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In the last couple articles I've read to reduce your own carbon footprint I've found one thing is sadly missing most of the time: butter.

It's way worse than beef.

One kg butter blasts 24kg CO2 into the air before it gets to you, with beef it's around 13kg.



The difference is that you don't consume butter in 250g quanities in a single sitting. Even if butter is worse the consumption patterns for butter are not those of beef.


Yes that is the point. If you account for calories, proteins and fats (as essential nutrients next to let’s say water and dry weight), butter doesn’t look that bad. It is still worse than average, so - check: app.eaternity.ch


Do people actually eat that much butter regularly?


How so? Butter is a side product from many dairy processes, eg producing parmesan and skimming milk.


Commonly and economic allocation is done. Each food is attributed those emissions to the share they have caused it by the money that was spend for it by the consumer. The question is: why was there a additional cow in the first place. Part of it was the butter.


I've replaced butter with margarine in a lot of cases since I just didn't taste a difference when having it under something hearty and tasty. Easy win.


I would speculate that when compared butter vs meat consumption, butter would be consumed probably an order of magnitude less than meat.


A kilogram of beef lasts me two meals. A kilogram of butter lasts me months.




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