A new digital tool helps chefs and consumers make more informed choices to reduce their food's carbon footprint.

Not just ingredients, regions, and recipes: today the menu also reflects the impact each dish has on the environment. This is what happened last July 22nd in Santa Severa (Rome), during the SWITCH Food Night, where the first gastronomic route with a declared environmental impact was previewed, thanks to the SWITCH Food Explorer, a tool developed as part of the European Horizon SWITCH project. This was made possible by a collaboration between pOsti, Carita Morena, and the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli."

For each dish served during the evening, the participants were therefore able to learn not only the ingredients or the seasonality, but also two fundamental indicators for the food sustainability: carbon footprint and water footprint. Information that, clearly, rarely appears on a menu, yet it's crucial in an era where food represents one of the main levers for reducing individual environmental impact.

Daniele Guidoni, co-founder of the Carita Morena bistro, the first to introduce this revolution in its menu, comments on the initiative as follows:

"Making a dish's environmental impact visible means empowering consumers, without depriving them of the pleasure of food. It's an act of transparency, a new way of communicating what eating well really means today. We're not sacrificing flavor, but we're adding information that wasn't there until recently. Information that changes the relationship between customers and the kitchen."

The life cycle of food becomes a tool for choice

Measuring the environmental impact of food is no small feat: it means rethinking the way we look at what we put on our table. Behind the work of the SWITCH Food Explorer, it's no coincidence, there's a complex analysis system, founded on rigorous scientific foundations and developed with the aim of transforming technical data into accessible tools. This operation was led by Simona Castaldi, an ecologist at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” who coordinated a team working on the evaluation of over 400 ingredients, considering not only their origin, but their entire life cycle: from agriculture to processing, from packaging to logistics.

The approach is Life Cycle Assessment, increasingly adopted today in the agri-food sector, to precisely quantify greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption along the supply chain. However, simply collecting numbers is not enough: you also need to know how to communicate themFor this reason, foods have been arranged into five colored bands, ranging from dark green (low impact) to red (high impact), in a visual scale that deliberately recalls nutritional or energy labels. The goal, therefore, is clear: offer the consumer an immediate and intuitive reading of the data, without the need to interpret complex acronyms or values.

In any case, the model doesn't stop at CO₂ or freshwater use. In the case of fish, molluscs, and crustaceans, the impact on marine and river ecosystems, linked to fishing or farming methods, has also been included. The end result is a overall environmental score, which not only informs, but also suggests how often to consume certain foods, just like nutritional guidelines.

Sustainability does not involve sacrifices, but awareness

A small note of clarification is needed: Talking about sustainability at the table doesn't mean making sacrifices, but to gain awareness. The SWITCH Food Explorer represents a step forward in this direction: offering clear information to enable more responsible choices, without taking anything away from the pleasure of food. As explained by Professor Simona Castaldi,

"The goal isn't to demonize one food or another, but to make people aware of the implications of each choice. Those who cook, eat, and produce must have this information available to them so they can change their habits, if they choose."

The heart of the project, in fact, lies right here:

We work to transform scientific research into easy-to-use tools, so that sustainability isn't confined to academic studies, but reaches our tables.

A simple interface for a complex revolution

Behind the SWITCH Food Explorer is the work of places, a startup specialized in food innovation and traceability, which took care of the technological implementation of the digital toolThe goal? To make food-related environmental data immediate and accessible, translating scientific complexity into an intuitive interface.Our task was to make this complexity accessible to everyone.“, He explains Virgil Maretto, CEO of pOsti.

Emerging digital technologies, from artificial intelligence to cloud-based data analytics, are revolutionizing the way people interact with food. With the SWITCH Food Explorer, anyone—chefs, restaurateurs, and citizens—can get a report on the environmental impact of a dish in just a few seconds. And this is just the beginning: AI will soon allow us to further enhance these tools, offering personalized suggestions, alternative menu simulations, and real-time environmental impact optimization strategies.

Funded by the European Union, The Horizon SWITCH project aims to build a more sustainable and transparent food system. And the Food Explorer, consequently, represents one of its first concrete applications, designed for adoption in restaurants, canteens and other environments.

Beyond the gastronomic event, a new idea of food

The SWITCH Food Night was not “just” an evening dedicated to taste, but a broader, deeper and more complex occasion for rethinking the link between food, health and the environmentAfter all, thanks to the combination of science, technology, and gastronomic culture, today we can sit at the table knowing the true environmental cost of what we eat, and we can no longer ignore this awareness.

This vision is also supported by The Black Sheep Publisher, a project partner with Zenzo Bar, the cultural and recreational space that's bringing summer to Santa Severa. Here, the initiative also extends beyond the kitchen, through the series of meetings "Il Gusto va in onda," curated by the publishing house.

"We're happy to be part of this innovation with Zenzo Bar, where we curate the series of meetings 'Il Gusto va in onda': an opportunity to talk about food not only with the palate, but also with the head and with conscience."

comments Simone Cargiani, administrator of the publishing house.

A signal that the transition to a more sustainable food system it also comes from storytelling, training and sharing.

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