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Hi, i’m going to just send the comment that I sent to someone else here who was also thinking that price was an obstacle to being vegan:

In terms of the cost of plant-based diets, they’re generally found to be cheaper on average than diets containing animal products. Here’s one such study https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study that found people were able to cut their grocery bills by up to 1/3 by going plant-based, and there are several others finding the same things. Plant-based whole foods are typically the cheapest foods available to buy, and when we look at production costs, it’s even better since animal products are only made affordable by artificial price lowering as a result of how much more government & tax subsidies are disproportionally given to animal agriculture than plant-based foods. Without those bail outs, it wouldn’t be affordable to the average consumer, and as it is, not only is it inherently expensive & inefficient to produce animal products compared to plant-based foods, but it’s also usually more expensive to buy for the end consumer than plant-based foods. This is why wealther nations typically consume far more animal products, and poorer nations - as well as poorer communities within wealther nations - often consume fewer animal products and more plant-based foods. There is a reason why legumes, grains, vegetables etc are often seen as the food of a “poor man’s diet” or “poor people food” - despite them being terrific foods, healthy, nutritious, ethical & sustainable, so it’s a win win that they’re cheap. Plant-based foods have been the staples of quite lower income countries and communities for generations. People often can’t afford to buy meat & animal products, and are plant-based out of necessity of affordability. The people who think plant based diets are expensive are ironically usually wealthier people who haven’t been in a situation where they’ve been forced to buy the cheapest food possible, because if they were they’d know it’d mostly be looking at plant based foods.

One notable exception to this and what often drives the common misconception that plant-based diets are expensive, is the fact that they CAN be if you eat novel plant based mock products or other expensive plant based foods - but you can also buy high-end expensive animal products and they would be the most exorbitant foods you can possibly buy. These plant based products are relatively new and haven’t reached economies of scale yet - not to mention the lack of support from governments compared to animal products, and heavy opposition from the animal agriculture industries, societal misunderstandings/misinformation, etc. In theory, they should be cheaper to buy since they’re cheaper to produce - and eventually they will be if more people buy them, and especially if also fewer people buy animal products - which would eventually become unaffordable if subsidies are removed, which are increasingly harder to justify given increasing environmental costs associated with animal agriculture and other issues threatening the industries. For now, it depends on where you are - regarding novel plant based mock products, not plant based whole foods or other traditional plant based staples like tofu, tempeh, TVP, falafel, seitan etc & ofc starches and other plant based foods - and in some cases plant based meats, plant based cheeses, plant based milks etc have achieved price parity with their animal derived counterparts, or are relatively affordable - sometimes actually cheaper already, especially in parts of Europe. But of course these are not essential products, and it’s perfectly possible for most people to be plant based even if they don’t have access to them.