Low Carbon Diet Calculator: Know the CO2e of your lunch

Locavoring and freeganism tends to get all the attention these days, but when it comes down to reducing carbon emissions, eating less meat will produce more dramatic results than picking local lettuce over greens shipped from China.

That's what the recently-debuted Low Carbon Diet calculator tries to illustrate. Put together by eco-conscious food company Bon Appétit Management, the Low Carbon Diet calculator aims to show consumers the environmental impact of their food choices.

Would-be eco-conscious eaters can calculate roughly how much carbon dioxide emissions are created by their meals by dragging and dropping food items onto a pan. The LCD calculator assigns a number of points to each food item, with roughly 450 points equaling a pound of CO2 emissions. 

Planning to eat a 4 oz. steak? That'll cost you 6977 points. Swap that out for 4 oz. of grilled tofu, and you can bring your score down to just 367 points.

Of course, BAM isn't suggesting that choosing to eat local doesn't matter at all. In fact, BAM plans to phase out out-of-season produce flown in from faraway places from the menus of the 400 or so cafes it serves, including The Getty Center. But BAM's first move for its low carbon menus is cutting back on beef and cheese, not obsessing over which tomato farm is closer to the locations it serves.

In a way, the Low Carbon Diet calculator encourages consumers to first focus on the food items that'll create big changes instead of sweating the small stuff. Die-hard locavorians might be peeved by the calculator though, because it doesn't distinguish between beef from locally-raised grass-fed cows and factory farm cows pumped full of antibiotics, even if the resulting CO2 emissions are bound to be quite different.

My breakfast (above), I found out, wasn't quite as green as I'd hoped -- though I'd like to think that the actual carbon footprint of my meal is smaller than calculated here, partly because the food was all organic, but mainly because the milk in my cereal was made from soybeans, not by cows.

Still, I found using the calculator an informative exercise. We can often lose sight of the big stuff because of the details in the little things. Meaning that yes, everyone should bring their own bags to the grocery store -- but there is a certain irony in watching a Whole Foods customer rant about how plastic bags are made of oil and create pollution -- before loading up her SUV and gas-guzzling her way home.