Climate Case for freeze-dried foods: can they have a lower total climate footprint than frozen or canned foods? The answer is yes, but only when the energy-intensive drying step is offset by big savings from avoiding the cold chain, cutting transport weight, and reducing food waste.
Core climate trade-off
Life cycle assessments (LCA) show that freeze-drying itself is very energy-intensive, so the factory “gate” footprint of freeze-dried products is usually higher than for many other preservation methods. However, once dried, the food becomes ultra-light, shelf-stable, and needs no refrigeration in storage or transport, which can substantially cut emissions from cold warehouses, refrigerated trucks, and retail or home freezers over the product’s lifetime.
Cold chain vs shelf-stable
A major LCA of 22 frozen foods and their alternatives found no general advantage for frozen or non-frozen options; instead, the winner depends on how much extra energy the cold chain uses versus how much food waste it prevents. The study concluded that when frozen products significantly reduce retail and household waste compared with fresh, the added freezing and cold storage energy can be fully or partly compensated, but if cold-chain energy is high and waste savings are small, alternatives can perform better.
In contrast, shelf-stable formats like dried and freeze-dried foods require no continuous refrigeration and can often be transported more efficiently because 70–90% of water (and therefore weight and volume) is removed. Industry and engineering analyses argue that this combination—no cold chain plus lighter loads—can markedly lower energy use and associated emissions, especially on long, multi-stage supply chains.
Role of food waste and consumer behavior
Global modeling shows that food loss and waste account for a very large share of food system energy use and emissions, so interventions that substantially cut waste can deliver big climate benefits. Frozen products already reduce household food waste compared with fresh in many categories, but new work also highlights that extending shelf life via drying and other methods can strengthen system resilience and reduce the pressure to rush perishable products through high-emission channels (including air freight).
Freeze-dried foods can sit safely in a cupboard for years, allowing more flexible consumption and making it easier to use cosmetically imperfect, surplus, or seasonal fruits and vegetables that might otherwise be discarded. LCAs and resilience studies suggest that when freeze-drying is applied to surplus or at-risk produce, the avoided waste and avoided cold-chain energy can outweigh the higher processing energy of the drying step, especially if the drying equipment is optimized and powered by a lower-carbon electricity mix.
What LCA say about drying technologies
A detailed LCA of strawberry drying found that conventional freeze-drying had the highest environmental impact among the drying options studied, but that process optimization and combining pre-treatments (osmotic dehydration plus freeze-drying) could cut emissions by about 25%. Earlier European project work comparing different drying technologies concluded that non-freeze-drying methods can be less energy-intensive per kilogram of dried product, yet still recognized that all drying options avoid cold-chain emissions for the rest of the life cycle.
These results show that climate performance of freeze-dried foods is highly sensitive to process efficiency, electricity carbon intensity, and what baseline they are replacing (e.g., air-freighted fresh berries, long-frozen vegetables, or ambient canned goods). In scenarios where freeze-dried products displace air-freighted fresh produce or long-term frozen storage, their total cradle-to-grave emissions can plausibly be lower despite high processing energy, whereas replacing efficient frozen or canned supply chains with poorly optimized freeze-drying may not yield a climate gain.
sources
- Prosapio et al., “Optimization of freeze-drying using a Life Cycle Assessment approach,” Journal of Cleaner Production (2017) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652617321236
- Prosapio et al., open-access LCA report (University of Birmingham repository) https://pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/files/44645427/Prosapio_et_al_Optimization_of_freeze_drying_J_of_Cleaner_Production_2017.pdf
- PRé Sustainability / Nomad Foods – “LCA of frozen food products versus their alternatives” https://pre-sustainability.com/customer-cases/lca-of-frozen-food-products-versus-their-alternatives/
- University of Birmingham News – “Raising frozen food temperature by 3°C can make global food chain more sustainable” (2023) https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/raising-frozen-food-temperature-by-30c-can-make-global-food-chain-more-sustainable-say-experts
- Bajželj et al., “The role of reducing food waste for resilient food systems,” Global Food Security (2020) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041620300826
- Read et al., “Assessing the environmental impacts of halving food loss and waste,” Environmental Research Letters (2019) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7295203/
- Mari et al., “Integrating Life Cycle Assessment in Innovative Berry Supply Chains,” Sustainability or related journal (2025) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11988440/
- “Freeze-Drying for the Reduction of Fruit and Vegetable Chain Losses,” Foods (2025) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11768221/
- CORDIS project “Processing Raw materials into Excellent and Sustainable End products (PROSPARE)” emissions. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/245280/reporting
- Swisslog – “How Frozen Food Can Tackle Climate Change” . https://www.swisslog.com/en-us/case-studies-and-resources/blog/how-frozen-food-can-tackle-climate-change
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