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The cost of Vegetarianism

  
 
skolld
15:32 / 24.08.05
(note to mods: feel free to move this to Conversation if it seems more appropriate there, but the discussion started here so i thought i would post it here for now)

So due to the previous thread mentioned above, I decided to attempt to eat vegetarian for a few weeks. I had made the argument that it was much more expensive to maintain a vegetarian lifestyle than one that included meat. I also felt that groups like PETA would be much more effective if they put more of their muscle into making it cost effective to eat non-meat meals.
This is what i've discovered; (note: i live in the U.S.)
1. if you already eat relatively well, switching to a vegetarian diet is not too much more of a burden finance wise. Going Vegan however does add up, and if you decide to go organic then the price is definitely higher. again not a huge increase if you already eat well and have many of the spices and such that you need, but a noticable increase. (i found this out because my girlfriend cooked many of the meals one week and she has a pretty well stocked kitchen)
2. If you eat like i do, college/artist diet, the difference is more than noticable. If i only wanted to eat beans and rice i could have maintained my normal spending, and i did try to get creative and used many of the recipes people posted.
I had to spend a lot on spices and other 'starter' things, plus fruits and vegetables are expensive here, and organics i just couldn't afford to buy. I discovered a Farmer's market after the first week and that helped bring down some of the prices though.
3. A vegan diet was right out for me, i just didn't have the knowledge or the time investment that it takes to read and understand all the foods you can or can't eat. (this is something that organisations like PETA could help with tremendously if they put some effort into it)
4. I really don't like vegetables that much. This made it difficult for me to find foods that i wanted to eat. A major problem i had was when eating out. Vegetarian dishes almost always have onion, and i can't stand onions. The home recipes i could just leave them out but at restaurants it was really hard.
5. It didn't seem much healthier to me. I still ate lots of pasta and rice. Heavy carbs but that's not a bad thing for me (i'm pretty thin) a lot of sauces and such on the food, same amounts of sodium and all that. it was healthier for me in that i was actually eating some vegetable which before this, didn't happen that often.
6. All in all a good experience. I think i will continue to eat more vegetarian type dishes and maybe my tastes will change over time. i won't be cutting meat from my diet, but i'm now much more aware of the meat that i'm eating.

I hold to my argument that a vegetarian life-style is more expensive, BUT this is relative to a person who grew up eating meat. So if our tastes could be geared more toward vegetarian foods as we're growing up i could see it becoming more cost effective. And again i think this is where PETA could do some good by focusing on health and diet education as opposed to 'meat eaters are bad' campaigns. I also think that as time goes by i'll get better at spending less on vegetarian food so maybe after another couple of months i'll have to amend this but for now i would estimate i spent about one and half times more than what i would normally spend.
Thanks to everyone for being so helpful in my experiment. the recipes and hints were great and i feel like i have a better appreciation for vegetarianism in general.
any comments or discussion would be welcome,
 
 
Loomis
19:03 / 24.08.05
Well first off I think it's fantastic that you were willing to give it a shot. I'm glad that you enjoyed it and learned a few new dishes. At least you shouldn't have much trouble next time you have vegetarians round for tea. I started learning vege meals when I had a vege girlfriend a long time ago and I enjoyed the food so much that before I knew it (even after she was long gone) I was only cooking vegetarian at home, and it wasn't until a couple of years of living like this that I even considered going vegetarian myself. So watch out skolld, it could happen to you!

I agree that it's a lot easier once you're in the habit. There's a perception that I have encountered in a lot of people that it's so difficult to eat vege, but just imagine if you had been vegetarian your whole life and then started to cook meat. You'd have to re-think a lot of your staple dishes and ingredients. One's not easier than the other - it's just what you're used to.

I wouldn't worry too much about organic if I were you. There's no direct relation between organic and vegetarian. Veges and carnivores alike would do well to eat more organic food but most of us don't have the money to do it very often, so don't feel that it needs to be a consideration in future vege adventures.

To get back to PETA, I don't think it's accurate to say that they don't put effort into food/nutrition campaigns. Their websites (and the sites of many other vege and vegan groups) have stacks of info about how to live a vege lifestyle. Just like with any activist group, they try and spread their message in different ways, but their basic aim is to grab your attention and get you to go to their website and read up. They're not likely to run big ad campaigns telling you how to cook broccoli, but that doesn't mean that they're only interested in shock tactics.

But all in all, I'm very impressed that you tried this experiment. I don't know many people who would.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
19:04 / 24.08.05
thanks for the post.

I usually cook vegan, eat vegetarian - but I went on a cleanse last month that restricted dairy, caffeine (sob), processed foods, sugar, wheat, polished grains (anything other than whole grains), onions (incl garlic, leeks, shallots) and the nightshade family (tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and peppers (sobsob)).

I couldn't believe there was anything left to eat... bow down to the power of beets!

I'm in Canada - Vancouver, where produce is less expensive (thanks to Chinatown) than most other cities.

It wasn't particularly expensive once I started spending coffee money on vegetables, and there's no viable option to eat out. However, some of the initial outlay was a little on the pricey side - flax oil, celtic sea salt in particular.

The biggest change was that I couldn't rely on my roommates to help, they had no interest in participating - so all of the cooking (mostly steaming vegetables - bless the rice cooker!) took up lots of time.

that was the biggest setback. Had to think ahead to every meal, instead of being able to raid the refrigerator for random bits.

the health difference was noticeable within a few days - felt like the fluids (blood, lymph etc) were really flowing. Previously, I'd been unaware of my overall stuffiness.

I've got a small patch of garden, which has turned out lots of swiss chard, broccoli, tomatoes, potatoes, squash. This also requires a bit of investment in terms of money and time, but with a bit of pickling supplies, these can turn a nice savings in the long term. Particularly if the food is eaten shortly after harvest (looking at nutrients per cost).

maybe a nutrition per dollar/pound/euro assessment would be more helpful than a simple cost analysis. Say looking at what a cup of brown rice contains vs a cup of white rice. teh price may be higher, but so's the nutritional value.

there's the cost to the consumer, which I think is the focus of this thread, versus the cost to the greater ecosystem - insert vegan/vegetarian rant here -

curious to see what other 'lithers have on this one.

ta
tenix
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:04 / 24.08.05
Wow. Someone actually looked at the alternate viewpoint, rather than condemning it out of hand. A rarity on Barbelith- or indeed anywhere. Nice one, skolld.

Again, as loomis said, a lot of it's down to what you're used to. Were I to start eating meat, I'm sure it would be more expensive (starter stuff, plus I don't actually know how to cook meat, so I'd be eating a lot more ready-made things, I guess).

I'm sure you'd find the price dropping over a longer period of time as you learned the best places to buy stuff, the most cost-effective ways to cook, that kind of stuff.
 
 
skolld
20:05 / 24.08.05
To get back to PETA, I don't think it's accurate to say that they don't put effort into food/nutrition campaigns

yeah, i suppose i should have said MORE effort. I'm just picking on the fact that they seem to spend millions on shock tactics that could be put to more constructive efforts, in my opinion of course.

on that other note though, i have found myself craving a black bean burger, so maybe i'm not as far from the 'dark side' as i like to think.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
10:34 / 25.08.05
skolld, were you doing most of your shopping at a supermarket? You mentioned the farmer's market, but I wondered if you'd found anywhere else good when you said I had to spend a lot on spices and other 'starter' things -as sometimes if you shop around these can be a lot cheaper too. Something like saffron is always going to be expensive, but it should be possible to get spices relatively cheaply from wholesale type places (the ones that get most of their business from restaurants but sell spices to the public on the side). Anyway, like everyone else has said I'm glad you gave this a shot and enjoyed your post! -especially as it reminded me that today is farmer's market day where I work...
 
 
Ariadne
11:01 / 25.08.05
Do you have a recipe for that black bean burger? because you've got me craving one too!
 
 
rizla mission
13:37 / 25.08.05
I've been soldiering on with Vegetarianism for about 18 months now, and as a lazy, relatively unhealthy bastard have been suffering all the same problems identified by Skolld.

My home-cooking, such as it is, is not the kind of stuff I'd wish to inflict on others and focuses heavily on such staples as omelettes, pizza, falafals and all purpose veggie-mush composed of pasta/rice/lentils/beans/veg/sauce.

I couldn't really estimate whether it's more expensive than a meat-eating diet - probably not, cos if I did eat meat I probably wouldn't buy cheap meat anyway.

The thing that bugs me the most has been the discovery that a lot of vegetarian food as sold in supermarkets - sausages, crispbakes and such like - is composed mainly of carbohydrate, despite appearances to the contrary (the exception being Quorn, and I don't want to eat Quorn cos it tastes like shit).

So the temptation is there for people who don't bother checking the nutrition info. to eat this stuff along with say pasta or rice = carbohydrate with more carbohydrate on the same, and thus really fucking bad for you - especially for me cos I'm diabetic.

Thankfully I still eat eggs and fish, but if I didn't protein would definitely be a problem.
 
 
Loomis
13:50 / 25.08.05
Err, Rizla, you are aware that vegetarians don't eat fish, right?
 
 
illmatic
14:42 / 25.08.05
He's a piscetarian.

When I was one of them, I ate cheaply, mainly by eating tuna pasta and home made pizza twice a week each and improvising something like veggie curry another two days, and having another random thing on the day out. Shopping is much cheaper if you've got your plan for the week ahead sorted out.
 
 
skolld
15:14 / 25.08.05
The Black Bean burgers were really easy, probably why i like them,
Mash up some black beans, add some bread crumbs, green peppers, and onions (i don't add the onion) then bake at 350 f. (i don't know what that is in C. degrees) until crispy (about ten minutes or so) season to taste.
I enjoy them with a side of tastey tater tots, but some people don't have the tot tooth that i have.

I found spices at a place called Jungle Jim's, they're a big international food store with reasonable prices but most of my regular food shopping was at the supermarket
 
 
rizla mission
14:30 / 26.08.05
Err, Rizla, you are aware that vegetarians don't eat fish, right?

DOH!

Well I don't eat that many vegetables either to be honest, so ok, I'll settle with being a non-meat-eating-person.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:43 / 26.08.05
Hang on.... you can make pizza? Fuck me.

Incidentally, anyone mind if I move this to the conversation? It's sprung from a Switchboard thread, but I thiink it has a broader interest, more in line with toksik's "Can you be a vegan and live" sort of thread...or was that in the Lab? Either way, this is lifestyle stuff...
 
 
skolld
19:03 / 27.08.05
I have no problem with that Haus
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
22:58 / 28.08.05
I think that any kind of eating healthy is more expensive overall. It's much cheaper to buy frozen crappy food in the market, and it is rather filling...and I won't even go into the organic vs. non-organic. I had to go vegetarian a few years ago because meat was making me sick, and in some ways it has REALLY made it hard for me to eat well at times. I was up in Northern Minnesota for a conference, and for most of the week, I was stuck eating cheese sandwiches because most of the places around didn't have any entrees at all without meat.
 
 
macrophage
21:41 / 29.08.05
Turning veggie is good for you as long as you make sure you eat a balanced diet. Now existing as a practising vegan well that can become hellish, as long as you live near or within safe driving distance of a Health Food Shop. You are far more healthier and the dividends are good. Veganism can become like a tiresome outsiderism, at least with being veggie people may have things for you if ever get offered dinner. Speaking from living here in Scotland and over in Ireland and in Europe (Belgium is Vegan Paradise, so much Soya Milk goodies and mainland Europe sells really nice vegan chocolates which are commercial and not from a Health Food Shop) you need to be either near a good Health Food Shop or a Commercial Supermarket for veggie conveniences but there's nothing like cooking up an original dinner. Go organic if you have the money, pesticides smell and are bad for you, whole food not junk food - makes you live longer and keeps you healthy indeed.
 
  
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