Which tips do you have to save money?
buy simple ingredients in bulk. beans, rice, lentils, etc. tofu can be frozen and kept on hand for a while too. at that point you just need to get produce to finish meals. store brand products are helpful and cheaper
I’ve noticed recently that smaller packets can be cheaper per kg than the bigger packs so you have to check every price tag. Even the big packs with ‘bulk save’ or ‘value pack’, etc, aren’t necessarily the cheapest. Scamming bastards.
That said, with dry store ingredients with long dates, when you find a good price per kg, buy loads and stock up, whether it’s one big pack or a few smaller ones!
Do this across stores, too, as you might find that rice is cheaper in one while pasta is cheaper in another.
I’ve found that smaller local asian, Indian and Mexican stores have lots of great vegan options for much less than big name grocery stores. For example, I can get a huge bag of chili peppers for less than a jar of chili powder, and they taste 100x better. I also buy rice, beans, tofu, nutritional yeast and VWG in bulk, and I make my own seitan super cheap.
Texturized soy. Prob the most cost-effective food ever.
Starve.
I know, it’s not what you’re looking for and it’s horrible, and I also don’t mean this as a jab, but eating vegan consistently is extremely difficult with little money. Especially when I’m in the middle of a food desert and I’m closer to a nuclear power plant then I am to an actual grocery store.
In full honesty, buying in bulk used to be incredibly useful at places like Costco, and I could survive off of only going there a handful of times a year and buying metric tons of vegan food for wholesale prices.
That doesn’t exist anymore and all the prices are the same and higher. I’ve lost a lot of weight from not eating. Eating vegan is a massive privilege.
Eating healthy is privileged. It’s actually cheaper to eat healthy vegan than healthy omnivorous. Of course unhealthy and environmentally destructive stuff is extremely cheap because McDonald’s are everywhere.
Maybe US is very different from Europe, but think it depends what someone expects of food.
McDonald is not food. So it’s not for comparing with real food. But even than I can not imagine potatos and peas cost more than anything in McD. less thah a pond of peas and 100ml of olive oil must be less than 5usd, add few tomatos and you have a great meal.
A small bag of potatoes costs 7-10 dollars, and fresh peas are ridiculously expensive so most people just buy frozen ones. Tomatoes are also about 50 cents/1 dollar each. Olive oil is also very expensive but can be found for relatively cheap if you look hard enough.
This isn’t possible in food deserts though. THERE IS NO FOOD other then McDonalds. Simply none. Nothing.
I didn’t say it was non vegan. But it isn’t healthy. Rice and beans mostly, some vegetables they I grow, cheap pasta. I have a friend who I can buy buckwheat through sometimes. Yes, I have a buckwheat dealer.
Also do you understand what a food desert is? Tofu? Chickpeas? You wish. I’m lucky if I see regular chicken breast every few months.
A cab to the closest grocery store will ring you 80 dollars there and back, not costing the cost of finding an Uber (there are none where I am), or a cab (these do not exist outside of major cities). Are you paying the bill? How is that cheap? If you want a good leg day, you should apparently be able to make the trip in 4 hours by bike (I live in an extremely mountainous area so good luck), or about 12 hours round trip by foot.
To answer your question, I grow some food, but it’s not much, and since I don’t eat fast food (one of the only food options) I starve.
Also what makes you think I can afford to purchase the vegan options at a regular grocery store if I magically teleported to one?
Also what makes you think I can afford to purchase the vegan options at a regular grocery store if I magically teleported to one?
the fact that the staples are generally cheaper than their violence-based counterparts
