Every year 
on the fourth Thursday of November, millions of Americans buy turkeys, make pumpkin pies, and clean the silverware in preparation for Thanksgiving. According to research from the Pew Center, 91 percent of Americans celebrate “Turkey Day”, meaning a lot of food will be consumed.
While we may enjoy our Thanksgiving meals for just one day, the impact of that food (and its processes) on the environment are long-lasting. Food systems, which are the ways we get food into our bellies from field, to farm, to factory, and to store; involve everything from the food itself to the infrastructure needed. Our food systems account for one-third of all human-caused global emission of greenhouse gases, according to a 2021 article from the journal Nature. These emissions trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet and causing climate change occurrences, such as more frequent and intense wildfires, drought, hurricanes, and extreme weather.
So what are the effects of your Thanksgiving dinner? Using My Emissions Food Carbon Footprint Calculator, I did the math to find out. I found popular recipes for common Thanksgiving dishes, and using the calculator’s data, found the carbon footprint of Thanksgiving meals.
The Main Course
Let’s start with the turkey. Turkey is more eco-friendly than red meat; the beef industry emits almost 258 million metric tons of carbon every year, according to data from the Nature Conservancy. Even so, turkey is still incredibly carbon intensive. According to Forbes, the average Thanksgiving turkey takes a “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” style journey over 1,500 miles to get to your local grocery store. As a perishable item, the turkey must be refrigerated along the journey, which is energy-intensive. That alone emits 24,000 metric tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide), or the “equivalent of taking 5,200 cars off the road”. This isn’t even factoring in the turkey itself! The carbon cost of producing one turkey is 64 pounds of carbon, according to Time, this is the same as driving a car 72 miles.
The Sides
Cranberry sauce: As a general rule of thumb, plant-based foods tend to be lower in their carbon emissions, due to the fact that they are less land-intensive than animal grazing, and don’t need to be refrigerated. Cranberry sauce only needs two ingredients: cranberries and sugar. With 12 oz of cranberries and one cup of sugar, the total carbon emissions of cranberry sauce is 1112 grams of CO2.
Mashed Potatoes: Potatoes (and root vegetables at large) generally have one of the lowest carbon footprints. According to my Thanksgiving dinner expert (my mother) they are made with potatoes, butter, milk, garlic, and some herbs. Butter and milk are animal products, but because the amounts of them are relatively small in mashed potatoes, the carbon footprint of this classic side dish is lower. Mashed potatoes emit around 1,886 grams of CO2.
Dinner rolls: As with the mashed potatoes, using small amounts of animal products doesn’t make a food climate-unhealthy. With a recipe of flour, milk, butter, and a bit of sugar, the dinner rolls produce 1,651grams of CO2 per serving.
Stuffing: Ok, the stuffing is subjective- it depends on what you put in it, what recipe you use. My grandma makes hers with fruit, my mom makes hers with oysters. For math purposes, I used this recipe from Love and Lemons, which is vegetarian. Because this recipe still uses quite a bit of butter and several eggs, it has a larger carbon footprint than our other side dishes, emitting 2,865 grams of CO2 per serving. However, substitute out the eggs and swap margarine for butter, and that carbon footprint drops to 1,471 grams of CO2.
The Dessert
No Thanksgiving meal is complete without pumpkin pie! To make a homemade crust and filling (I used Preppy Kitchen’s recipe), you’d need evaporated milk, eggs, butter, and pumpkin puree. Due to the dairy products, this recipe has a large carbon footprint of 5,183 grams of CO2 per serving.
All the sides and dessert have a combined carbon emission of 11, 303 grams of CO2 per serving, which is far less than the 29, 030 grams of CO2 (64 pounds) produced by turkey.
The grand total of your Thanksgiving dinner carbon emissions? 88 pounds of carbon. Carbon emissions by people cause catastrophic climate change; here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, climate change has lengthened heat wave seasons by several weeks and increased both wildfire frequency and the duration of fires, according to a report from the Sierra Nevada Alliance.
All this said: maybe switch out the turkey for a tofurkey next year, or make a big salad with vegetables.
