Carbon footprints of omnivorous, vegetarian, and vegan diets based on traditional Turkish cuisine

Abstract

Turkish cuisine is one of the most globally wide-spread and also nutritionally diverse diets in the world. Yet, to this day the environmental footprint of Turkish cuisine has not been studied. In this work, the carbon footprints of weekly omnivorous, vegetarian, and vegan diets based on traditional Turkish cuisine were calculated. The functional unit was selected as 2000 kcal of daily intake per person, CCaLCTM was used as software alongside CML2001 methodology, and c cradle-to-grave approach was employed. The following stages were included in the life cycle inventory: raw material supply including packaging, meal preparation (energy required for cooking or baking), and end-of-life treatment. On average, the omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan diets were found to have carbon footprints of 35.22, 27.8 and 18.5 kg CO2eq. per functional unit, respectively. The reduced carbon footprint of the vegetarian and vegan diets was mainly attributed to the absence of meat and dairy products. Raw material supply emerged as the main hotspot with an average share of 77.2% in the overall carbon footprint, followed by meal preparation with a share of 21.5%. End-of-life treatment options did not have a significant effect on the carbon footprint. The results were found to be highly consistent with those reported earlier in the literature. Extrapolating the results showed that nutrition is roughly responsible for one third of the total carbon footprint of Turkey. The main conclusion was that Turkish cuisine is comparable with other major cuisines in terms of its environmental impacts, while offering a very diverse and healthy diet.