This is just to say: vegan food is very cheap

It seems that whatever country you live in, there’s a view that being vegan is an expensive lifestyle decision. I heard this sentiment expressed in the uk and mainland europe, and i’ve recently also heard it expressed in china. I am not vegan, and since coming to China, because i want more variety in what i eat in canteens and restaurants, i would be hard-pressed to describe myself as vegetarian either. Because of the general lack of interest in veganism in China, it is true that the few specialist vegan restaurants are right in the centre of the international cities, and therefore cost a lot. It is also true that in the uk, and i am sure in other countries as well, enough vegans tend to be well off enough that restaurants can charge a lot more for a simple meal than perhaps is reasonable. Is there anything we can do to combat this most egregious example of capitalism in action? This problem stumped me for a long time, but i eventually came up with what i think is an excellent solution: the kitchen.

I would estimate that at the moment i cook at home, between fifty and seventy percent of the time. In the uk, where eating out is almost universally more expensive, this was above ninety-five percent. And it so happens that when i am cooking at home, i eat predominantly vegan food.

When i was in the uk, in my final year of university, i would go to the supermarket once per week, and buy a few kilograms of sweet potatoes, a few kilograms of frozen spinach, and a dozen tins of chopped tomatoes. I’d make a huge curry, and eat that curry all week. The lack of variety was a little depressing, but in general i was eating wholesome food, and it was costing me about fifty pence per meal. The food was vegan not out of preference, but necessity; making cheap, healthy food simply cost less when it was just vegetables.

In China, the situation is similar, except the lower prices of groceries means that i can buy a greater variety of food. I eat porridge with frozen fruit in the morning, which costs three yuan for a large serving. I eat some kind of stew, curry, or chilli with rice for dinner, which costs around five yuan for a serving, using beans, lentils, vegetables, and rice.

What’s the secret? I think it’s kind of out of the bag at this point, but if your diet consists mostly of grains, pulses, and vegetables, and you cook for yourself, you will not need to pay much in most parts of the world. (I understand there are some parts of the usa where a variety of problems have resulted in fast food actually being cheaper than whole ingredients; i’m fortunate that this has never been the case for me, and also has not been the case for anyone who’s expressed the above sentiments to me). My food is usually not the most spectacular or beautiful, but the taste is good and wholesome, and it feels good for me. These are the things i value most.

I would assume that people who express the above sentiments are committing the critical error of trying to make one-for-one replicas of meat dishes using meat substitutes. I generally avoid anything marketed as a vegan or vegetarian alternative—i would rather eat real meat. These tend to be expensive and i find that they often fall into a taste and texture uncanny valley. Instead, the best approach is to find recipes designed not to contain meat in the first place; lots of cultures have such recipes, and i think india is a good place to start due to the long history of vegetarianism in the country.

To further illustrate this, i’ll show a super simple bolognese recipe that can be made with either beef mince or lentils. I chose this recipe firstly because i make it very frequently, and secondly because beef mince is some of the cheapest meat you can get here. Here’s our ingredient list:

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 can chopped tomatoes
• 250g beef mince or 120g dried lentils
• black pepper to taste
• mixed herbs to taste

And here’s a table showing the cost breakdown:

We can see that in total, making this recipe with beef mince will cost us about twenty yuan, which is on the cheaper end of a bowl of noodles at a public canteen. We can also see that far and away the most expensive ingredient is the beef, at 17.5cny for 250g. Using lentils on the other hand, the meal costs us about five yuan, and the lentils are not even the most expensive ingredient. The superpower of pulses is that they can be bought dry, so my 120g dry lentils will expand into 250g when cooked. This is just one example, but the general pattern can be observed across most recipes: pulses are simply much cheaper than meat.

Another thing people hold a stigma about is the nutritional value of frozen and tinned vegetables, so i want to note that these are not considered to be nutritionally worse than their fresh counterparts. I find that a lot of tinned vegetables have a slightly strange taste, so i usually only get tinned tomatoes, but most of my other vegetables are frozen. Frozen vegetables suit me, because they last for a long time, are pre-chopped and, due to being pre-chopped, are cheaper because vegetables with bad parts can be used with the bad part removed. Furthermore, any textural differences are moot when i stew pretty much everything anyway. Whether you choose to use frozen and tinned vegetables is a personal choice, but don’t discount them without giving it a try!

To conclude: vegan food is some of the cheapest food you can eat. If you try to replicate recipes using fake meat, you will likely pay a premium, but if you stick to vegetables and pulses, in most places your food expenses will be tiny.

(Feedback on an earlier version of this post was given by elly and fruit. Thank you <3