Healthy, tasty, quick, or cheap? Pick three.
No diet, not even a vegan one, can be low-cost, delicious, convenient, and nutritious.
This Dec. 12, 2010 photo shows Mediterranean barley vegetable stew in Concord, N.H. Vegan food is a celebration of produce, as is this stew. Guest blogger Trent Hamm writes that he cut down on the cost of food by switching to a vegan diet.
Larry Crowe / AP / File
In October, due to some medical results and the encouragement of a dietitian, I made the choice to switch to a vegan diet (with the minor exception of occasional fish consumption) for the time being. A vegan diet simply means that I avoid meat and all animal products, which would include milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and so forth. In fact, this dietary change (and the subsequent questions from readers) led to my ongoing Friday afternoon series on what to have for a frugal and healthy dinner.
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The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds – we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
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The big question that I often get from readers (besides the inevitable “what do you eat, then?”) is whether or not my diet is inexpensive. There seems to be a perception out there that eating such a diet would be quite pricey.
So, let’s address these questions.
What do I eat?
The best way to do this is to just summarize what types of things I consume at each meal.
Breakfast items include: fruit, oatmeal, cold cereal (with almond milk), a fruit smoothie, a breakfast burrito (made with beans and really finely diced tofu), toast, and bagels.
Lunch items usually include: leftovers, bean and rice burritos, salads of all kinds, sandwiches, and lots of different kinds of soups. Honestly, it’s usually just leftovers.
Supper items usually include: a starter salad, pasta with various tomato-based sauces, stir fry, curry, ratatouille, grilled portobello mushrooms, chilis or other thick and heavy soups and stews (one of which I’ll post this afternoon), and usually some sort of vegetable on the side and fruit on the side.
Snacks include nuts (lots of nuts, actually), pieces of fruit, date bars, fruit smoothies, pita chips, hummus, and salsa.
These items just scratch the surface. There’s a ton of variety out there once you start exploring what kinds of vegan foods are available.
I should note that I often eat four smaller meals a day now rather than three, and I snack a bit in between them. I usually eat a mid-afternoon meal at about three or four (often with a cup of tea… perhaps I’m secretly British).
At first, this diet was very hard to adjust to. Rather than focusing on what I could have, I kept thinking about what I couldn’t have. I thought about cheese. I thought about steak. I thought about milk.
Over time, though, I moved to thinking about all of the stuff I could have and sought out things within that group that I enjoyed. Salsa. Beans. Grilled mushrooms. Fruit smoothies.
That mental shift made this entire diet easier. I grew to really appreciate the things that I enjoyed and could eat freely.
What does it cost?
One of the biggest knocks against this type of diet is the perception that it’s expensive. Doesn’t it cost a lot more than a “typical” American diet?
After having eaten this diet for four months, I can say from experience that the financial cost of my current diet is the same as, if not a bit lower than, my normal diet in the past. Our family food budget has dropped about 15% since I started this diet, on average.
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