The Water Cost of Your Favorite Foods

You probably don’t think about how much water it takes to produce a slice of pizza or a cheese burger, but it’s substantial. Grace Communications has put together a helpful list of how thirsty your food is.

One slice of cheese pizza (New York size, Chicago is probably a factor of five more) – 21 gallons.

When you consider that 80% of all water in the US goes to agriculture it becomes obvious that low flow shower heads can never reduce water by nearly as much as what farms and food choices can do.

Produce gets bad press because it’s easy to see farmers spraying water on their crops all the time, but the water use of produce (well, except rice) is comparatively low.

• 1 pound of potatoes – 119 gallons
• 1 pound lettuce – 30 gallons
• 1 pound of rice – 449 gallons
• 1 pound of tomatoes – 24 gallons

When you start looking at items that have to go through any kind of processing like bread, the use shoots up.

• 1 loaf of bread – 288 gallons
• 1 pound of chocolate – 3,170 gallons

But meat is the real king of water use. Those animals are thirsty and need to wash their antibiotics down with something.

• 1 pound of chicken – 468 gallons
• 1 gallon of milk – 880 gallons
• 1 pound of beef 1,799 gallons

Compounding the problem is food waste. When you choose a food you might end up not converting that water that was used to make it into fuel for your body when you toss out unused portions. 25% of fresh water used each year is lost to food waste.

Then there’s transportation. 10% of all US energy use is consumed in transportation of food starting at the farm and ending in your pie hole.

Source: Grace (PDF)