Chiara Zenaro is a sustainability expert at Hedgehog — and Italian.
Although she’s spent quite some time among the Dutchies, there’s one thing she still can’t get used to: the famously boring Dutch lunch. While watching her colleagues nibbling on a plain cheese sandwich, she often finds herself craving her grandma’s pasta with tomato sauce.
That made her wonder: which lunch actually has a smaller impact on the planet?
Here’s her story — and what her research revealed:
As for every Italian, lunch is the most important meal of the day. So you can imagine my shock when I moved to the Netherlands and discovered that a traditional Dutch lunch usually consists of bread with cheese. It took me a while to adjust to this new lunch concept, but after joining Hedgehog, I’ve grown fond of enjoying a little boterham with colleagues.
That said, I have to confess - I am absolutely delighted whenever a hot meal is cooked in the office. And if it’s pasta, I’m in heaven!
Since here at Hedgehog, we strive to make sustainable choices every day, lunch after lunch, I began to wonder: what is the impact of my beloved pasta compared to the Dutch boterham? So here we go.
Comparing two traditional lunches
For this study, we compared the environmental impact of a traditional Italian lunch, a simple pasta with tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes, and the classic Dutch lunch, which consists of toasted bread with cheese, plus some tomatoes and cucumber to give the toast extra sparkle of flavour. The ingredients for both meals as well as their nutritional values are described in the tables below.
For the Italian lunch, it has been assumed that the tomato sauce is being made starting from fresh tomatoes which are slowly cooked for one hour on gas stoves - just as my grandma would do. For the Dutch lunch, the bread is assumed to be toasted. Also, to ensure a fair comparison, we adapted the recipes to deliver approximately the same amount of calories, around 700 per meal.
How did we approach this case?
To assess the environmental impacts of both meals across their life cycle, an LCA analysis was performed. We referred to the PEF methodology, using the EF 3.1 method. The scope includes all the phases: the raw material acquisition (i.e. the grain, water and salt to make the bread and the pasta, the tomatoes, the cheese, etc.), the manufacturing phase (i.e. the industrial process of making bread and pasta), the distribution (i.e. the transportation of finished products from the manufacturing site to the consumer and the disposal of food losses), the use phase (i.e. refrigeration and the cooking) and end of life (e.g. the disposal of food packaging).
We focused on the following four key impact categories:
- climate change
- land use
- water use
- fossil resource use
These categories have been chosen because they are especially relevant when examining dietary choices. In fact, they capture the most environmentally significant aspects of food production and consumption.
Climate change
The climate change category indicates the global warming potential of all the greenhouse gas emissions produced during every phase, from material acquisition to the end of life. It is expressed in kilograms of CO2 equivalent (kg CO2 eq).
Figure 1 shows the results of the modeling for the climate change category per each phase of our two recipes. With 1.73 kg CO2 eq, the Italian lunch produces triple the emissions than the Dutch lunch, which generates 0.57 kg CO2 eq.
We see that the largest contribution to climate change is the use phase for the Italian lunch, and the ingredients for the Dutch lunch. Let’s zoom into these two phases.
For the Italian lunch, the high impact of the use phase is mostly due to the use of natural gas for the cooking process, as depicted in Figure 2. In fact, cooking fresh tomatoes for one hour on a gas stove to turn them into tomato sauce alone causes 1.47 kg CO2 eq emission, causing 86% of the total emission of the recipe.
For the Dutch lunch, 90.4% of the emissions come from the ingredients (raw materials), totalling 0.51 kg CO2 eq. Almost half of these emissions are due to the cheese, as shown in Figure 3, which alone contributes to 42.5% of the meal’s total emissions. A large part of the emissions is also due to the cucumber, as it is assumed to be produced in a heated greenhouse, contrary to the tomatoes which are assumed to grow in an unheated greenhouse - and therefore generate lower emissions.
Land use and water use
Land use category assesses the overall soil quality loss due to land use and it is calculated by taking into account several factors such as biotic production, erosion resistance, etc. It is dimensionless.
Water use measures the potential regional deprivation of water, thus it represents how much the water use contributes to water scarcity. It is measured in cubic meters of deprived water equivalent (m^3 eq deprived).
By comparing the Italian lunch with the Dutch lunch, we see that while the values for water use are comparable, preparing a Dutch lunch contributes almost 13.5 times more to land use than the Italian lunch. Again, this mostly derives from the use of cheese.
Fossil resource use
Fossil resource use refers to the environmental impact associated with the extraction and use of fossil fuels, quantifying the potential depletion of those resources. It is expressed in MJ.
Figure 4 shows that overall, the Italian lunch uses nearly 5 times the fossil resources of the Dutch lunch. It also shows that if we break down the fossil resource use by phase for both lunches, we note that the greatest consumption of these resources is made for the ingredients and the use phase.
In the case of the Italian lunch, fossil fuel is mostly consumed during the use phase, with 98.7% of the fossil resource consumption due to the long use of gas stoves (natural gas) to cook the tomato sauce. For the Dutch lunch, fossil fuel use is greater in the raw material phase due to the manufacturing of cheese and the production of cucumbers in heated greenhouse, which together contribute to 76.4% of fossil resources use.
Can we make our lunches more sustainable?
Considering these insights, the boterham could be considered a more sustainable option than the pasta (sorry grandma). The Dutch lunch in fact has less impacts on climate change, water use and fossil resource use, although it has a much bigger impact on land use than the Italian lunch.
However, it seems that both the cheese and the traditional tomato-sauce-making process are proving to be significant contributors to environmental impact.
Can we reduce these impacts without sacrificing flavour or tradition? We took a closer look, inspired by real lunch habits at Hedgehog.
Italian lunch at Hedgehog
Let’s be honest: grandmas’ tomato sauce, though delicious, is both time- and energy- intensive. At Hedgehog, we’re usually very busy, and hot meals are prepared in around 30 minutes. Also, we use electric stoves, not gas. So, what happens if we cut cooking time to 30 minutes and switch from gas to electricity?
Figure 5 shows that this change reduces the climate impact of the use phase by 1 kg CO2 eq. And while values for land use and water use stay more or less the same, fossil resource use drops from 23.7 MJ to just 7.4 MJ.
Dutch lunch at Hedgehog
At Hedgehog, our vegan colleagues are masters at crafting delicious toasts without dairy. And as we turn to them for cheese alternatives, one ingredient stands out: peanut butter.
So what happens if we replace the cheese with peanut butter?
We selected a new vegan Dutch lunch recipe to find out:
Figure 6 shows that going vegan reduces climate change emissions to 0.31 kg CO2 eq. Also, a vegan boterham records only 5.9% of the land use, 65.5% of the water use and 64.7% of the fossil resource use compared to the cheese boterham.
Which lunch is more sustainable?
The vegan Dutch lunch wins the gold medal for the most sustainable lunch. If we focus on climate change, the vegan Dutch lunch comes out on top, generating just 0.36 kg CO₂
eq, followed by the traditional Dutch lunch with cheese, which accounts for 0.57 kg CO2 eq, the Italian lunch cooked on electric stoves with 0.73 kg CO2 eq, and lastly the grandma’s pasta, with 1.7 kg CO2 eq.
The vegan Dutch lunch also has the least impact on land use, being very similar to that of both Italian lunches. As for water use, the vegan lunch impacts up to 40% less compared to all the other options, being also the least impactful in terms of fossil resource use.
Key takeaways of this case study
Though I’m a little sad to give up pasta, I’m happy to say that choosing another vegan lunch is the most sustainable option - who doesn’t like peanut butter anyway?
And no worries, whether it's pasta or toast for lunch, you can still enjoy a delicious and traditional meal while being kind to the environment. Just remember: use electric cooking appliances, keep cooking times efficient, and go for vegan and seasonal ingredients whenever you can!
The final verdict
Though I’m a little sad to give up pasta (and especially my grandma’s slow-cooked sauce), this analysis has shown that when it comes to sustainability, the vegan Dutch lunch is the clear winner. With the lowest impacts across all categories - climate change, land use, water use, and fossil resource use - it proves that even small changes in our lunch habits can make a big difference.
But the story doesn’t end there. This case study also shows that simple tweaks, like using electric stoves instead of gas or reducing cooking time, can significantly cut down the impact of even our most cherished meals, like Italian pasta. Likewise, swapping cheese for a plant-based alternative like peanut butter in the Dutch lunch slashes environmental impacts while maintaining nutritional balance.
Ultimately, the most sustainable lunch isn’t about abandoning tradition, it’s about adapting it. So whether you’re craving for a warm plate of pasta or a quick boterham, you can still make mindful choices that are better for the environment. Use energy-efficient cooking methods, reduce animal-based ingredients and dairy where you can, and choose seasonal, plant-based foods.
We don't have to sacrifice flavour or culture - just make a few smart swaps!
Buon appetito – or eet smakelijk – and here’s to greener lunches!
The recipes for the lunches have been derived from Ricetta Spaghetti al pomodoro - La Ricetta di GialloZafferano and What Is A Dutch Lunch: Discovering Traditional Ingredients And Social Customs (Great Ideas!). The nutritional values have been calculated from foodspring, Peanut Butter Calories - New products - Fddb.
