Now you might be wondering why I am drawing a correlation between what people eat and CO2 emissions but there actually is one. When I was in the process of completing my carbon footprint using the calculator on this sight I came to the food section and was confused as to why there was a section in regards to food? In reality though, the reason that this section is one of the four listed in the evaluation is that what each household eats equates to an average of 8 tons of Carbon emissions, or 17% of the emissions world wide. This is due to the processes of growing or raising food in places made for our consumption, storing food, packaging food and transporting food.
        The process of raising or growing food itself requires many of it's own CO2 emissions from other categories in order to maintain healthy plants and animals such as using water, fertilizer, feed and even cow farts. The next step in the process after the animals or plants have been farmed of killed is to keep them from being inconsumable. To do this people will use appliances such as refrigerators or oth er cooling devices to keep things fresh and only adds to the carbon footprint. Along with keeping things fresh comes packaging and packaging can easily be made of things that cannot be reused or recycled and are thrown away into the trash. The main hit comes when you realize food has to be delivered from far off places if you don;t buy locally sourced food and most delivery vehicles run on gases that contribute to the growing emission levels.
        Establishing the reasons behind why food is a significant part of a carbon footprint you may be wondering how to lower it in this category. Well, if you are not willing to give up meat, you can source local food with little packaging. Ultimately though, if you want to make a significant difference you will have to eat more vegetarian or vegan meals. Meat accounts for upwards of 50% of CO2 emissions in the food category and vegetables account for much lower percentages. Meats and dairy products are at the upper end of the scale while fruits vegetables and nuts are at the lower end of the emission scale. Vegetarians on average have 50% less carbon emissions in the food category than meat lovers as a result and vegans even less because they don't eat any animal products. In the end, if you want to make a difference in your carbon emissions in regards to food, you will have to give up meat and livestock products.

Sources Sighted - http://www.greeneatz.com/foods-carbon-footprint.html

wow