Prices

Vegan groceries cost less

By WhyStopHarmingAnimals.com

Eating vegan usually costs less than eating animals[1][2][3][4][5][6]. A price analysis covering 150 countries found vegan and vegetarian patterns were generally the most affordable way to eat[1], and three US clinical studies that tracked real grocery spending came to the same result: when meat and dairy leave the shopping list, the bill goes down[3][4][5].

150 countries, one pattern

Springmann and colleagues priced healthy, sustainable diet patterns in 150 countries and published the results in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021[1]. Vegan and vegetarian patterns were generally the cheapest options[1]. In high-income countries, a vegan diet cut food costs by up to about one third, 25–29% below what people there typically eat[1]. The University of Oxford’s write-up of the study named the US, the UK and Australia among the countries where a vegan diet was the most affordable choice[2].

The analysis prices diet patterns using food costs; it does not follow individual households through the checkout. That makes it a statement about what a way of eating costs, and the trials below fill in what happened when actual people switched.

What happened to grocery bills in trials

Kahleova and colleagues randomized overweight adults to a low-fat vegan diet or a control diet[3]. A secondary analysis of that trial, published in JAMA Network Open in 2023, found the vegan group’s total food costs fell about 16%, roughly $1.51 a day or more than $500 a year[3]. The control group’s spending did not change[3]. The savings came from buying less meat and dairy[3].

A second study, a crossover trial also led by Kahleova and published in JAMA Network Open in 2024, put the same people on a low-fat vegan diet and a Mediterranean diet[4]. Vegan groceries were 19% cheaper than a standard American diet and 25% cheaper than the Mediterranean diet, about $2.40 a day less[4]. The Mediterranean diet is often sold as the affordable healthy option, and the vegan diet beat it on price[4].

A third analysis, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2024 by Campbell and colleagues, priced meals as people actually ate them on three patterns[5]. Whole-food plant-based eating cost $9.78 a day[5]. The typical baseline diet cost $15.72, so the plant pattern came in about 38% cheaper[5]. DASH, the diet that still includes dairy, fish and poultry, cost $12.74, and whole plant foods were about 23% cheaper than that too[5].

Secondary and post-hoc analyses look back at trial data after the fact, so they carry less weight than a trial built from the start to measure cost, and these samples are small next to a 150-country model. Still, they are records of what real people spent, and all three moved in the same direction[3][4][5].

Outside the lab

A 2022 survey of Portuguese consumers by Pais and colleagues, in Agricultural and Food Economics, found plant-based eaters, and vegans in particular, were associated with lower food spending than omnivores[6]. A survey shows an association and cannot prove the diet caused the saving, since people who choose plant-based eating may differ in other ways. It does not fit the idea that plant food is a boutique luxury for people with money to spare.

Where the savings come from

The receipts explain it. In the 2023 trial the money saved came from meat and dairy, which people stopped buying[3]. Staples like beans and grains cost less than meat and dairy, and a diet built on them costs less as a whole. The 2024 comparison with DASH makes the same point from another angle: a diet that keeps some dairy, fish and poultry sat between the typical diet and the whole-food plant diet on price[5].

A global price model, two clinical trials, a meal-by-meal cost comparison and a national survey all found that food without animals was the cheaper food[1][2][3][4][5][6].