Tofu Beats Cheddar: What Cambridge's New Protein Ranking Really Says

-

 


A new scoring system from a University of Cambridge researcher has produced a headline designed to start arguments: tofu is the best protein you can eat, and cheddar cheese is the worst. The ranking comes from Dr. Chris Macdonald of the Better Protein Institute, published in 2026 in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. It is not a diet plan. It is an attempt to judge 20 common protein foods on health, environmental impact, affordability, and availability at the same time, and the results say as much about how we measure food as about the foods themselves.

How the BPI Score Works

The Better Protein Institute Score awards up to 40 points: 16 for the planet (greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, land use, and freshwater use per 100 grams of protein) and 24 for people (sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol, protein completeness, affordability, and supermarket availability). Tofu scored 36 out of 40, followed by chia seeds, beans, and quinoa. Every food in the top quintile was plant-based; every food in the lowest quintile was animal-based. At the bottom sat mozzarella, lamb, beef, and finally cheddar with 13 points.

Why Tofu Wins and Cheddar Loses

The gap is mostly environmental. Producing 100 grams of protein from tofu was associated with 0.61 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions and 2.16 square meters of land, against 64.19 kilograms and 211.38 square meters for beef. Cheddar's problem is the double hit of dairy's footprint plus high saturated fat and salt. Macdonald is upfront about the limits: the first version uses UK supermarket prices and availability, and most plant proteins are incomplete proteins while all animal sources are complete, so the ranking rewards a food's overall footprint, not its amino acid profile alone.

What to Actually Do With This Ranking

Use it as a tiebreaker, not a verdict. If you already eat tofu, beans, or lentils, the score confirms they are efficient choices. If you love cheddar, the takeaway is portion and frequency, not banishment; no single score captures taste, culture, or how a food fits an otherwise balanced plate. The ranking's real value is its challenge to single-number labels: a food can look good on carbon and bad on salt, or great on protein and terrible on price, and only a combined view catches that trade-off.

FAQ

Who created the protein ranking and what does it measure?
Dr. Chris Macdonald, a behavioural scientist at the University of Cambridge and director of the Better Protein Institute, built the BPI Score to combine nutrition, environmental impact, affordability, and availability into one 40-point ranking of 20 protein foods.

Does tofu beating cheddar mean cheese is unhealthy?
Not exactly. Cheddar scored last because the system weighs dairy's environmental footprint together with saturated fat and salt; the ranking is a combined footprint score, not a pure health verdict, and portion size still matters.

You May Also Like



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Norah Jones and Her Love of Wine with Dinner

-
Image
Every artist in this series has a cocktail. Norah Jones has something better documented: a palate. The singer whose Come Away With Me became the defining dinner-party album of its century never developed a signature mixed drink — instead, across interviews with Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, she has described a genuine, dinner-first love of wine that eventually made her the co-owner of a French winery. This is that story, told from the record. A Palate Built at the Dinner Table "I Developed a Taste for Good Wine" "I'm certainly no wine expert, but over the years I've learned what I like and what tastes good to me," Jones told Wine Spectator. "In my mid-20s, I had managers take me out to dinner and order wines and I had no clue what they were, but I developed a taste for good wine." Decades of European touring sharpened it further, in the food-and-wine cultures of Italy and France. Her stated go-tos are precise: crisp, dry whites — Grüner ...
Read more

Spam Musubi: Hawaii's Beloved After-School Snack — Aloha in a Handheld Meal

-
Image
  On a hot Hawaiian afternoon, running to the playground or the beach with friends after school, there was one thing every kid clutched in hand: Spam musubi . A salty slice of fried Spam, a block of sticky rice, and a belt of dark nori holding it all together. Simple, almost stubbornly so — but for children raised in Hawaii, no snack was more reliable, more filling, or more familiar. Add a rainbow shave ice after surfing or sweating through a game, and the whole island afternoon tasted like salt, sugar, and warm wind. From Wartime Ration to Island Icon How Spam Came to Hawaii Spam arrived in Hawaii the way it arrived everywhere in the Pacific: as a U.S. military ration in World War II. The islands, far from the mainland and under wartime restrictions — offshore fishing was curtailed, and after Pearl Harbor fresh meat and fish grew scarce — took the canned meat seriously. Where most places abandoned Spam once fresh food returned, Hawaii adopted it. Island families treated it lik...
Read more

Domaine d'Auvenay: The Tiny Estate Behind the World's Rarest White Burgundy

-
Image
  If Domaine Leroy is Lalou Bize-Leroy's public empire, Domaine d'Auvenay is her private garden. Hidden in the hills above Auxey-Duresses, the estate covers under four hectares scattered across some of Burgundy's humblest village appellations — plus a sliver of the grand cru Chevalier-Montrachet. From that sliver she makes a white wine in quantities of a few hundred bottles, which now trades for five figures and is spoken of by sommeliers the way birdwatchers speak of a species seen once in a lifetime. A Farm, Not a Brand Lalou bought the Auvenay property with her husband Marcel in the 1980s, long before the wines became mythical. There is no visitor center, no marketing department and effectively no public face. The vineyards are farmed biodynamically and plowed by horse; the cellar work is minimal; the yields are as punishingly low as at Leroy. Much of the production goes to a short list of loyal buyers who have stood by the domaine for decades, which is why bottles so ...
Read more

Tom Brady: The TB12 Diet and the Avocado Ice Cream That Fits His Rules

-
Image
  Tom Brady played elite football into his mid-forties, and his TB12 diet is one of the most talked-about eating plans in sports. It is mostly plant-based, highly restrictive, and built around a single idea: reduce inflammation wherever possible. What the TB12 Diet Excludes Brady's rules are strict. No white sugar, no white flour, no dairy, and no nightshade vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, which he avoids for their potential inflammatory effects. Gluten is out, and most processed food is out with it. What remains is vegetables, whole grains like quinoa and brown rice, lean proteins, and healthy fats. The Favorite Food Workaround Brady's most famous dessert is avocado ice cream, made from an avocado base instead of dairy. It is the perfect symbol of his approach: he does not give up the idea of dessert, he rebuilds it to fit his rules. Hydration is the other pillar of the plan. He reportedly starts each day with water and electrolytes, and treats water in...
Read more

Red Velvet Cake: The $300 Recipe Legend, the Texas Dye Salesman, and America's Most Mythical Cake

-
Image
It is the most theatrical cake in America — crimson layers, white frosting, a whisper of cocoa — and almost everything about it is an argument. Was it invented at the Waldorf-Astoria? Is it Southern or New York? Was it originally red at all? The true history of red velvet is better than any of the legends, though the legends are pretty good too. Before It Was Red Velvet Meant Texture, Not Color In the Victorian era, "velvet" was a baker's term for a fine, soft crumb — velvet cakes were the delicate opposite of dense pound cakes. The red arrived by chemistry. Nineteenth-century cocoa was natural, not Dutch-processed, and its pigments — anthocyanins, the same compounds that color raspberries and roses — blush red in acid. Combined with buttermilk and vinegar, cocoa batter baked up a natural burgundy. Cakes in this family, like mahogany cake and devil's food, were reddish-brown long before anyone owned a bottle of food coloring. Food writer Stella Parks argues that r...
Read more

Peking Duck: Beijing's Lacquered Icon — The 72-Hour Craft Behind the Crispiest Skin on Earth

-
Image
  There is a moment in every great Peking duck dinner when the chef lifts the bird, mahogany and gleaming, and the room goes quiet. The skin shines like lacquer. It shatters like glass. It took three days to get there. Peking duck (Beijing kaoya) is not a roast; it is a discipline — air, sugar, wind, and fruitwood fire, in that order — and every step has a way to fail. That is precisely why, after six centuries, it remains the most famous dish in China. From Imperial Kitchens to Roast Duck Diplomacy Six Hundred Years of One Bird Roast duck was refined in the imperial kitchens of the Ming Dynasty, but the Peking duck we know was codified by two rival houses. Bianyifang traces its closed-oven technique to 1416: the duck roasts sealed away from direct flame, filled with a special soup so it roasts outside and simmers inside at once, emerging juicier but softer-skinned. Quanjude , founded in 1864 by poultry dealer Yang Quanren, pioneered the hung oven: ducks hang over open fruitw...
Read more

Koong Ten: Thailand's Dancing Shrimp — The Dish That Moves Before You Eat It

-
Image
  Scroll food videos long enough and you will meet it: a bowl of tiny translucent shrimp, twitching and leaping as lime juice hits them, while the diner tries to keep them on the plate. This is koong ten (กุ้งเต้น), literally "dancing shrimp" — a raw salad from Thailand's Isan region and neighboring Laos, and one of the most startling dishes in Southeast Asia. It is not a trick of editing. The shrimp really do dance. From the Mekong to the Market Stall An Isan Classic Isan, Thailand's northeast, is a cuisine built on the Mekong River and its tributaries: sticky rice, fiery som tam, grilled chicken, and raw preparations dressed in lime, fish sauce, and chili. Koong ten belongs to that family. The shrimp are not the tiger prawns of a Bangkok restaurant but tiny freshwater shrimp, barely larger than a sliver of onion, scooped live from tanks or river baskets at fresh markets and Isan restaurants. Vendors sell them from double-basket carts: seasonings on one side, a ...
Read more

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall: The Soup So Fragrant a Monk Abandoned His Meditation

-
Image
  There are difficult recipes, and then there is Fo Tiao Qiang — a soup that takes days, dozens of ingredients, and a sealed wine jar, and carries the most famous name in Chinese cooking: Buddha Jumps Over the Wall . The story goes that when the jar was opened, the aroma drifted to a nearby temple, where a vegetarian monk, meditating in discipline, caught the scent — and climbed over the wall to taste it. It is a legend, but like most legends about this dish, it undersells the labor. The True Story Behind the Name From an Official's Table to a Fuzhou Institution The dish began in 1870s Fuzhou, capital of Fujian, under a luckier name: Fu Shou Quan — "Full of Blessing and Longevity." An official's wife created it for a banquet honoring Zhou Lian, the provincial treasurer, simmering chicken, duck, pork, and seafood together in a Shaoxing wine jar. Zhou was so taken with it that his chef, Zheng Chunfa , was set to study the method. Zheng refined it — more seafood, les...
Read more

Biscuits and Gravy: The Southern Soul Food Breakfast That Smells Like Sunday Morning

-
Image
  Think of a Southern childhood and the first thing that comes back is often not a sight but a smell: butter, black pepper, and sausage drifting through the house on a Sunday morning. Biscuits and gravy — flaky buttermilk biscuits drowned in creamy white sausage gravy — is not just breakfast in the American South. It is love and comfort on a plate, the meal that gathered the whole family around the table before the week began. Calorie counting? In those days, that was not part of the recipe. Born in the Lumber Camps Sawmill Gravy: Fuel for Hard Work Biscuits and gravy in some form trace back to the Revolutionary War era, when staples were scarce, but the dish as we know it took shape in southern Appalachia in the late 1800s . It was working food. In lumber camps and sawmills, where a day of labor started before dawn, breakfast had to be cheap, filling, and calorie-dense — and the gravy earned its nickname there: sawmill gravy . Pork sausage drippings, flour, and milk, seasoned...
Read more

DC Beer Fest 2026: 200+ Beers Take Over Nationals Park on November 7

-
Image
  For one Saturday each fall, Nationals Park trades baseball for beer. On Saturday, November 7, 2026 , the DC Beer Festival returns to the ballpark in Navy Yard, spreading more than 80 breweries and 200+ beers across the stadium concourse for a day of unlimited tastings, food trucks and live music. The Essentials When: Saturday, November 7, 2026 — Session 1 runs 12:00–3:00 PM, Session 2 runs 5:00–8:00 PM Where: Nationals Park, 1500 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, DC Tickets: General admission is $67 for either session, and VIP tickets are also available Included: Unlimited beer tastings during your session; food is sold separately Good to know: 21 and over only, rain or shine, and tickets are non-refundable. Nationals Park is a non-smoking venue. What's Pouring The festival pours from more than 80 craft breweries, with over 200 beers on offer — fall seasonals alongside IPAs, stouts, sours and lagers. The DMV is well represented: the festival's own previews ...
Read more