-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. In a video uploaded to YouTube last year , home cook and food influencer Alexa Santos scores a wheel of brie, drizzles it with honey, and flips it into a hot cast-iron pan. "Cheese is the main reason why I can't go vegan," she explains before baking the cheese with blackberries and hazelnuts and smearing it on slices of baguette.
She was channeling a common sentiment. There are long Reddit threads of would-be vegans confessing their inability to quit cheddar and chèvre. Miyoko Schinner, the founder of the plant-based cheese company Miyoko's Creamery, said in a recent Netflix documentary series that she hears that kind of thing often.
"It's so interesting about cheese that people can't give it up," she said. I get it, because I'm one of those people. How on earth are we supposed to ditch the most carbon-intensive form of dairy in the face of melty pots of fondue and snowy piles of grated Parmesan? Try as though cheese lovers might, it's hard to ignore the environmental toll of cheese.
Among major food products, its climate footprint trails only red meat and farmed shrimp. It's emissions intensive because of the methane that dairy cows belch into the air, and also because cheese is a concentrated product — it takes 10 pounds of fresh milk , on average, to produce one pound of cheese, with hard cheeses like Parmigia.