With low-carbon diets, consumers step to the plate

About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and nearly all of it takes to the skies. That means delicate slabs of fresh halibut and salmon carry a long contrail of aircraft exhaust to the table. Bon Appetit is setting up supply lines to buy Alaskan salmon fillets and other fish frozen at sea. York said top chefs swear that diners cannot tell the difference if fish is properly prepared.

Bon Appetit, which long ago joined the buy-local movement, is slowly eliminating out-of-season produce flown from Chile and other Latin American countries and cutting by half its imported tropical fruit, such as bananas, pineapples and papayas.

It has also phased out imported bottled water, she said. No more San Pellegrino. No more Perrier.

"Voss water, what's that? It's water that comes in a fancy glass bottle from Norway, of all places," York said, revealing her Brooklyn accent. "Don't we have enough water here?"

York told the group that plastic packaging, despite its bad reputation, is only a minuscule part of the carbon footprint. So if it's a question of taking leftovers home in plastic containers or leaving the food to be thrown away, she said, take it home.

"The food with the highest carbon footprint is the food we don't eat," she said, explaining that 3% of America's energy use is tied up in food trucked to the dump.

Although Americans are piling more food onto their plate than ever, studies show that not all of these extra calories are expanding waistlines. As much as 25% of those leftover peas and carrots and gristle ends up buried in the landfill. Deprived of oxygen, the mash of rotting food produces methane gas.

Bon Appetit has begun to reverse the trend of super-sized meals. Burgers on many college campuses, for instance, have been downsized from one-third to quarter-pounders, with prices adjusted accordingly.

York, a Harvard- and Yale-educated MBA, is part carbon cop -- "I spent a lot of time beating up our suppliers" -- and part mom, reminding customers that their mother was right: You should eat more vegetables. You shouldn't waste food.

She's also a food detective. She leads the company's effort to track the origins of Bon Appetit's food purchases to assess carbon emissions.

That's not always easy. She has found confounding things, such as San Joaquin Valley-grown tomatoes that get shipped to Massachusetts and back because of the peculiarities of the nation's food distribution system.