Understanding the Climatarian Diet

By Michael Hines

Originally Published: 16 April, 2024

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Cherwell Collective advocates for a climatarian diet in our community outreach, at our Climatarian Kitchen, in our recipe blog posts, and during our annual Carbon Cost of Food Week? We share why this is such a central part of our advocacy.

As a UK community interest company (CIC), Cherwell Collective’s various charitable efforts fall under a common theme of helping the community to build climate resilience. As part of that mission, we seek to educate the public about how your personal choices can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. All of our daily activities, including eating, transport, buying clothes, heating homes, and using electricity have a certain Carbon Costs. Because up to one-third of humanity’s Carbon Costs come from from food production activities, we’ve made it a key part of our mission to help individuals and families adopt a climatarian diet in their everyday lives.

Scientific estimates find that anywhere from 25 to 33% of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.  Reducing those emissions is one of the easiest and fastest ways you can personally contribute to stopping climate change.

Sources: Our World in Data, Nature, United Nations

What is a Climatarian Diet?

Making the Climatarian Diet Sustainable

A climatarian diet is meant to be a timeless component of helping society build climate resilience. You’ve probably been bombarded with fad diets in recent years. They may rely heavily on overconsumption of a particular item, like meats or grapefruits, or cut out certain foods altogether. Some have trendy names or make promises to trim your waistline, boost your energy, or improve your sleep or cognitive functions.  While those all might be intriguing and fruitful reasons to pursue a particular diet, at Cherwell Collective, our primary aim is to help our users learn ways to lower their carbon footprint and live with a lower Carbon Cost.

The climatarian diet is meant to be sustainable on multiple fronts–in other words not just sustainable for the planet but something that you the individual are able to sustain in your everyday life, unlike a fad diet. At its core, a climatarian diet is not meant to be overly complicated or overly restrictive. If the consumer can’t sustain a diet for the long term, that diet cannot help sustain the planet in the long run either.

Climatarian Diets Put Lower Carbon Cost at the Center

The climatarian diet centres how you buy, prepare, eat, and store food around reducing greenhouse gas emissions while still enjoying a variety of foods prepared simply. Plant-based foods tend to have the lowest Carbon Cost, so the climatarian diet encourages at least 75% of your plate to be plant based. Meanwhile, the climatarian diet recognizes that food waste is a major contributor of climate changing emissions. Wasting high Carbon Cost foods like red meat that have already been raised is especially bad.  Therefore, we recommend efforts to purchase and eat meat thoughtfully, in carefully controlled portions without letting any go to waste, and to purchase it via surplus when possible.

Plant-based foods are central to healthy, doctor-recommended diets filled with fibre, vitamins, and minerals that are lower in cholesterol and saturated fats than most typical diets. In principle, the climatarian diet does not totally restrict animal-based foods either.  Surveys have found that less than 5% of the population is interested in adopting a vegetarian-only or vegan diet. Yet there is still enormous potential from the other 95% of us simply focusing on lowering our dietary Carbon Cost by increasing consumption of plants without necessarily cutting out meat altogether. Some have also called this “less meat” approach a reducitarian diet, which is just one component of the overall climatarian approach.

Overall, a climatarian diet is what you eat to support the planet. Decisions about each step in making a meal–buying, preparing, and storing foods, eating them, and properly disposing of waste–are all important.  In that vein, we are working on a forthcoming cookbook to help you understand all the best practices you need to make yours a climatarian kitchen. In the meantime, we share 5 tips for cutting Carbon Costs and adopting a climatarian diet starting today.

Top 5 Shortcuts to Adopting a Climatarian Diet:

A climatarian diet is stocked with items that have a low Carbon Cost and is brimming with fresh in-season and local produce. Efficient cooking techniques and appliances reduce energy consumption. Careful storage techniques reduce and prevent food waste, while the unavoidable scraps are composted.

Your climatarian philosophy can even extend beyond the home when you choose how, where, and what to eat at school, work, and on the go.  To help you get started, we’ve come up with five top features to consider:

1. Eat less but better meat and other animal products

You can review our Carbon Cost of food materials to learn more about how supply chains for animals (and the supply chains for animal food) contribute to climate change. The lesson from this is that red meat has anywhere from 4 to 10 times the Carbon Cost of other sources of protein and tends to have the biggest emissions footprint for any category of food.  Eating less red meat can be part of a broader overall strategy of eating less quantities of animal products, including pork, poultry, seafood, and dairy. As a general rule of thumb, we suggest you make 75% of your plate consist of plant-based foods as way to follow a climatarian diet.

For instance, for Carbon Cost of Food Week in 2024, we looked at how the traditional full English breakfast can be pared down and less meat focused, for a significantly lower Carbon Cost. Another way to help reduce animal product consumption is to embrace flexi-recipes, which take some liberties with traditional dishes. For instance, swapping out half the animal based products in any traditional recipe with plant based products instead.

In a Bolognese sauce, which normally includes mince beef, even substituting half the beef with pork will make a massive difference–and even more so if you substitute with a plant-based food such as minced mushrooms or nuts, or even a beef substitute product like Beyond Mince. You can also reduce your meat consumption by learning about complete plant proteins—combinations of various plants such as wheat and lentils or rice and beans, or certain superfood plants like quinoa or soybeans, which are complete proteins in and of themselves, just like animal meats. Our signature Climatarian Burger is half meat, half mushroom and extremely popular in our cafe.

Simple Tricks for Cutting Meat

We actually love meat, and we know that adopting a fully meatless diet such as vegetarianism or veganism can be quite hard.  That’s why we embrace an array of smaller practical changes you can make: 

• Meatless Mondays or meat-free lunches
• Buy less but better meat (only purchase meat from local farm shops)
• Shop surplus first and buy only what you know might otherwise be wasted. 
• Following portion size guides, especially with red meat and cheese, such as 100g or less per person.

If you make even one of the above changes, you are already going a long way in the fight against climate change.

2. Eat seasonally

Fruit and veg that are grown nearby and sold in-season tend to have the lowest Carbon Cost compared to items shipped from far away or grown out of season.  When products come from far away, there are carbon emissions associated with transporting the fruit or veg to us from another climate region.  This is especially true of highly perishable out-of-season products, including asparagus, green beans, and fresh berries, which are transported by aeroplane when out of season.

Also beware of the assumption that “local” is always better, even when produce is out of season. Out-of-season local products also have an added carbon footprint because they are often grown in heated greenhouses or stored in long-term refrigeration units, both of which consume fossil fuels for energy. Learn about what produce is in season where you live and add more of it to your diet!

3. Reduce Waste

A staggering one-third of all food is wasted before it is eaten, contributing to 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Reducing food waste is a powerful tool in the fight against climate change.

Reducing food waste starts with careful shopping and not over-buying ingredients, especially meats and cheeses that have a higher Carbon Cost per kilo compared to plant-based foods.  It also means taking stock of what you have in the refrigerator and pantry, and using that before buying more ingredients.  Smart food storage techniques will also help prevent your food from going to waste before you can enjoy it.

Food loss and food waste account for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

United Nations

You can also reduce waste by shopping surplus first, saving items from being wasted by using a local fridge or larder, or looking for discounted short shelf life items at your nearest shop. At home reimagining or freezing in small batches your leftovers so you can have easy lunches for work are all small steps that go a long way.

While we often focus on the production of carbon dioxide, greenhouse gas emissions from food include methane from when food waste decomposes in landfills.  We can cut these methane emissions when we compost our food scraps.  The composting process breaks down the waste using bacteria in a more emission-friendly way. Learn about what you can compost and quick and easy steps to start composting where you live and if you can’t let it rot, rethink buying it in the first place!

Related:  Check out our blog post on reducing your food waste at Christmas.

4. Think smaller

Sometimes it’s difficult to know enough about a supply chain to feel confident making a decision so it’s ok if every choice you make isn’t carefully considered. If you adopt just a few small changes and habits, that’s a great start. In fact, thinking “smaller” in general is a good place to start when it comes to Carbon Cost. If you’re dining out, portion sizes are often 2-3 times the recommended plate portion, so only eat half and save the rest for later to lower your impact. If you aren’t sure about what to buy, smaller animals like chickens tend to be more sustainable to raise than large animals like cows. The same goes for cooking appliances.

Cooking appliances tend to consume energy based on how big they are. Smaller appliances, especially those that are electric like toaster ovens, air fryers, microwaves, and electric kettles, tend to heat food and liquids more efficiently and with fewer emissions compared to stoves and ovens, especially those that use gas. Consider using a microwave to heat and cook starchy vegetables, corn and rice.  Use the kettle whenever possible to heat water.  If you need to roast something to provide a crispy outside, use a toaster oven or air fryer if the food will fit. If you need food to cook quickly, chop it into smaller sizes. 

5. Be flexible

If you understand some of the basics of climate science, you can make exchanges to try to lower your Carbon Costs and find the best set of habits to build for your lifestyle. Once you’re on the right path with your eating decisions you can think about decisions in every other part of your life. We recommend taking time to understand how human activities like farming, manufacturing, transportation, and energy production create greenhouse gases. This will help you decide what your future sustainable lifestyle fits you best.  We offer an introductory lesson on how greenhouse gases contribute to climate change for those wanting to know more.

Climatarian Kitchen Cookbook Is Coming

For those who are interested in adopting a more climatarian diet, we are hard at work on our cookbook Climatarian Kitchen. Stay tuned over at our blog, Our Collective Thoughts, for updates on this forthcoming guide to climatarian eating.

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