Go on a Global Warming Diet: 'Carbon Nutrition' Labels on Food?

What if every piece of food you bought was labeled not just with nutrition information, but with carbon impact specs as well? As in—let's see: this jar of mayo's got 16 grams of fat, 110 milligrams of sodium, and 150 grams of CO2 spewed into the atmosphere on its account. Per serving.

That's the conceit behind the Global Warming Diet, which offers a compelling perspective on food miles, method of food distribution, and general greenhouse gases emitted by food production. The website's authors have imagined what such "carbon nutrition" information would look like, and offer this rendering of such a label on a jar of peanut butter.

They take into account where the food originated from, how far it traveled to reach you, the method of transportation used in moving it there (truck, train etc,), the amount of emissions generated in producing the plastic jar, and the processing of the food itself. The calculations were done by EcoSynergy, and the results are tallied on a high/low graph.

I know the carbon nutrition label is meant to be something of a spoof?but am I na

The authors of the website are also responsible for a similarly themed book: Cool Cuisine: Taking a Bite Out of Global Warming, which should be worth a look if you're intrigued thus far.

So "carbon nutrition" labels may be a long time coming. But we should be following the lessons the satirical ones teach: let's keep on making that effort to buy local, support farmers' markets, and cut back on foods packaged in plastic.