In a paper published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Dr. Chris Macdonald explored the best sources of protein currently available.
To answer the question, Macdonald had to build a new holistic scoring system that combines measures of environmental impact, health, affordability and availability into a single framework.
Applying the scoring system to 20 commonly consumed protein-rich foods, the analysis found a striking pattern: every product in the highest-scoring quintile was plant-based, while every product in the lowest-scoring quintile was animal-based. Tofu ranked first overall, while cheddar cheese ranked last.
The paper argues that many existing food rating systems focus on only one aspect of a product. While useful, these single-dimension labels can obscure important trade-offs and make it difficult to compare foods comprehensively.
TOFU DOMINATION
Link to open access article https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2026.1677796/full
Ultimately, beyond the spreadsheets and scores lies a fundamental reckoning: our protein choice is a referendum on the compassion we are willing to show to animals, to the planet and to future generations.
Clearly no bias at all!
Personally I’m wondering why their beef item was steak and not ground beef. Because there’s so much more of the animal that can be included, the impact would be smaller.
Well, if I had to guess, I’d say they started with the result they wanted, and worked backward from there.
I haven’t read the article and I’m not saying you’re wrong, but in general plant foods are known to have less environmental impact than animal products because animals are higher on the food chain, and it takes more energy to raise an animal for consumption (including the resources to grow food for the animal) than to just grow plants and consume them directly.
What’s with the protein obsession? Eat more fiber, that is what almost everyone is lacking.
Marketing. Also, people think you can only get protein from meat.
It’s a large ongoing Facebook campaign. My mom is also obsessed with protein suddenly, so dumb.
it seems to be the food industry marketing ‘flavor of the month’. everybody and everything that can, is stressing protein content or producing high-protein varieties.
Laughable new USAian nutrition guidelines plus accompanying social media nutrition grifters
I prefer both
This is the take.
Which is funny, because tofu is low fiber. Eat more beans.
+1 to more beans!
Are there any health issues linked to a lack of fibre?
Colon cancer.
That is probably the most serious. Other things that are more likely when you don’t get enough fibre with your food:
Feel hungry sooner
Increased blood sugar fluctuations
Piles due to increased straining to poop
Constipation
Abdominal cramps and bloating
Weight gain
The last meta study I saw saw that over all health comes were better for people with a majority fiber diet over both majority protein and majority carbohydrate diets.
Personally it’s the fact that I can be full faster but with less total calories.
Not sure how they score, but chickpeas are pretty great too. Soak’em, mash’em, stick 'em in a falafel.
Falafel goes great with hummus!
Too bad there isn’t a good source of tofu in most grocer markets. Soy is one of the most suspect crops,with pesticides and such to start, and there just aren’t many buying options, and they are all expensive-er than they should be.
A pound is like a couple of bucks, but a pound isn’t that much really. Making your own isn’t really practicable, I saw a video on how they make it traditionally in East Asia and it’s a big thing with many steps.
I’ve made my own tofu and it is not a big thing with many steps. Soak beans overnight, blend beans in blender, cook resulting slurry, strain, add coagulant, place in container and apply weight.
It’s about the same amount of work as baking bread. However it is not cheaper than buying tofu from the store unless you can find very cheap soybeans.
Sounds a little similar to making cheese. Which you can do at home easily too. It just takes a lot of milk for not much cheese. Usually only do it if I obtain several litres of milk for free that would otherwise be wasted.
Yes I believe it’s basically the same. You’re just collecting protein from soy milk when making tofu.
My wife has made tofu as few times as well as a tofu analog using different types of beans and it was surprisingly good and it was less intensive to make than I expected. Tofu is fairly cheap, but I imagine you could make large batches without much additional work. I can’t say that her was following some traditional method which might be more work, but it matched what I expected from tofu in the taste/texture dept.
What is even the point of preserving liveable Earth if the food on it will taste like polystyrene?
Tofu can taste like anything you want. It’s the way you prepare and season it that makes the taste
Tell me you don’t know how to cook vegetables without telling me you don’t know how to cook vegetables
Vegetables are awesome. And the majority of legumes are awesome. Delicious and nutritious. But tofu… tofu is basically biodegradable polystyrene, yes.
Gotta disagree, but heyho :)
I notice that the replies are all “it’s not tasteless, it tastes like whatever you season it with” so yeah. Boring and without much taste, but carries flavouring well
I’m sure it’d still score highly if not, but I wonder if the study accounts for the burning of plastic to cook it? https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/10/tofu-plastic-indonesia
This is a “western” waste disposal problem, not a tofu-production related problem. Do you think they would use it to fuel their factories if we wouldn’t dump our trash there?
What made you think I was vilifying them for it? I was only curious about whether that sort of thing counts in this scoring system.
It’s a shame because plastic could be converted into biodiesel, which would then be clean burning. It could even be burnt in a diesel engine which would provide both heat energy and also kinetic energy that could spin a generator. The article made no mention of this. Would be interesting to know if that was considered, and what the cost would be for the chemicals needed for the conversion.
I like tofu. My wife eats it almost daily, I eat it occasionally (typically, I make mabodofu). My biggest issue is that it’s fragile and doesn’t have a texture akin to meat. Before anyone recommends seitan, I like that but can’t have gluten or wheat anymore. Any suggestions?
I live in Japan, so we have no shortage of types of tofu, but even our firmest doesn’t do it for me.
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