Swap turkey for cod and pigs in blankets for Quorn sausages: MailOnline reveals the simple swaps you could make to slash the carbon footprint of your Christmas Dinner

With its multitude of ingredients, from turkey and stuffing to veg and gravy, the Christmas Dinner is easily the biggest meal of the year.

But with all that grub, your festive carbon footprint is about to rocket higher than Santa's sleigh. 

And that's not to mention the extra noshing that takes place either side of the main meal, whether it's seafood in the morning or the cheese board in the evening.

Fortunately, there are some simple subs you could make to lower your Christmas Day emissions – and not all of them are plant-based! 

They include swapping turkey for cod or tofu, pigs in blankets for Quorn sausages and prawns or smoked salmon for lesser-know seafood like whitebait or cockles. 

To work out the swaps, MailOnline used the 'food carbon footprint calculator', an online tool created by My Emissions, a London-based software company.

It gives food items a colour-coded 'carbon rating' from 'A' (dark green) to 'E' (red) based on CO2 equivalent (CO2e) – a unit of measurement used to standardise the effects of greenhouse gases. 

According to the calculator, a typical serving of turkey breast – around the size of your hand, or 320g – has a 'very high' carbon footprint (2,063g CO2e). 

However, the same sized portion of cod has a medium rating of 1,028g CO2e, making it an eco-friendly alternative. 

Plaice and haddock don't have as low a carbon footprint as cod, but are both better than turkey (1,396g CO2e). 

To go one better, chefs could opt for a tofu alternative to turkey, which has an even lower carbon footprint of 594g CO2e.

Generally, the public can make their meal low carbon by swapping out meat items for alternatives such as tofu or falafel. 

This means Quorn sausages are a good alternative to pigs in blankets, which are particularly bad for the planet because they combine two forms of intensively-farmed meat. 

The calculator reveals that one pork sausage (84g) has a 'very high' carbon footprint of 557g CO2e, while one rasher of bacon (40g) is also 'very high' at 557g CO2e. 

Meanwhile, an equivalent Quorn sausage – largely made out of the vegan ingredient mycoprotein derived from fungi – has a 'low' rating of 143g CO2e. 

Vegan alternatives like mycoprotein uses much less land and energy compared with rearing livestock for meat, which accounts for most of the food industry's emissions. 

As for your Christmas Day vegetables, most listed on the calculator have a 'low' or 'very low' rating – such as sprouts. 

However, there are some high-emissions veg in the supermarket to watch out for. 

A typical serving of green beans – three heaped serving spoons, or 80g – has a 'very high' carbon footprint of 543g CO2e.

And the same servings of asparagus and peas have 'very high' ratings of 563g and  338g CO2e, respectively.

Low emissions choices include Brussels spouts, broccoli, carrots, parsnips and – to the relief of roastie fans everywhere – potatoes. 

One of the things to be most mindful of at Christmas is cheese, which like most animal products has a very high carbon footprint. 

That's especially the case for Christmas cheese board stalwarts like brie, camembert, stilton and cheddar. 

But the calculator shows there's lower emissions alternatives that you can put on your crackers instead, like cottage cheese and quark, a mild spreadable cheese. 

Other good swaps to make on Christmas Day are lower emissions seafood such as whitebait and cockles instead of smoked salmon and prawns, while interestingly, sherry has a lower footprint than whiskey. 

According to the Carbon Trust, more general tips for reducing the Christmas Day meal's emissions is reducing the amount that goes out as waste. 

If you're cooking for guests, let them serve themselves the amount they want to eat, rather than dishing it out, the Carbon Trust suggests. 

Food left in a serving dish can be eaten as leftovers the next day, whereas food left on plates will often be binned. 

Mike Berners-Lee, a climate professor at Lancaster University, told MailOnline: 'The most important consideration by far will be will be to reduce the amount of meat and dairy.

'The second most important thing is to make sure that everything gets eaten – even if it turns into the next day’s leftovers.'