By Farid Farid 

Caffeine addicts, chocoholics and red meat lovers be warned – you’re making the planet sick.

Coffee and chocolate may be essential pick-me-ups to power through a chaotic world – and a piece of steak can help too – but they are high on the list to take out of your shopping trolley if you care about the environment.

A report from The George Institute for Global Health has found these three specific grocery items generate the highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia’s packaged food supply.

The study, FoodSwitch State of the Food Supply Report: Planetary Health Edition, analysed ingredients of more than 25,000 food and beverage products across five major supermarket chains, including Coles and Woolworths.

Each item was assigned a star rating for planetary health, with five being the best, and shoppers can compare using the institute’s purpose-built ecoSwitch app scanning the bar code.

The lowest scoring food category was red meat with a rating of 0.7 stars. Coffee was the poorest performing beverage with rating of 1.6 stars

Simone Pettigrew, head of health promotion at the institute, said the report armed consumers the knowledge needed to make more sustainable food choices at the supermarket.

“Most people would assume it’s not their problem. They look to taste, price and brand familiarity,” she told AAP.

“For decades we have been trying to make nutritional health salient, but planetary health has not risen to that level of consciousness.

“Having that information could be handy but also horrifying for people to know about how disastrous a certain product’s environmental footprint is.”

The report found there was also a direct correlation between the level of processing in packaged foods and the rate of greenhouse gas emissions, with fresh fruit and vegetables better for the environment.

Dr Pettigrew, who is a UNSW professor, said environmental sustainability ratings should be placed on food products, which could have a dramatic shift on how food and beverage producers use processed ingredients.

For vegans, they can feel vindicated knowing that swapping meat and dairy products in a typical weekly grocery shop for more plant-based options can save more than 6000kg in greenhouse gas emissions per year.

The report’s authors estimated it is the equivalent of driving to and from Perth to Sydney (24,000km) three times.

Australia is the second-highest meat-eating nation behind the US, with each Australian consuming an average 122kg of meat per year.