First it was meat. Now researchers are pointing out that even the sacred Swedish coffee break is a major climate villain. According to new reports, our coffee consumption is not just bad – it is even worse than meat from a climate perspective. This is despite the fact that Swedes have been drinking roughly the same amount of coffee for generations. The cup that has always been on the table in Swedish cottages is now claimed to threaten both the Amazon rainforest and the climate.

Earlier, researchers at Stockholm University warned that the Swedish fika culture is not the innocent cozy moment we like to imagine. “The fika is so romanticized that we refuse to talk about its downsides,” said researcher Anne Charlotte Bunge at the Stockholm Resilience Center to Swedish Radio recently.

According to her, coffee is almost as climate-damaging as red meat. But having to stop drinking coffee is no small sacrifice in a country where we have already learned to feel climate shame over every meatball on the plate.

WWF and Chalmers confirm: Coffee is the worst of all

During COP30, the Amazon Footprint Report 2025 was released, where WWF, Chalmers, and the Stockholm Environment Institute mapped what is actually driving deforestation in the Amazon. The result: Swedes’ coffee consumption leads to more deforestation than our import of soy and beef.

In the mapping, it is claimed that in 2022, Sweden contributed to the disappearance of 331 hectares of rainforest – equivalent to 463 soccer fields – due to our coffee consumption. The corresponding figure for beef was 236 hectares.

Researcher Martin Persson at Chalmers states that coffee has “flown under the radar” – which is a diplomatic way of saying that no one has really dared to criticize the Swedes’ sacred drink.

Objection: “But we have always drunk coffee?”

The most puzzling thing in this context is that Swedes are not drinking more coffee than before. We are stable at about three cups a day, which places us at the top of the world – but we have been doing this for a long time.

READ ALSO: Researchers warn – fika could lead to climate collapse

Yet it is now claimed that today’s cups are suddenly the ones accelerating deforestation and the climate crisis. The area used for growing coffee bushes for the needs of Swedes should therefore be the same as always. In addition, the coffee plant contributes to the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen like all other vegetation.

Chocolate also a climate villain

Researchers have recently also begun to cast skeptical glances at chocolate. Cocoa is, just like coffee, a crop whose cultivation in some regions contributes to deforestation – especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

But just like with the coffee bush, the cocoa tree’s leaves also absorb carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen into the atmosphere. So, there is no deforestation in the sense of clear-cutting without vegetation.

The future: lab coffee and cocoa-free chocolate

Alleged “solutions” to the “problem” with coffee and chocolate, according to researchers, are that we start drinking coffee produced in the lab and eat chocolate made from something other than cocoa beans.

No one knows what it would taste like, but those who remember the war years when Swedes had to make do with coffee substitutes made from chicory and dandelion roots have nothing good to say.

Stopping fika is a bit like stopping breathing

Researchers hope that the EU’s upcoming anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR) will make it easier to see where the coffee actually comes from. But so far, there are no clear labels for deforestation-free products, making it difficult for consumers to navigate.

Reducing coffee consumption is a possibility – but in Sweden, it is culturally on the same level as: “stop breathing every now and then, for the sake of the climate.”

The coffee break has become the latest battleground for the climate. The coffee that has always been on the table is now portrayed as the villain that risks felling both rainforests and traditions.

The next time we pour a cup, we are encouraged to think about how many soccer fields we have and will be guilty of drinking up in our lifetime. As with the meatball, as with the plane trip, as with…