survive glyphosate, which gets absorbed by the soy that gets turned into your tofu.

If industrial farms would sell the manure and spread it on fields rather than blanket them with petrolchemicals (fertilizers) this entire argument would be completely moot.

We need to return to traditional farming where the cattle can graze and naturally fertilize the land instead of being confined and mainly fed corn (which exacerbates the spread of ecoli).

Traditional farming can also reverse desertification of land therefore can reduce the CO2 footprint of this industry.

I'm not saying don't be vegan, just take a look beyond these studies that are cherry picked to cement your opinions on us monsters that are so apparently destroying this planet.

Also get mad at the military and they are the top contributors of CO2 emissions and they have 0 restrictions and are omitted from every study.

But i need to eat meat.

Less people, less problems. Walk around Bandung Indonesia and I'll show you 10 people polluting to your 1 American. Good luck.