For fish, go lower on the food chain. While it's certainly important to go local and seasonal with seafood choices, doing so can be tricky — especially if you live in a landlocked state. Wherever you live, the best solution is to eat lower on the food chain, says Helene York, foundation director for the Bon Appétit Management Company, a food service group that serves some 80 million meals a year based on a low-carbon diet. “The energy required to fish high trophic-level species like tuna and deep-sea fish like Chilean sea bass is enormous,” says York.

Make a balanced choice: York recommends clams, mussels, and oysters, which require “practically zero” energy to farm. Other good choices are herbivorous fish, like tilapia and catfish; and species low on the food chain, such as mackerel, herring, and sardines. If you must have your pan-seared salmon, ideally it has been flash frozen at sea and transported in a container ship instead of a jumbo jet, says York. And skip the shrimp cocktail, she says. Imported shrimp can have an even higher carbon footprint than beef.

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