New Foodsteps carbon labelling on our food menus

We recognise that food creates a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the biggest cause of biodiversity loss. And we want to help our guests understand the impact of their food choices.  For this reason, our hospitality partner, Restaurant Associates, has recently introduced Foodsteps, a carbon label system to support more sustainable diet choices.

Foodsteps methodology

In the same way that there is guidance for how many calories, salt and fat we should eat in a day, the same has been calculated for carbon. The FoodSteps A-E rating system - where A is 'very low' and E is 'very high' - is based on a carbon budget. This carbon budget is measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilo (kg CO2e/kg of food) or more simply, carbon intensity. This measurement allows for a fair comparison between products of different serving sizes.

The A-E rating boundaries are set within the context of the commitment to meet the Paris Agreement pledge - keeping global warming to well below 2°C, aiming for 1.5°C. Eating A-rated items will help you to stay within the EAT-Lancet 2050 global carbon budget for food, established in 2019 to help achieve healthy diets and sustainable food production.

How does Foodsteps measure impact?

Foodsteps uses life cycle assessment data to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions from food across its life. This is done for every dish on our menu, individually. The assessment takes into account the impact of emissions sources from all life cycle stages of the process of producing and consuming food: farm, processing, packaging, transport, retail, end-mile, cooking and food waste. Find out more about each of these life cycles.

What the labelling looks like and the ratings' non-food equivalents

The new labels on our menus are colour-coded like a traffic light to show you the carbon score of your meal.

Below we see how the carbon intensity of the different ratings compares to other real-life examples, such as the carbon footprint of charging your smartphone, or driving your car. This really helps visualise quite how carbon intensive some food options really are!

We hope labelling system will help raise awareness of how food production and meal choices affect climate change. And in turn encourage organisers booking events with us to think about sustainability when choosing the menus for their events going forward.