Environmental Impact and Nutrition Information for Applegate® Well Carved™ Products

At Applegate, we care about your health—and the planet’s. That's why we offer full, transparent nutritional information and commissioned an independent, third-party analysis of the environmental impact of the Applegate^® Well Carved™ Organic Grass Fed Beef Burger.

The results, tallied by independent research firm HowGood, show our burger creates 51 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional beef burger; uses 67 percent less water and generates 99 percent less water pollution due to run-off. And while the greenhouse gas emissions for our burger are higher than a processed Impossible Burger, they compare relatively favorably when you consider that we make ours from real, organic meat and whole organic vegetables.

This estimate combines data from published literature, but it is not based on full LCA modeling and is not compliant with ISO 14021, 14025, 14040, or 14044.

How did we get these numbers?

HowGood, an independent research company with the industry’s largest database on food product sustainability, compared 53 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reports from peer-reviewed journals and industry publications. The most salient data for four impact factors were extracted from the literature:

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions - kilograms of Carbon Dioxide-equivalents [CO2-eq] per kilogram of ingredient
• Water Consumption - Liters [l] of water consumed per kilogram of ingredient
• Aquatic Eutrophication Potential - Polluting phosphate-equivalents [PO4-eq] per kilogram of ingredient; essentially water pollution from run-off

Of the six food ingredients reviewed, beef was by far the most important ingredient by weight and impact. Therefore, 23 LCAs were reviewed to study the impact of beef production. Four LCAs were reviewed to explore plant-based burger alternatives. The remaining 26 reports were split among the five non-meat ingredients.

Though each LCA study is rigorous, well-intentioned and strongly structured, many LCAs do not compare well to each other. Researchers choose differing underlying assumptions (such as “age at slaughter”, “water needs”, “water stress”) that make it difficult to support one-to-one comparisons. HowGood has normalized these numbers when possible to find average values across disparate LCAs. Through this process, the reports show remarkable similarities in calculations for greenhouse gas emissions, but show differences across water consumption, aquatic eutrophication and even land use.

That said, these numbers may change as data expands and improves. Case in point: The current trend in Life Cycle Assessments is towards measuring “stressed water use” instead of total water use. “Stressed water use” is defined as using groundwater for agriculture that exceeds the dependably renewable water supply for a location in a year (specifically, when annual water withdrawals exceed 20% of the annual renewable supply). There were not yet enough high-caliber studies from this new perspective to be included as a primary metric for comparison in our study. As more studies use stressed water as a baseline, HowGood estimates that the water use associated with Applegate’s Well Carved Beef Burger may decrease by an order of magnitude given the LCA’s for Australian pastured-beef operations.

Nutritional Comparison for Well Carved™ Burgers With 100% Meat Burgers

Note: Serving size assumes 1 patty. Serving sizes & associated values reflect what a consumer will see on the packages/websites. A 1oz equivalency has been provided for ease of comparison.

Nutritional Comparison for Well Carved™ Burgers With 100% Plant-Based Burgers

Note: Serving size assumes 1 patty. Serving sizes & associated values reflect what a consumer will see on the packages/websites. A 1oz equivalency has been provided for ease of comparison.

Nutritional Comparison for Well Carved™ Meatballs with Competitors

Note: Serving size assumes 3 to 4 meatballs. Serving sizes & associated values reflect what a consumer will see on the packages/websites. A 1oz equivalency has been provided for ease of comparison.