Going vegan is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint, a new BBC food calculator confirms.

The calculator indicates the most damaging foods to the environment are meat, dairy, chocolate and coffee.

The calculator asks users about their weekly food consumption and calculates how much you contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the calculator, if you drinks a glass of dairy milk every day, it contributes to 229kg to your annual greenhouse gas emissions – which is equivalent to driving a regular petrol car for 585 miles or heating the average UK home for 36 days.

It also shows this consumption is equivalent to the use of 45,733 litres of water and 652m² of land.

The BBC calculator also provides a comparison chart showing that dairy is the highest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, in comparison to other non-dairy milks including rice milk, soy milk, oat milk and almond milk.

A University of Oxford study had similar findings to the calculator. It revealed a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions came from food production, and more than half came from animal products – mainly beef and lamb.

The calculator was created in collaboration with Joseph Poore, a researcher at University of Oxford and Thomas Nemecek, an agroecology and environmental researcher in Zurich, Switzerland.

They analysed data from 40,000 farms and 1,600 processors, packaging types and retailers to assess the impact of 40 major foods on the environment.

Poore said in a statement: “What we eat is one of the most powerful drivers behind most of the world’s major environmental issues, whether it’s climate change or biodiversity loss.”

• Read: Vegan activist Earthling Ed owns ‘high welfare’ butcher in live BBC debate

Will the results from this new tool have an impact on your eating habits? Tell us in the comments below!

Anu Kondal

Anu Kondal is a digital writer at Totally Vegan Buzz. Anu specialises in informative articles about vegan food, drink and general plant-based knowledge. Anu is an accomplished researcher and educational writer and is an expert on vegan trivia.

See author's posts