Data
Greenhouse gas emissions of UK diets, by diet group
Greenhouse gas emissions caused by producing the food eaten in a day by vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and low, medium and high meat-eaters in a large UK study, per 2,000 kilocalories, in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, with the range that holds 95% of the authors' uncertainty estimates (Scarborough et al. 2023).
Latest value
10.24kg CO₂e/day
United Kingdom: 55,504 adults of the EPIC-Oxford cohort (not a representative sample of the UK population), 1993–1999. Version Nature Food 4, 565–574 (2023).
As published
“High meat-eaters 10.24 (7.04, 15.95) 8.97 (6.17, 14.15) 14.77 (10.23, 22.55)”
Environmental impacts of UK diet groups (Scarborough et al. 2023), Table 3, p. 569. Checked word for word against the stored copy of the document every time the data is rebuilt.
Every value
| Diet group | Period | Value (kg CO₂e/day) | Range | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vegans | 1993/1999 | 2.47 | 2.09 to 3.36 | final |
| Vegetarians | 1993/1999 | 4.16 | 3.31 to 5.82 | final |
| Fish-eaters | 1993/1999 | 4.74 | 3.85 to 6.27 | final |
| Low meat-eaters | 1993/1999 | 5.37 | 4.26 to 6.99 | final |
| Medium meat-eaters | 1993/1999 | 7.04 | 5.26 to 9.39 | final |
| High meat-eaters | 1993/1999 | 10.24 | 7.04 to 15.95 | final |
Where it comes from
- Producer
- University of Oxford (Scarborough, Clark, Springmann et al.), published in Nature Food · Environmental impacts of UK diet groups (Scarborough et al. 2023)
- Version
- Nature Food 4, 565–574 (2023)
- Fetched
- 2026-10-04 (automatically), 1,422,647 bytes
- Fingerprint
- sha256 b061fbc4e0b22a1a548061df007ced7a17ec66c380f8e19ab5ea870ce5a81eccETag "48ec88b22f02a3cb8be1964463a38945" · Last-Modified Thu, 26 Oct 2023 09:18:48 GMT
- Copies
- No Wayback copy recorded yet.Our copy of the exact file
- Cite the producer
- Scarborough, P., Clark, M., Cobiac, L. et al. Vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters in the UK show discrepant environmental impacts. Nat Food 4, 565–574 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00795-w
What was done to it
Read the text of the article's version-of-record PDF (sha256 b061fbc4e0b2…). Found Table 3's title, column header, note and all 6 rows on PDF page 5 (printed p. 569), and the Methods sentence on the GWP100 factors on PDF page 7, word for word, before publishing.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/food/scarborough_2023.py · code sha256 3cdc437bb7f0c857… · inputs b061fbc4e0b2…
Published the GWP100 column (the first of the table's three metrics): for each diet group the median as the value and the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the authors' 1,000-iteration Monte Carlo analysis as the 95% uncertainty interval, exactly as printed. The GTP100 and GWP20 columns are not published here.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/food/scarborough_2023.py · code sha256 3cdc437bb7f0c857… · inputs b061fbc4e0b2…
What it covers
- Geography
- United Kingdom: 55,504 adults of the EPIC-Oxford cohort (not a representative sample of the UK population)
- Gases combined with
- AR6-GWP100
- Basis
- Dietary footprint from farm to retail of the food eaten (self-reported in a food frequency questionnaire at the cohort's baseline, 1993–1999), standardized to 2,000 kcal a day and to the cohort's age and gender mix; food-level emissions from a database of life-cycle assessments published 2000–2016. Median and 2.5th–97.5th percentiles of a 1,000-iteration Monte Carlo analysis. GWP100 with IPCC AR6 factors (CH4 27, N2O 273). The period is the years the diets were reported.
- Unit
- kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per person per day (2,000 kcal) (kg CO₂e/day)