Ready to revolutionize your next bite? Sustainable food brands that consider palate, profit, and the planet, can help.
Move over chemical-reliant ingredients, resource-intensive monocrops, and plastic packaging because there’s a new star on supermarket shelves.
Sustainable food and beverage companies are cooking up a better future by considering what foods are sustainable and ensuring they’re grown, manufactured, packaged, and distributed in the most eco-friendly and ethical way. In other words, they’re the solution to a sugar-soaked, lab-concocted, corrupt food industry.
We’re currently rolling out our new Brand Rating System that gives brands an even greater grilling by considering a whole bunch of criteria from animal welfare to chemical use, waste, and pollution. Check back soon for brand ratings, and in the meantime, our explainer has all the details.
We independently research all featured brands and we ask them to confirm their claims. In many cases we personally review recommended products. This post contains affiliate links which means we may earn a commission if you buy something. Learn more here.
Index: The Most Sustainable Food Brands
- Nature’s Path Jump to brand
- Gomacro Jump to brand
- Lundberg Family Farms Jump to brand
- One Degree Organic Foods Jump to brand
- No Evil Foods Jump to brand
- Alara WholeFoods Jump to brand
- Island Bakery Jump to brand
- Wholy Greens Jump to brand
- Pana Organic Jump to brand
Nature’s Path
About Nature’s Path
Nature’s Path is a “fiercely independent family-owned company” that answers to no one—aside from its conscience and customers.
This sustainable food brand offers an array of organic snacks, cereal, granola, bars, oatmeal, waffles, and chips from a variety of brands under their umbrella including EnviroKidz, Love Crunch, Que Pasa, and Qi’a.
Regardless of the name you see on the packaging, you can rest assured that your favorite NP food only contains organic ingredients.
They also work with their suppliers to help farmers make the conversion to organic production.
Nature’s Path’s Sustainable and Ethical Practices
Nature’s Path is one of the only brands to trial circular shipping, sending reusable granola containers to pilot cities.
Currently, 97% of the company’s packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable. By 2025, 100% will be.
Their cardboard containers are 55% post-consumer recycled, FSC-certified, and printed with plant-based ink.
The organic food brand is also pioneering the regenerative agriculture movement. Some of their oats are already Regenerative Organic Certified.
One of the most ethical food companies out there, NP donates $2 million of organic food every year to those in need. They also fund urban garden projects and support schools, food banks, and endangered animal organizations.
Gomacro
About GoMacro
GoMacro’s plant-based protein bars are 100% organic and just as delicious.
They’re vegan, gluten-free, and packed with Certified Clean, FODMAP Friendly ingredients—meaning they’re low in difficult-to-digest fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols.
The mother-daughter-owned company got its start in the kitchen of their family farm after the mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Not only has her plant-based macrobiotic diet supported her health, but now MacroBars can be found in nearly every US grocery store.
GoMacro’s Sustainable and Ethical Practices
As one of the most ethical and sustainable food brands for those on the go, GoMacro partners with responsible suppliers, like local organic oat farms, fair trade chocolate distributors, and Fair for Life cinnamon producers.
The brand’s facilities are 100% powered with renewable solar and wind energy.
Their cartons are compostable or recyclable and, through a partnership with TerraCycle, the wrappers can be recycled via a prepaid shipping label.
They divert more than 60% (via upcycling or recycling) of their annual waste and have planted over 1,000 acres of forest to earn status as a Carbon Neutral company.
Every year, they donate nearly 500,0000 pounds of food scraps to local farms for animal feed.
Lundberg Family Farms
About Lundberg Family Farms
For Lundberg, “it all starts with a single grain of truth:” that rice is goodness and how you grow it matters.
In addition to sustainably grown rice, the sustainable food company also sells side dishes, quinoa, brown rice syrup, and rice cakes and chips.
Most products are certified organic, while others are either Non-GMO Project Verified or “grown with earth-preserving practices”.
Lundberg Family Farms’ Sustainable and Ethical Practices
The Lundberg family started in sustainable rice after fleeing the 1937 Dust Bowl in Nebraska. Once re-settled in California, they knew sustainable farming was the only way forward.
To this day, they take steps to leave the land healthier than how they found it.
Lundberg is an active partner for environmental organizations like the Sustainable Food Trade Association, One Step Closer, and the Climate Collaborative.
Their products are produced in a TRUE Zero Waste Certified facility where 99.7% of their waste is diverted from landfill and electricity use is offset.
Lundberg’s partnership with TerraCycle ensures that their flexible packaging can skip the landfill for a second life as durable plastic goods.
One Degree Organic Foods
About One Degree Organic Foods
Recognizing the connection between healthy crops, healthy soil, and healthy people One Degree Organic Foods is one of the best sustainable food brands for nourishing, clean foods.
When you buy their oats, oatmeal, granola, flour, bread, legumes, seeds, or cereal, it’s like going to the farmers’ market—with the daily convenience of a supermarket.
Everything is organic, glyphosate-free, and free of artificial ingredients.
Since all ingredients are sprouted, the products are more nutritious and easier to digest.
One Degree Foods’ Sustainable and Ethical Practices
All of One Degree Foods’ products come with a QR code that allows eaters to trace their meal and “meet” the sustainable producers behind each and every ingredient.
Everything is grown following plant-based, veganic principles, with the exception of two products that feature ethical organic honey.
No Evil Foods
About No Evil Foods
“In plants we trust” is No Evil Foods’ motto—no surprise they’re one of the best sustainable vegan food brands around.
NEF uses nothing but plants, but unlike some companies offering meat alternatives, their ingredients are of the recognizable, wholesome variety (no soy protein isolate here).
Most are organic and they’re all non-GMO.
Their product line of cleverly named vegan meat substitutes includes vegan “chicken”, “chorizo”, “Italian sausage”, “roast”, and “pulled pork”.
Time to bring out that non-toxic cookware for an ethical feast!
No Evil Foods’ Sustainable and Ethical Practices
All products come in an unbleached kraft carton that is recyclable or compostable. It features plant-based ink and adhesives, too.
For every pound of plastic used to wrap the meat, TWO pounds are removed from natural ecosystems through a partnership with rePurpose Global.
This makes them the world’s first Certified Plastic Negative Plant Meat Company.
They plant pollinator gardens at their HQ and regularly support animal and environmental organizations.
For example, with every purchase of The Pardon holiday roast, proceeds go to Full Circle Farm Sanctuary to support real, rescued turkeys.
Alara WholeFoods
About Alara Wholefoods
One of the most environmentally friendly food companies in London, Alara Wholefoods is a producer of locally sourced, organic superfoods, granola, muesli, and cereal-based sustainable snacks.
Alex Smith founded the company almost 50 years ago with £2 he found on the street.
A member of the squatting movement, he was in the midst of living a year without money when he used this small amount to gather wasted fruits and vegetables to sell—which would eventually evolve into Alara.
Alara Wholefoods’ Sustainable and Ethical Practices
Alara was the first zero waste food manufacturer on earth.
The drive for environmental sustainability and social fairness has remained with the company throughout the decades.
Alara was the first Fair Trade cereal company in the 90s and is still one of the only to use ISO 14001 and SMETA audits to ensure workplace ethics.
Now, they use 100% renewable energy, package everything in home-compostable eucalyptus cellulose, and offset their emissions by partnering with Indigenous farmers to plant trees in Africa and South America.
The Net Zero carbon food company even has a permaculture garden around their factory.
Island Bakery
About Island Bakery
Scotland’s Island Bakery makes use of the local wild and unspoiled landscapes to provide some of the most delectable and planet-friendly organic biscuits.
On offer are sweet and savory oat cakes, cheese biscuits, oat crumbles, shortbread, and some gluten-free varieties.
Island Bakery’s Sustainable and Ethical Practices
As one of the most eco friendly food brands to invite to tea time, the company uses locally sourced and organic ingredients.
Their renewable energy is also local, with the bakery being powered by wind, water, and wood from right there in the Isle of Mull.
Wholy Greens
About Wholy Greens
If planet-friendly pasta is on your mind, be sure to add Wholy Greens to your sustainable food companies list.
The Netherlands-based brand has a range of pasta for the pro-earth generation: campanelle, zucca, radiatori, and fusilli.
European shoppers can find their pasta in several shops throughout the Netherlands and via online retailers.
Wholy Greens’ Sustainable and Ethical Practices
Realizing we only have 29 harvests left until we have to feed a population of 10 billion, the eco friendly food brand combines ugly produce with hearty, ancient grains (like spelt) to provide nutritious and sustainable pasta.
The best news about this pasta is that it’s made with 50% vegetables—which are upcycled and sourced from 24 local, like-minded, and sustainable farmers.
So you can eat copious amounts of pasta AND get your daily serving of veggies all in one pasta fazool swoop.
Pana Organic
About Pana Organic
What are the most sustainable food brands for those with a sweet tooth?
If you’re in Australia, it’s got to be Pana Organic.
The Melbourne-based chocolatier is responsible for lip-licking, planet-loving chocolate that’s vegan, gluten-free, and organic.
In addition to ethical chocolate, they sell frozen desserts, spreads, drink blends, baked treats, and gifts.
Pana’s Sustainable and Ethical Practices
Pana’s chocolate bars are packaged in 100% recycled cardboard that’s printed with non-toxic, vegetable ink. They’re well on their way to packaging the rest of their line in the same materials.
They work with local suppliers to get their organic ingredients and make chocolate bars by hand.
This eco friendly food brand’s HQ is also equipped with solar panels that supply 15% of the energy for their operations.
Through their give-back program, they’ve planted more than 55,000 trees and regularly support local charities.
