Lentils: carbon footprint per kg
Live factor value
0.466 kgCO2e per kg
Source: Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE, France), 3.1 (revision 1). Factor set agribalyse-3.1-r1.
Lentils are close to the floor of the food-footprint table: the live per-kg figure below, from France's official Agribalyse database, is a small fraction of any meat's. As legumes, lentils even fix their own nitrogen, cutting the fertiliser emissions that dominate most crops.
Per gram of protein the advantage holds: pulses deliver protein at a tenth or less of beef's footprint. That is why 'swap one meat meal for a pulse-based one' appears in almost every evidence-based footprint-reduction list.
Worked example
A 400 g serving of cooked lentils: 0.4 × 0.466 = 0.2 kgCO2e.
Measure your own with the free food calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Are lentils really lower-carbon than chicken?
- Yes — per kilogram and per gram of protein, cooked pulses come in at a fraction of even the lowest-footprint meats in every major food database.