Eat a Vegan Diet for Under $5 a Day

Persons can eat a healthy vegan diet for less than $5 a day in most places here in the United States. Often foods that are good for us are cheaper than junk food.

Although eating a vegan diet can be cheaper than eating a diet that contains meat and dairy products, much of the information in this article applies even to persons who eat a diet that contains meat and dairy products.

Most of us can significantly reduce the amount of money we spend on food. Below I list some steps toward cutting food costs.

1. The first step (You may have guessed this one.) is to substantially reduce (or eliminate) eating at restaurants. Eating at restaurants is typically much more expensive than preparing and eating food at home--unless someone else is paying the restaurant bill. In addition, restaurant food often contains additives you don't want, such as extra salt.
   
2.  A second step is to buy dry beans instead of meats and poultry. A wide variety of beans are available in supermarkets, including pinto beans, great northern beans, black beans, kidney beans, cranberry beans, navy beans, and lima beans. Beans lack the fat that is in meats, and beans are typically cheaper than meats. Furthermore, beans are nutritious. For example, pinto beans and whole grain cornbread provide an excellent source of protein and amino acids. You can cook a big batch and freeze or refrigerate leftovers.
3. Third, eat a variety of whole grains instead of refined white flour products. Whole grain cornmeal, whole grain wheat flour, whole grain brown rice, and numerous other grains are available at reasonably cheap prices. My personal favorites are whole grain yellow cornmeal and white whole wheat flour.
4. Fourth, nuts and seeds (as well as legumes) provide nutrition and cholesterol free fat that is "good fat" compared to the saturated fat (with cholesterol) in meats. A serving or two of almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc., can be a tasty part of a well-balanced diet. You can eat most nuts either raw or roasted. Try them both ways to add variety to your diet.
5. Fifth, even fresh fruits and vegetables are not very expensive on a per serving basis, especially if you buy them on sale. Fresh fruits can average less than 40 cents per serving, and vegetables can average less than 20 cents per serving. At these prices, eating three servings of fruit daily and five servings of vegetables daily would cost less than $2.20. The key is to buy things on sale. Supermarkets typically have a few fruits and vegetables on sale each week. You can also buy dried or canned fruit on sale, as well as canned or frozen vegetables on sale, but buy fresh products when reasonably feasible. And if you buy some vegetables at a cheap price (carrots for example), you can afford to pay more for others (asparagus for example).

The photograph below shows some of the foods I currently have in my apartment: a pineapple, green and red grapes, a cantaloupe, a tomato, carrots, potatoes, cinnamon-raisin bagels, white whole wheat flour, everything bagels, yellow whole grain cornmeal, and pinto beans. 
 

I bought the pineapple and cantaloupe on sale at a local supermarket for 50 cents each (even better than the sale price of about $1 each I usually try to buy them for), bought a pound of carrots on sale for $1, a five pound bag of potatoes for $1 on sale, tomatoes for less than $1 a pound on sale, and the other items at their regular prices. The bagels are a processed food made with regular white enriched flour, but still as a snack they are healthier than candy, most cookies, cake, pie, etc.

Below I provide some suggestions about what to prepare for various meals.

Breakfast
Oatmeal, wheat farina, homemade biscuits and gravy, pancakes, cereal (bought on sale) and nondairy milk, etc., are all relatively cheap breakfast foods. Add a piece of fresh fruit or juice. To get a vegan source of Omega-3 fatty acids, you can sprinkle some ground flaxseeds on your breakfast cereal, biscuits, or pancakes after cooking (cooking damages the Omega-3s). Walnuts are another good vegan source of Omega-3s. By the way, microalgae is another vegan source of Omega-3 fatty acids, and microalgae contains DHA and EPA Omega-3 fatty acids, making its fatty acids more similar to those in fish than the ALA in ground flaxseeds. It is probably best for vegans to add microalgae to the diet, too.

Personally, I drink a glass of orange juice enriched with calcium most mornings. I buy 12 ounce cans of frozen concentrate in store brands for about $1.50-$1.75 each, which provides six servings of eight ounces each per can for a cost of less than 25 cents per serving. I often add a banana or some other type of fruit to my breakfast, too.

Lunch at Work and Other Meals Away from Home
If you must eat a meal away from home, such as lunch at work, to save money consider packing your own lunch. For example, you might pack a sandwich or two, a piece of fruit, and a salad. 

Taking to work your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich(es), banana(s), and a fresh salad will almost certainly be cheaper than eating at a restaurant and likely more nutritious, too. You can pack the salad in an airtight plastic container with some ice cubes to keep it cold. If you are concerned someone may tamper with your lunch before you get to eat it, perhaps you can put it in a locker, in a drawer at your desk, in your locked car, or some other place that is safe.

Dinner, Supper, and Other Home-Cooked Meals
Preparing some type of beans and some type of whole grain bread (cornbread, biscuits, garlic bread, etc.) provides a tasty, nutritious main part of the meal. A variety of spices and seasonings can add flavor. Numerous recipes are available online in addition to the basic ones on the bags of beans and grains.

For side dishes, choose from whatever vegetables you bought on sale (asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, collard greens, corn, green beans, lettuce in a variety of types, mustard greens, onions, potatoes, radishes, spinach, turnip greens and turnips, etc.).

Fresh fruit can be dessert. In addition to apples and bananas which are usually reasonably priced, each week some types of fruit are usually on sale (such as apricots, blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, grapes, oranges, peaches, pears, pineapples, plums, strawberries, watermelons, etc.).

For dessert, instead of fresh fruit, you can prepare some type of homemade treat. Homemade cakes, candies, cookies, pies, etc., are usually fairly cheap per serving, and if you prepare them with relatively small amounts of fat, salt, and sugar, they can be relatively healthy compared to most store-bought desserts. Numerous vegan dessert recipes are available online that have limited fat, salt, and sugar content, thus making "junk food" a bit healthier eating. For example, some recipes substitute applesauce or another sweetener for sugar, reduce the amount of cooking oil or margarine compared to a typical recipe, omit salt by substituting other seasonings, etc.

To give one specific example, when time permits, I enjoy making homemade cinnamon-oatmeal-raisin cookies, using molasses or applesauce to sweeten them. They are tasty, somewhat nutritious, and relatively low in fat--I use little vegetable oil in them.

Snacks
One of my favorite snacks is bagels. I buy cinnamon-raisin, blueberry, and everything bagels, and eat one or two of those instead of potato chips, candy, or other less healthy foods.

Popcorn that is air popped without adding significant amounts of salt, margarine, cooking oil, etc. is a relatively healthy snack that adds fiber and relatively few calories to one's diet, and it is cheap, too.

Fresh fruits and vegetables can also be tasty and nutritious snacks, with or without a nutritious dip.

Homemade treats like banana nut bread, oatmeal cookies, and peanut butter cookies are tasty, too.

Closing Thoughts
Since no one eats perfectly, adding a daily multivitamin to one's diet is a good way to add nutrients. I confess that the one I take is probably not a vegan multivitamin, but I hope to find a vegan multivitamin that I like. If a bottle of multivitamins costs $15 per 100 vitamins, that is only 15 cents a day added to the cost of one's daily diet. Vitamin B12 is one of the nutrients that vegans often have difficulty getting into their diet. In addition to taking a daily multivitamin that contains vitamin B12, I use soymilk enriched with B12, as well as sometimes eating cereal enriched with B12.

I am neither a dietician nor a medical professional, so I cannot give dietary or medical advice, but I am confident that persons who follow the guidelines I provided in this article will eat a more healthy diet than most persons and more cheaply than most persons eat here in the United States.

Do adapt my suggestions for your own specific calorie and nutrition needs. And please seek out other sources for more information about eating a healthy diet at a relatively low cost.

Who knows? You may find that you enjoy eating a cheaper and healthier diet more than you enjoy your current diet--and you may feel better as a result, too.

NOTE: The material in this article is adapted and/or reprinted from material I wrote in Chapter 31 of my book True Christianity: It May Not Be What You Think, second edition, copyright 2015, as well as from material in an article I posted on Newsvine on April 20, 2012.