Poverty, privilege, and the vegan debate
Before I start I want to say I love veganism. I think it’s the most sustainable way to live, I adore vegan food, and I want to go fully plant-based. My partner and I already split our meals, half vegan, half not, because small changes are better than none.
But I’m so tired of hearing people claim veganism is always cheaper.
Yes, if you’re talking about staples like chickpeas, lentils, and tofu, it can be cheaper than meat and eggs. I’m not arguing that. But you buy those whole ingredients when you have the money and time to cook a full meal.
And also before anyone “debates” with me there’s a difference between low income and poverty, so many people I see talk about this grew up low income and working class and feel like it was poverty, and the meals they talk about would still have been luxury to me as a child.
So I’m going to break it down for you
My local food bank (not the one in your area, MY one from MY experience I’m talking about) Mostly pasta, sometimes rice, tinned tomatoes, beans, and spaghetti hoops (and yes those are vegan but they’re not a meal). A good week meant they had the ones with little hotdogs in, because for three children, two of which are autistic, those were the best thing ever, and more importantly they were filling.
Chickpeas? Lentils? Rarely donated. And even if they were, how do you make a meal out of a tin without buying more ingredients.
Our weekly shop was four pints of milk, own brand cereal (usually honey or chocolate hoops, now 75p a box) 50p pizzas (now 65p), split three ways. Frozen chips. A 99p bag of mixed veg that had to last a week. And those big bags of chicken nuggets, £3.75 now, for a family of five. Then we’d get bread if extra was needed that week, butter (which was actually vegan because the vegetable oil based one is cheaper so a win there I guess), and occasionally my dad would get us those tubes of yoghurt and those make your own jelly things as a treat.
My dad went hungry. A lot. My mum was in hospital so much they fed her at least. And its important to note my mum was in hospital because meals also had to be easy because sometimes I was the only person around to cook, and at 8 years old I wasn’t going to be able to make a meal from scratch. Free school meals were a lifeline, and yes, we wanted the meat version because vegan options in school are unfortunately not exactly appealing to a hungry child and even now some schools just are still bad at providing good vegan options.
I did the math and looked at my local supermarket and added up what we spent just on food and it is £14 a week on food in today’s money. All of the cheap vegan meals I’ve been seeings as examples are things which are like 65p - £1 per portion. And that sounds cheap until you realise for a family of 5, 65p is £3.25 per meal and thats 22.75 per week. We are already way over budget and that’s just on dinners.
So no, veganism isn’t always cheaper. And if you really want people to go vegan, stop telling them they’re wrong and donate to food banks. Fill them with the ingredients they can use to make a whole meal, not just the stuff that’s easy to donate.
If you want to push veganism, help make it accessible.
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