15 Ways To Be Vegan On The Cheap

April 26, 2008

People often tell me it’s too difficult to go vegan because it’s too expensive to buy fresh, organic produce and other vegan foods. Indeed, there is a food crisis right now and food is becoming more and more expensive - for everyone.

But there are plenty of ways to go vegan and keep it on the cheap. In fact, eating vegan is often cheaper than eating as an omnivore. I came up with a few suggestions:

  1. Stop buying substitutes: You don’t need meat substitutes or vegan cheese. If you like them and can afford them, by all means get them. But you don’t need them. So if money is tight, opt for lentils and rice instead of frozen fake chicken.
  2. Eat the cheap foods: Beans and rice, peanut butter and jelly, potatoes, soups, etc. Look at the diets of people without access to cheap meat and emulate them. Start shopping in the “ethnic” foods section and stop shopping in the section designed for rich, white folks.
  3. Plan your meals: Plan your meals so that shopping trips don’t involve unnecessary, expensive items or foods that will go to waste. Make large batches of soups, chilies and other foods and freeze half for later.
  4. Shop at green markets: Farmer’s markets are invariably cheaper than Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or other large groceries. And farmer’s markets are often organic. (Many states now allow you to use food stamps at farmer’s markets.)
  5. Look for sales: Often groceries will put produce on sale if they have an excess quantity or if it’s ripe and will over-ripe tomorrow. You can snag these items in large quantities, prep them at home, and toss them in the freezer for use later.
  6. Buy in bulk: Many groceries have a dry foods section with grains and beans. If you bag and label the food yourself, you’ll usually save some money at the register. Also, if you’re comfortable with it, shop at places like Cosco where you can get bulk produce and some other non-animal foods. And if you don’t have storage for bulk items or if you can’t afford the price, go in on it with a friend or neighbor.
  7. Shop in season: Try to buy the foods that are in season where you live. They will often be less expensive than the imported foods.
  8. Use coupons: Most of the time coupons are only for specific brand names, but sometimes you’ll find produce coupons. So just keep an eye out for them and use them when you see them.
  9. Shop online: You can buy some vegan foods online. For example, Tasty Bite sells prepared dishes online at about half the cost of what the stores charge.
  10. Opt for the alternatives: You don’t have to buy always fresh, organic produce if it’s too expensive or not available. Nonorganic produce, canned, frozen, and dried vegan foods are still a better choice than animal products. (Here’s a guide to pesticide loads. You could choose to buy only the organic versions of foods with high pesticide loads and buy the nonorganic versions of foods with low pesticide loads. This won’t do much to help the environment, but it’s better for your health.)
  11. Use cookbooks and guides designed for cheap living: This book, Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook, is designed for the frugal vegan. There are other vegan guides, too, like Alternative Vegan, that focuses on easy to find vegan foods, and Vegan On A Shoestring. And you can often adapt advice about frugal living geared for omnivores to fit your vegan lifestyle because most of it is about saving money, not about consuming animal products.
  12. Grow your own food: Even if you only have room for a small container garden, you can still grow some herbs and cut back on that expense. If you have more room, you can grow some fruits and vegetables. And if you don’t have room, but you’re feeling adventurous, you can start a guerrilla garden. (We did that once. We found a barren spot of land, built a wooden frame, filled it with planting soil, and planted a small guerrilla garden.)
  13. Keep your produce fresh longer so nothing goes to waste: I love these bags because they help my produce stay fresh longer. But you can also use paper bags, the crisper in your fridge, or you can freeze the produce.
  14. Reuse bags or use cloth bags: Many grocery stores give a discount of 5 cents per bag. It might only save 25-50 cents per shopping trip, but that adds up. It’s good for the environment and it’s good for your pocketbook.
  15. Get your priorities straight: If you have any disposable income at all, then the excuse that ‘being vegan is too expensive’ doesn’t cut it. You just have to decide that you care about your health, the environment, and/or animals and just do it. (Even food stamp programs and WIC offer ways to eat vegan or vegetarian.)

To the vegans and vegetarians reading this: how do you keep your grocery bill low?

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Animals, Environmentalism, Food, Health, Fitness, & Beauty, Work, Business, & Finances, veganism 

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Comments

11 Responses to “15 Ways To Be Vegan On The Cheap”

  1. LittleOldLady on April 26th, 2008 5:29 pm

    Did you see that the Costco, Sam’s Club warehouse-type stores have put limits on bulk purchases of rice and that stem rust is threatening the wheat harvest worldwide? I think we have not seen the end of the price rises in staple grains, and that is going to crush the poorest of the poor, particularly in Africa and Asia, and squeeze the less well-off everywhere. Changing agricultural practices to more healthy, environmentally sound methods is going to cost people in the developed world, but the poor in the developing world will really pay the price in the short term, and they may have difficulty surviving to see long-term improvements in a less toxic environment and food supply. In some places there are already civil disturbances (i.e., riots) over food scarcity and sharply rising food prices, and that is likely to get worse before it gets better.

    Beans and rice is obviously the cheaper choice than a heavy meat diet, and beans plus some form of grain, be it wheat pasta with chickpeas or fava beans or wheat or corn tortillas with beans or succotash or New Orleans red beans and rice or the West Virginia favorite pinto beans and cornbread or peanut butter on white bread, have been the poor folks’ diet for time out of mind (or since the agricultural revolution). But it looks like a concatenation of events from biofuels to crop failures exacerbated by monoculture is about to price even beans and grain out of poor peoples’ reach.

  2. Simon on April 26th, 2008 6:00 pm

    One way to save money on food is to avoid paying other people to make it for you. It will almost always be cheaper to cook your own food than to get a microwave-ready version.

    Simon’s last blog post..Martingale Monkeys

  3. Stentor on April 26th, 2008 7:52 pm

    Start shopping in the “ethnic” foods section and stop shopping in the section designed for rich, white folks.

    Sometimes the ethnic foods section is designed for rich, white folks. But I agree about the potential for savings by shopping at a store or in a section aimed at the actual members of an ethnicity other than “white American.”

  4. greentangle on April 26th, 2008 9:51 pm

    Seems to me that an animal based diet is actually much more expensive. I do many of the things on your list…farmer’s markets, bulk aisle of the coop, stock up during sales, use coupons, my own bags, and the cookbook you mentioned, only buy organic produce if I’m not happy with what else is available. I also make my own seitan which is easy to do and much cheaper than the packaged version.

  5. Elaine Vigneault on April 27th, 2008 12:31 am

    Simon says: “cook your own food ”
    Absolutely - often much cheaper than the microwave version, the take-out version, or the dining-out version.

    Stentor - I learned this just by comparing the variety of foods available at various Vons around town in Vegas during college. The ones in the poor neighborhoods over had a wider variety of vegan foods and they were cheaper, too. Basically, if the label isn’t English, it’s often cheaper.

    Green wrote: “I also make my own seitan”
    I haven’t done that yet but I want to. I don’t think I can call myself hardcore vegan until I’m making my own seitan, tofu, nut cheese, etc. For now I’m softcore.
    There are youtube videos about making seitan:
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=ovsp3926QXc
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=UFW9turegxI
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=mRNxKKOncY4

  6. Judith Lautner on April 27th, 2008 9:40 am

    Because I find it hard to control my own portions I am sometimes better off to “let others cook for me”. If I buy a package meal and eat just that it may cost less than a bargain bag of food that I eat too much of.

    However, I really prefer to cook for myself and it is hard to get cheaper than beans and rice or potatoes with whatever or any number of similar options.

    By the way, the rice crisis comes from commodities trading, not an actual shortage, and the limits the warehouse stores are placing on rice are really high. You can buy a lot of rice. Rice and beans are not going to be priced too high any time soon, you can bet on it.

    My non-paying tenant lives on beans and rice and potatoes and popcorn. So far no scurvy or pelagra, but I’m waiting to see that. He does put carrots and celery into the pea soup so maybe that’s all it takes. Carrots and celery are among the cheapest of the cheap, too, and go everywhere. Along with onions. Paul is an example of a vegan-not-by-choice, in a sense. No money, so he scrounges in my cupboard and tries to eat as cheaply as he can. I am waiting for him to move out, make money, buy meat, get unhealthy again.

  7. Ed on April 27th, 2008 12:32 pm

    Potatoes have a wide array of nutrients, and you can live on essentially just potatoes for quite a while. If you add in carrots and beans and whole grains, I don’t think Paul will be getting scurvy or pelegra any time soon. :)

    Ed’s last blog post..Archive Review: The Review Is Overdue Edition

  8. Elaine Vigneault on April 27th, 2008 1:56 pm

    BTW, more resources for frugal vegan living…

    The cheap vegan livejournal community:
    http://community.livejournal.com/cheapvegan

    Vegan FAQ: how to eat cheap:
    http://veganfaq.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-do-i-live-cheaply-on-vegan-diet.html

    Discussion on PPK about non-food vegan items (shampoo, cosmetics, etc):
    http://www.postpunkkitchen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=56771

    The frugal forum at veggieboards:
    http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=165

  9. Linderella on April 28th, 2008 8:39 am

    Elaine, you are one of the most sensible vegans I’ve read on the web. Thanks for offering great advice. Please keep up the fantastic work you do.

  10. noemi on April 30th, 2008 1:01 am

    off the top of my head: freeze leftovers.
    have potlucks w/ other vegans.

  11. Kirsten on December 18th, 2008 6:54 pm

    I recently found myself in a bit of a financial bind, but I am committed to meat-free and organic/eco living. This article was exactly what I was searching for! Some of it may seem like common sense, but it’s good to be reminded now and again.

    Thank you, Elaine, for your initial post and thank you all for your contributions.

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