The household budget makes up a substantial part of most families’ outlay and of that the largest part of the bill is for food. Meat probably makes up the largest part of that food bill too, so you would be forgiven for thinking that you could save a lot of money by giving up meat. You would suppose that becoming a vegetarian might save you some money.
However, that is not always the case. You can save money by taking up vegetarianism on a budget, yet it does not necessarily effort out that way without some work on behalf of the vegetarian. The fact is that vegetables, on their own, frequently seem boring to someone who used to enjoy a decent steak or barbecued spare ribs, so food manufacturers have come up with all manner of accoutrements to liven up vegetarian dishes but these are not normally all that cheap.
Even some of the fairly regular vegetarian staple foodstuffs like nuts are not necessarily cheap, particularly if you want variety. After all, you can not just eat salted peanuts, not that all that salt would be good for you anyway but when you begin to buy macademia nuts or pistachio nuts for a change, you will find them dearer than meat.
Eating out at vegetarian restaurants is also relatively expensive, because the market is comparatively small. There are not many restaurants that refuse to cook meat and the percentage of the population that is vegetarian is still fairly small. This all leads to higher charges, and that is if you can find a vegetarian restaurant outside a substantial city. A sandwich bar is likely the closest thing you will find to it in most towns but there will be meat on the premises too.
The cost of vegetarian food is exacerbated if you insist on eating organically grown food. Eating just organically grown food can add 30% to your food bill making vegetarianism on a budget impossible. So what can you do to trim down the price of your food bill if you are a vegetarian?
The first thing to do is decide if you really believe the whole organic story. Some do, some do not. Either way, you could attempt growing the expensive vegetables in your garden, your greenhouse or in an allotment. If you can not do that, you could offer to buy these vegetables from friends, if they will grow them for you. Lots of pensioners take up gardening and lots of pensioners would be happy with the extra income.
Another fashion is to shop at farms or farmers’ markets. I know that time is valuable, and if you can only go to such a place once a week, you could buy enough food for three or four days without it deteriorating. Buying in bulk like that should become cheaper too. A sack of potatoes will last a month but it is far cheaper than buying a couple pounds at a time from the supermarket.
Another method of reducing costs is not to purchase your fresh fruit and vegetables from supermarkets at all, because it easy to be enticed to buy the latest fad fruit or vegetable from halfway around the world at an exaggerated cost ‘just for a change’. Stick to locally grown fruit and vegetables that are in season and you might just about manage vegetarianism on a budget.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several topics, and is now concerned with low carb vegetarian recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our site at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com