Eating for a Better Planet

How do you balance the environmental impacts and nutritional benefits of different foods?
Exploring and noticing Working systematically Conjecturing and generalising Visualising and representing Reasoning, convincing and proving
Being curious Being resourceful Being resilient Being collaborative

Problem

Look at the cards below.  

Use the cards to answers these questions:

  1. Arrange the 9 foods in ascending order of emissions per portion.
  2. Without doing any calculations, try to put them in ascending order of emissions per calorie.
  3. Use a calculator to check your ordering.

Do the same for litres of water per gram of protein.

Which other measures could you use to order the foods?  Which do you think is the "best" food?

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Eating for a Better Planet

 

You can download a complete set of cards, and use them to play "Top Trumps".

You can find more information about the cards here.  

This problem is based on the work done by Sarah Bridle and her colleagues at "Take a Bite out of Climate Change".

You can hear about Sarah Bridle's mathematical journey in this "The Life Scientific" podcast