Compare your food

Two foods, side by side

Emissions, land, pollution, nutrition and animals. Choose how to compare, and read the plain-English interpretation under each chart.

First food

Second food

Compare by

Same amount of protein from each food. Fairer for protein foods. That is 1,111 g of lentils against 625 g of tofu.

Greenhouse gas emissions

kg CO₂e per 100 g protein

Lentils

Tofu

Lentils and Tofu are about the same.

Lentils: Roughly about 12 km of driving (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024)

Tofu: Roughly about 12 km of driving (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024)

All greenhouse gases released producing the food, from land clearing to retail, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents.

Calculation basis

Lentils: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.
Tofu: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.

Land use

m² per 100 g protein

Lentils

17.3

Tofu

2.2

Lentils has about 7.9 times the land of Tofu, so Tofu has the lower impact here.

Lentils: Roughly about 0.07 tennis courts (International Tennis Federation, 2024)

Tofu: Roughly about 0.01 tennis courts (International Tennis Federation, 2024)

Farmland needed to produce the food, including grazing and land for animal feed.

Calculation basis

Lentils: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.
Tofu: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.

Water pollution (eutrophication)

g PO₄e per 100 g protein

Lentils

Tofu

3.9

Lentils has about 4.9 times the pollution of Tofu, so Tofu has the lower impact here.

Nutrient run-off from fertiliser and manure that causes algal blooms and dead zones, in phosphate equivalents.

Calculation basis

Lentils: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.
Tofu: Poore & Nemecek (2018), OWID version accessed 2026-09-06; life-cycle assessment through retail, per kg retail weight.

Protein

g per 100 g protein

Lentils

100

Tofu

100

Lentils and Tofu are about the same.

Protein content of the food as eaten.

Fibre

g per 100 g protein

Lentils

87.8

Tofu

12.5

Lentils has about 7.0 times the fibre of Tofu, so Lentils provides more.

Dietary fibre. Animal foods contain none.

Saturated fat

g per 100 g protein

Lentils

1.1

Tofu

8.1

Tofu has about 7.3 times the sat. fat of Lentils, so Lentils has the lower impact here.

Saturated fat content. Higher intakes raise LDL cholesterol.

Animals slaughtered

animals per 100 g protein

Lentils

Tofu

Neither involves slaughtered animals.

Approximate number of animals slaughtered for this amount of food. Small fractions mean one animal yields many portions. Zero for plant foods; dairy and eggs involve animals indirectly.

Calculation basis

Lentils: Approximate retail yield per animal inverted; yield assumptions are illustrative, not counts of individual animals spared.
Tofu: Approximate retail yield per animal inverted; yield assumptions are illustrative, not counts of individual animals spared.

Methodology, sources and caveats

Environmental values use retail-weight averages, converted to the basis you choose. Nutrition can use cooked weight; preparation and proxy assumptions are listed below. Farms vary widely around these averages; thin lines on the bars show the reported range where the source gives one.
Where a food has figures for more than one country or production system, the default is the all-systems figure for your country (or the global average). The figure menu under a chart lets you choose another; the source and geography update with it.
Nutrient values are reference composition figures. Preparation and variety change them, and absorption differs between plant and animal sources (see the nutrient panel).
No single metric tells the whole story. A food can score well on emissions and poorly on water, or well on protein and poorly on fibre.
Freshwater use: Water use matters mainly where water is scarce. A litre in a rainy region is not equivalent to a litre in a drought-prone one, so treat this as indicative only.
Scarcity-weighted water use: Scarcity weighting depends on where each food is actually grown. Global figures blend many regions; country figures are shown where a source provides them.
Animals slaughtered: Dairy and eggs are shown as zero because no animal is slaughtered per unit sold, but both systems involve animals; this metric only counts direct slaughter.
Lentils: Environmental metrics use Other pulses per kg retail dry product as a proxy; nutrition uses cooked lentils, FDC 172421. No dry-to-cooked footprint conversion is applied; comparisons and calculator replacements are approximate.
Tofu: Nutrition is an approximate firm-tofu composition, with an assumed 350 mg calcium per 100 g. FDC 172475 has 683 mg; brands and coagulants vary.

Sources: Poore et al. (2018); Service (2024); Nations (2024). See how we rate evidence.

Environmental values use retail-weight averages, converted to the basis you choose. Nutrition can use cooked weight; preparation and proxy assumptions are listed below. Farms vary widely around these averages; thin lines on the bars show the reported range where the source gives one.
Where a food has figures for more than one country or production system, the default is the all-systems figure for your country (or the global average). The figure menu under a chart lets you choose another; the source and geography update with it.
Nutrient values are reference composition figures. Preparation and variety change them, and absorption differs between plant and animal sources (see the nutrient panel).
No single metric tells the whole story. A food can score well on emissions and poorly on water, or well on protein and poorly on fibre.
Freshwater use: Water use matters mainly where water is scarce. A litre in a rainy region is not equivalent to a litre in a drought-prone one, so treat this as indicative only.
Scarcity-weighted water use: Scarcity weighting depends on where each food is actually grown. Global figures blend many regions; country figures are shown where a source provides them.
Animals slaughtered: Dairy and eggs are shown as zero because no animal is slaughtered per unit sold, but both systems involve animals; this metric only counts direct slaughter.
Lentils: Environmental metrics use Other pulses per kg retail dry product as a proxy; nutrition uses cooked lentils, FDC 172421. No dry-to-cooked footprint conversion is applied; comparisons and calculator replacements are approximate.
Tofu: Nutrition is an approximate firm-tofu composition, with an assumed 350 mg calcium per 100 g. FDC 172475 has 683 mg; brands and coagulants vary.

Sources: Poore et al. (2018); Service (2024); Nations (2024). See how we rate evidence.