No but like seriously, why are vegan and vegetarian options always MORE expensive at restaurants. Whenever I cook my self, the meat is BY FAR the most expensive part of any meal. Meanwhile stuff like soy strips are DIRT CHEAP, not to mention they last basically forever!
The canteen I go to for lunch actually sells the meatless meals for 2/3 of the price, always a taunting reminder. Like hell yea, that’s how ya convert me!
Imagine if legumes and grains were subsidized like animal meat and dairy is now. The meals would only cost the labor and heat energy.
Just imagine
I’m really liking lemmy. A post like this in vegan reddit would have been taking down and OP called a bloodthirsty animal. Those folks are crazy.
Posts like this is how we change the minds of people and how they see food.
Having heard that vegan is better my whole life, I’m convinced that it will only get subsidized/better logistics when the price of meat goes up.
And the price of meat going up will just make people into red hats angry that their burgers got taken away by the left.
Many of MAGAs don’t even understand that much of the beef industry already has subsidies. From the farm, to the feed, to even the price of beef itself.
But these subsidies aren’t doing much to keep the price of beef down.
Absolutely, this study from Berkeley from 2014 said beef should be $30 / lb, without subsidies. Inflation-adjusted (with caveats), it’d be ~$40 / lb today.
Right!
Every person pays $49 dollar a year on average in Canada towards the $2 billion animal agriculture gets in subsidies.
People will pay more to uphold their moral values.
That’s me with fair trade and bar shampoo/conditioner
i’ve had the opposite experience. Vegan substitutes here for example are wayy more expensive than the meat counterparts, or they’re straight up trash. And cooking anything nutritious enough is by itself expensive enough, irregardless if its meat or vegan
“Meat substitutes,” ie impossible burgers and vegan cheese, are more expensive. There’s a complex process and decades of trial and error that have gone into trying to replicate specific flavors. But “things in place of meat,” like tofu or beans (dried beans especially), are often cheaper.
Nutritious meals based on lentils/legumes are astonishingly cheap. wtf are you smoking? mock sausage etc is a luxury good, it is not a standard feature in any diet.
Because vegan substitutes are junk food, not something you should actually be eating a lot of. Tofu for example is very cheap
Its crazy how far 20 dollars in veggies will go. A bag of carrots is like 2 bucks
Not where I’m at :(
The problem is that fresh food is more expensive than frozen food, but meat freezes better than vegetables. There’s some veggies that can be flash-frozen and retain some taste and texture, but often the comparison is between fresh veggies and frozen meat, and they’re about the same price around here at least.
How much is Tofu? Thats always a good cheap option if fresh veg isnt affordable
I’ve only ever been able to make enjoyable tofu in curries. Got any good recipes?
Buy the super firm stuff and, if you’re willing to spend the extra time, put it in a tofu press to get out even more water. Marinate in the same kind of things as meat. Fry in a pan, cook on the grill, or on an open flame is my favorite :)
The drier the tofu, the more meaty it gets and will brown a lot better too. I don’t care what people say about oil, I think its much better for flavor and Browning.
Freezing the tofu makes it more tougher, and you can use the cheaper tofu’s.
Thats true I forgot about that
Drain well; put a towel over the cut pieces and place weight on it to press water out for ~2hrs.
Toss with soy sauce and spices. Bake at 425 F for 20 min, flip and then 15 min more. Serve with literally whatever bullshit you got
Exactly! Whenever I was low on cash as a student, I’d just buy some tomatoes, throw in some lettuce and mayo I already had for sandwiches and boom! Maybe add some pasta and or an egg. Depending on how fancy I go that’s anywhere between like 2~3 bucks a big ass bowl!
The problem is this doesn’t really stack up if your eating a lot of stuff thats been put on reduction. Full price meat is really expensive but 90% off meat works out cheaper than vegetables on a per calorie basis. (Vegetables never go on reduction)
At my place meat rarely goes for above 50% or even 30% discounts. And even then, 500g of meat usually costs me in the 150czk range, with 50% off that’s still a solid 75czk, meanwhile my soy strip bag costs up yo 30czk max. Like I wish we had 90% discounts on meat lol xD
As for veggies, some like potatoes, carrots and lettuce are dirt cheap already and you’re not putting the whole thing into a single dish. Shit is like rice, the 5kg bag is almost cheaper than meat, and it’ll last for MANY dishes.
Oh potatoes and rice go in more than half of what I eat, a lot of cababge too. My point is less about meat specifically and more that based on where you live a vegan diet may or may not be the more affordable option. A lot of us just end up on the ‘whatevers on sale’ diet.
Ironically, as a toddler, my mom tried offering a fair bit of money (for the time for a toddler, so probably like $20 or $100) to try to get me to eat meat and I still refused. Taste, texture, smell or presentation was icky so nty. Weird people pay extra for it.
for a toddler, so probably like $20 or $100
Mate what the shit
Was gonna say, I remember when I though 5 bucks was a lot, and I was probably like 8 or 10.
Not sure what you mean, so gonna just shotgun approach my response and maybe one of the things are somehow relevant.
By “toddler”, I meant like sometime between infant and kindergarten. Idk the actual age.
I was young enough to not remember, so I just don’t know what it was. Just that it was a lot.
I was a stubborn eater. My mom also tried other things like not letting me other things until I tried something new. But found my tolerance for starving myself was more than their tolerance for me staving. I lost some absurd about of weight (like 10lbs per week) for a few weeks straight over being a picky eater in 2nd grade (that was not my mom’s doing nor was it intentional).
Meat always tasted gross to me.
I grimaced every-time as a kid as I ate chicken nuggets because there were weird bits inside of them.
But now with vegan nuggets, I don’t find those weird bits anymore.
Seriously, I just discovered impossible nuggets. They are hands down better than meat nuggets.
Taste, texture, smell or presentation was icky so nty.
Side note, but I think that’s a huge part of the disconnect between vegans and meat-eaters. A lot of vegans for whatever reason just never liked meat in the first place, so they think it’s the easiest thing in the world to give it up and are genuinely baffled why people keep eating meat.
Nah this is just cope. Vegans come from all walks of life.
Ease of doing something or degree of missing it doesn’t really tip the moral scales much when compared to the yawning abyss of horror that is farming. Plenty of us loved all the hedonistic pleasures of carnism, just once you realise what you’re doing it’s completely indefensible and change is required.
I drank like a gallon of milk a day before I went vegan and products containing cheese, eggs, or chocolate were a good chunk of my diet. I lost a lot of weight changing diet because there was very little left to eat out of my already very limited diet, so I just didn’t want to eat. Also, I never really considered myself a vegetarian before going vegan… like I didn’t eat meat, but like I also didn’t really eat vegetables for the same reason.
No that’s just not true at all. Before I was vegan my favorite food hands down was meat - ribs, steak, ham, brisket, chicken, burgers, etc. I loved it, not to the degree of luffy from one piece (🤓) but my favorite by far. That said, once I realized pleasure is never a good reason to kill someone, I stopped eating animals, and when I learned how fucked other animal ag (dairy, eggs, etc) is I went completely vegan.
Now when I walk by places cooking dead animals it smells good and then I think about the massive injustice behind it, and there’s just no way I could go back to supporting that no matter how good it tastes. I love stuff like Juicy Marbles, Beyond, and Meati Mushroom steaks tho, cause they’re the best replacements I’ve found.
Even though animal flesh is one of my favorite flavors I’ve ever tasted I’m still baffled that people continue to eat it when the reality is it’s killing and hurting animals for pleasure, which is insane and not ok at all.
At least where I live chicken (frozen) & dairy are some of the cheapest sources of protein, followed closely by beans & similar legumes.
How could I get ~160g protein a day on vegan diet? Is protein powder only option? Also tryin to stay around 2400 cals
Soya strips? Soya anything really. Per gram there is WAY more protein in soya strips than any meat. My 80g pack says it has 49g protein. Shit is more than half just straight up protein. Find me any meat with such density, the best I can find is 32g/100g. And for calories you’d be hard pressed to beat nuts, not even sugar beats em.
Any Brands you recommend?
I’m not really a brands guy, I just try to grab whatever is cheapest at any store I’m at (within reason, bought shampoo once that was basically just water, never again). Also I live in Czechia, I’m assuming we might not have the same stores and brands available. Tho anyways, soy strips/chunks are a pretty basic ingredient, so I’d assume just about any should be fine, and for nuts, over here we quite often have nut mixes, sometimes even salted or otherwise spiced, tasty stuff for snacking :) For cooking purposes, again, very basic ingredient, just about any will do. There are many Asian and even western recipes that make wonders out of peanuts for example, not to mention countless desserts, but that’s probably not what we’re going for xD
Also tempeh is pretty good! Also soy, but it has a nice flavor, and is great on sandwiches!
Beans and nuts
I can’t speak for restaurants, but I can speak for vegan replacements for non vegan foods(e.g. Vegan cheese). Its simply, more expensive, because people are willing to pay dor it and RhE company can make more money with it.
There is a little more work to make those veggies taste good.
Sometimes some of the vegan food I eat I feel like cooking it was closer to witchcraft.
Just add some garlic and or onion, it’s the secret behind many sauces, even meat ones :)
Tho yea, you’re right, ya can’t just throw some salt and pepper together with (insert not meat) and still call it a delicacy, sadly…
Overhead, really. The margins on restaurants are knife-edge thin already. Most of the cost of a meal goes to wages, rent, utilities and then the tiny sliver left over goes to ingredients and profit. Any savings from cooking all veg meals is thus completely absorbed by the losses from having such a smaller market, thus prices have to go up to make up the shortfall. It helps that most people are willing to shell out a little more to support their principles, though the cost is why you never see vegan restaurants in poor areas - people can’t afford the fee to eat morally.
capitalism: it sucks!
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Maybe it’s different in America, but we actually have a few cheap vegetarian joints here in Prague, and their prices are pretty unmatched, even by other cheap lunch places. I just find it weird that the wast majority of places that sell meatless stuff, are capable of selling it for like twice the price of the rest.
I also find the “overhead” argument hard to belive, considering that all you need for soya strips/chunks is throw a but load of them into hot water for 10 minutes and that’ll last the entire bloody day. Unlike meat that can barely leave the fridge. Meat also generally makes a bigger mess, the only worthy competitor is some cheeses. And other things take even less effort than meat, meals that primarily use nuts or beans, or if you don’t wanna go full vegan, cheese and eggs also open the doors to plenty of dishes. Like ever heard of tiger eggs?
As generally used, “overhead” doesn’t address the topic with a degree of granularity that takes the difficulty of preparation into account. It simply means the operating expenses associated with the business - wages, facilities and utilities are by far the three largest aspects, raw materials, consumables and related equipment costs are (depending on the industry) anywhere from a minor line item to little more than a rounding error. This is true for essentially every industry you care to name (I actually can’t think of an exception. Maybe NFTs or some related crypto nonsense? Though even those famously have to factor in utilities).
TL;GTTP: The type of food you’re preparing matters comically less than where your restaurant is located and the size of your staff.
Yea I get that, and my question is, why is the vegan or even just vegetarian option at the same restaurant more expensive? And like up to 50% more so? I’d argue it doesn’t take any longer to make a meatless dish, nor does it require any unique equipment/procedure. The only logical explanation I can see, is if you intentionally use some super expensive replacement lab meat or demand is soo low that the allocated storage would be better served with something more popular, at which point why even sell it? Prep is basically non-existant compared to meat, so extraordinary work can’t be it. The only realistic things I can think of is a lack of demand. Hmmm, in the context of America that seems a lot more likely actually…
Jamaica with its 30 vegan restaurants proves your point wrong.
It is actually in fact 30% cheaper to source a whole foods plant-based diet
Source: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
Sorry but… no, my point absolutely stands. I’m just pulling my data from HappyCow and TripAdvisor, but Jamaica has way more than thirty vegan restaurants. 141 that have enough of an internet presence that I can find them before this hangover forced me to stop looking. Happycow has an extremely convenient breakdown by area, too, which shows the regional concentration of veggie/vegan restaurants. And, if you do the math, ~90% of them are in high population density coastal towns with heavily tourism-dependent economies, which is what I’d expect to find (I didn’t control for the obvious potential sampling bias, but it’s a small enough country we can probably assume we’re working with a population here). “Specialty” restaurants, which category unfortunately vegan/veggie venues fall into in the western meme, are even more at risk of failing than the average due to the restricted market appeal, and so require a larger population (and economic base) to support them.
I feel like my comment has touched a nerve with people due to my own inelegance while stating my point. I’m not saying that eating morally has a fee associated with it, I’m well aware of how much cheaper it can be to eat a veggie-heavy or full vegan diet. I am saying that dining out has fees associated with it, and that the cost of dining out has very little to do with the price of the ingredients (even for perceived ‘luxury’ meals like in steakhouses or hotpot) and almost everything to do with the operational overhead of running a restaurant (wages, facilities, utilities). Vegetarian dishes at mixed meat/veggie locations are a ‘money maker’ for the restaurant, because those dishes can be priced similarly to more-expensive ones but cost less to produce. But even that expanded profit margin is always going to be a much smaller percentage than the base cost of the meal, which is defined by the aforesaid overhead.
I’m quite sorry that I didn’t make that clearer in my initial drunken 3am comment!
Happycow breakdown
Convenience is expensive. I prep vegetarian meals that mostly cost under $2/meal. Some under $1/meal. Eg, Rice N Dahl, Curried rice w/tempeh, taco beans on potato. Were I to go out to eat I’d expect the same food, I’d expect a bit better quality cooking but I’d also expect $25/meal price.
