When I started working on this post I thought it would be a simple matter of taking a typical daily menu for a meat eater and substitute tofu or beans for the animal products. However, that doesn’t give a true picture. A healthy diet, vegan or not, needs to include a balance of nutrients. Exchanging tofu cutlets for animal meat with no other dietary changes doesn’t result in the best diet. For example, a healthy vegan diet should include a higher intake of veggies that are rich in calcium and iron. Just exchanging animal products with tofu or beans won’t necessarily provide the calcium and iron needed.
But trying to compare average diets also poses a problem in determining what an average diet is. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is anything but healthy and it contains a good bit of fast food or highly processed foods. So do I compare a SAD diet to a vegan diet based on vegan fast food and vegan highly processed foods? That doesn’t give a true cost comparison for the average vegan. In this comparison the SAD diet would cost less, but what vegan eats this way? Probably some I’m sure but that is not the norm.
As a vegan who would like to see this become a vegan world, I would love to show that absolutely, a vegan diet costs less than a non-vegan diet. But that isn’t always the case. The reality is that most vegan processed foods cost more than non-vegan products. Vegan frozen pizza is about $7.50 and a comparable non-vegan pizza is about $4.00. However, non-processed foods that are often used in place of meat products cost less. While lean hamburger runs about $4.00 a pound, extra firm tofu is about $1.95. Beans from the bulk section of the store are pennies per serving and can be used as a hearty main course.
The more processed food a person eats the more a vegan diet will cost over an animal based diet. For me, eating vegan is far less expensive than my pre-vegan diet. But that is because I stopped eating the Standard American Diet, high in processed foods and switched to a whole foods plant based diet with a few bags of Lays potato chips thrown in. Hey, a girl needs her occasional indulgence!
Prior to going vegan I usually went to the grocery store on my way home from work and picked up something already cooked from the deli section or something I could put in the microwave. I ate out several times a week, and I ate few fresh veggies or fruit. Today I eat at home almost every day for dinner. I seldom use my microwave for anything, and I eat far more than the recommended 5 servings of veggies and fruit a day. My food costs were reduced by almost 50%, not counting the money I saved from reducing the number of times I eat out.
I didn’t go vegan to save money. I did it because I believe it is the right thing to do for the beings we share this planet with including other humans. The cost savings for me has just been another of the many unexpected benefits to going vegan.
Below I have included links that do cost comparisons and provide more information on nutrition both vegan and non-vegan.
One off topic note, during my search for information I ran across a web site that is all about found shopping lists. Seriously, just found shopping lists from around the world. What a unique and entertaining idea for a web site! Anyway if you want to kill a little time I think it is worth a visit or two. Visit: This is Grocerylists.org The World’s Largest Online Collectin of Found Grocery Lists
Links:
21 Day Vegan Kickstart
American Dietetic Association: 1,800 Calorie Sample Menu Plan (non-vegan)
Great post! I’m like you–once I became vegan, I found that I ate at home so much more. I have found that I really enjoy cooking, and now that I am vegan, I experiment more with flavours and spices.
I’ve often been told that a vegan diet is more expensive than a meat-based diet. Ha! In addition to all that you have stated, I also tell people to consider it in terms of long-term costs. There are a lot of long-term health costs that vegans won’t have to face. A vegan who eats properly will be at much lower risk for things like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc. Overall, vegans will enjoy better health than non-vegans, and poor health involves significant costs. There are more costs to our food choices than just what we pay at the till, and I try to remind people of that.
By: donchaknow on May 14, 2012
at 7:26 am
You are so right! The long-term costs are scary. But the funny thing (or not so funny) is that so often when I tell someone I’m vegan I get a lecture on how unhealthy it is or how they have a friend who knows someone who went vegan and got so sick they couldn’t function. I even point out that my health is amazing since going vegan (no more high blood pressure meds, no more cholesterol meds).
By: Debbie on May 20, 2012
at 11:59 pm
I am going on both a budget and a low sodium diet. I am also learning how to cook.
The history of the area I live in documents that people here eat mostly fish and I am.also a good fisherman. I love fish. I am not a vegan.
I will simply stop.eating things that have faces that someone kills. I am hoping it will be both healthy and cheap. It will be the I cook and l catch diet.
By: tom on March 22, 2013
at 1:52 am