Bon Appétit’s Low Carbon Day to focus on crops and climate change

April 17—For its annual Low Carbon Diet Day, held on Earth Day (April 22), Bon Appétit Management Company will turn its more than 500 cafés into culinary classrooms to deliver climate change information. This year’s theme, Your Lunch is Heating Up!, will examine how crops such as corn, wheat, rice, fruit, dairy and coffee will fare ina changing climate.

Bon Appétit's chefs will use cooking demos, which will include an almond milk-fruit smoothie, a cheeseless vegetarian pizza or an edamame burger with carrot-peel topping, to discuss these agriculture trends as well as encourage customers to choose planet-friendlier foods.

On Low Carbon Diet Day 2013, Bon Appétit will also share its new version of its online educational companion to the Low Carbon Diet program. The EatLowCarbon.org website uses photos and quizzes to show which familiar foods are higher carbon and explain the science behind their carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions scores.

Bon Appétit has reduced its own purchases of beef by 33% and cheese by 10% since launching the program, and many of the cheeseless pizzas first introduced on Low Carbon Diet Day have become menu staples at its accounts. Meanwhile, the company's new Stem to Root culinary program, from which the Low Carbon Diet Day carrot-peel-topped veggie burger is drawn, is the latest approach in its ongoing campaign to combat food waste.