Carbonostics keeps
nutrition in check

Every industry has its own sensitivities that cannot be overlooked when environmental measurements are brought into the picture.

For the food industry, the nutritional value of its products makes up a historical component of its responsibility to society.

To measure environmental impacts without taking into consideration nutritional profiles would be to deliver only half the information necessary to make smart lifecycle decisions that maximize profit and minimize negative impacts.

Identifying hotspots in a supply chain can only provide the environmental picture. That’s why Carbonostics always delivers a nutritional profile alongside any carbon emissions calculation. When modeling options for reduce carbon, clients can ensure that the nutritional value of the product is not comprised in an effort to reduce environmental impact.

Tomatoes – canned vs. fresh.

Here’s a case in point. A Carbonostics client was considering changing his recipe from canned tomatoes instead of locally grown fresh tomatoes, because:

(a) canned tomatoes are cheaper,
(b) cans protect the product, therefore there’s less waste, and
(c) cans store better.

The hope was that these factors would lower their impact. However, by modeling this option in Carbonostics, they discovered that:

(a) canned tomatoes contain a high sodium level and therefore would upset the nutritional profile of the product,
(b) locally grown fresh tomatoes are grown in a greenhouse and therefore have a high carbon footprint; however,
(c) by sourcing fresh tomatoes from a warmer, sunnier climate, even with higher percentage of waste per kilograms of tomatoes and the transport involved, the nutritional profile would stay balanced and the environmental footprint would be reduced.

View a sample analysis of a Lasagna and explore scenarios and models that illustrate the cost + carbon + nutrition impacts of changing from canned to fresh tomatoes.