Fair point. In the case of being ve*an I think relative value is mostly irrelevant because dietary change shouldn’t preclude you from the other high impact actions (career change or donating money). In other words there’s no direct opportunity cost of dietary change because we have to eat, we just choose to eat something else.
If going ve*an is sufficiently inconvenient for an individual to the extent that it substantially inhibits their work productivity then your point is valid, but it really shouldn’t be. If anything my transition to veganism improved my productivity via health benefits. Personally I’m not at all inconvenienced by having to find vegan options given that I live in London where options are plentiful (although I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone).
Seems like there are clear time/money costs? As a simple example, if you get coffee from Starbucks every day, switching from regular milk to plant-based milk for coffee could cost $0.50 per day—maybe you’d do better by saving that $0.50 and donating an extra $100 every year.
I’m not convinced ve*isn costs more overall. It think it can cost a lot less as fruit, veg, lentils, beans, nuts etc. are generally very cheap whereas meat is quite expensive? This research finds vegan meals are generally 40% cheaper than meat and fish counterparts.
As for time costs these are negligible/zero for me now.
There are two kinds of vegan though, and most of us want to be the fancy kind.
> There are a small number of vegan protein options that are cheaper than the animal-based equivalent, and then there are a wide variety of ones that are more expensive. If you build your diet from the first category it’s cheap and environmentally sustainable, but the limited choices mean most people won’t find it as enjoyable as what they were eating. On the other hand, the second category offers enough options to suit most palates but it costs more.
Financial advice company Cleo found that, after three months on the diet, meat eaters who go vegan end up spending £21 less per month on eating out and groceries.
However, vegetarians who opted to go vegan ended up spending £11 more per month.
So generally vegetarianism seems to be the cheapest diet, followed by veganism followed by meat eating.
Fair point. In the case of being ve*an I think relative value is mostly irrelevant because dietary change shouldn’t preclude you from the other high impact actions (career change or donating money). In other words there’s no direct opportunity cost of dietary change because we have to eat, we just choose to eat something else.
If going ve*an is sufficiently inconvenient for an individual to the extent that it substantially inhibits their work productivity then your point is valid, but it really shouldn’t be. If anything my transition to veganism improved my productivity via health benefits. Personally I’m not at all inconvenienced by having to find vegan options given that I live in London where options are plentiful (although I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone).
Seems like there are clear time/money costs? As a simple example, if you get coffee from Starbucks every day, switching from regular milk to plant-based milk for coffee could cost $0.50 per day—maybe you’d do better by saving that $0.50 and donating an extra $100 every year.
I’m not convinced ve*isn costs more overall. It think it can cost a lot less as fruit, veg, lentils, beans, nuts etc. are generally very cheap whereas meat is quite expensive? This research finds vegan meals are generally 40% cheaper than meat and fish counterparts.
As for time costs these are negligible/zero for me now.
There are two kinds of vegan though, and most of us want to be the fancy kind.
> There are a small number of vegan protein options that are cheaper than the animal-based equivalent, and then there are a wide variety of ones that are more expensive. If you build your diet from the first category it’s cheap and environmentally sustainable, but the limited choices mean most people won’t find it as enjoyable as what they were eating. On the other hand, the second category offers enough options to suit most palates but it costs more.
But the research I linked to indicated that vegans generally spend less.
Also this news story cites research that says the following:
So generally vegetarianism seems to be the cheapest diet, followed by veganism followed by meat eating.