Being Vegan is Expensive: How Dare You?

The myth of the plant-based diet aspect of veganism as expensive is rubber-check, three dollar bill false, put forth by mendacious, First World “experts” who have recently converted to the Whole30 diet and silly fads like it. Any vegan, who by definition chooses not to eat or use animals for the sake of the animals, should be downright insulted by the mere insinuation being vegan is expensive.

For me, this accusation of pricey veganism hits home hard. I decided to become an ethical vegan on July 26, 2010, one of the worst personal finance eras I ever hope not to experience again in this lifetime. My husband lost his job through no fault of his own when the company he worked for failed and shut down. Every bill, including running my own small business, keeping a roof overhead, various insurances, and eventually a new car (for him) fell to me and his meager unemployment. If vegan food is expensive as they say, we both would have starved to death. At $18.46, a pair of factory farmed steaks destined for one third of a meat-eater’s meal was slightly more than my food budget for two hearty vegan eaters FOR ONE WEEK. Gwyneth Paltrow may not know how to shop the dollar store and Aldi to keep her family alive on pennies, but I figured it out fast.

A packet of factory farmed chicken’s thighs from my local grocery store costs $5.36. This is after the US government spends $38 billion to help out the meat and dairy industries, with a paltry $17 million put aside for subsidizing fruits and vegetables.

If these subsidies were suddenly removed, the meat and dairy industries would go bankrupt because a steak that previously cost $8 would skyrocket to $45. Animal exploitation industries are that pathetic – though it doesn’t take a genius to know there is no way to make systematic murder easy, clean, or cheap. On the plus side, if meat and dairy subsidies were removed, the average person would see her overall health act as if she had reversed in age by 5 – 30 years, impoverishing countless oncologists and taking away the assumed privilege of numerous specialists to take tri-annual jet vacations. I won’t feel sorry for the former horsey set, as I will remember how they made an industry from the suffering of the ignorant and brainwashed who spent their last dollars on cancer-causing radiation “therapy”, which did nothing but exacerbate the pain and suffering of the Death of A Thousand Cuts. Those parasites would be lucky to get a kick in the stomach from me to speed their demise as they lay flopping in the gutter.

The belief in lies like “vegan is expensive” or “vegan is unhealthy because soy” comes from a necrovore’s need to project guilt and shame on someone who is no longer engaging in dastardly behavior. The construct is very simple. When someone claims that being vegan is expensive, she is desperately scrambling for an excuse that will justify her physical and mental addiction to animal products. Much like my grandma, who clung to emphysema-causing cigarettes until the day she died of complications due to smoking, there’s always an excuse at the ready because a severe addict believes she will die if access to the substance is cut off.

That is why it deeply frightens meat eaters when I say I would rather die if it was between me and a pig on that fabled desert island we are always visiting in hypothetical scenarios. They are terrified by the idea of a modern person being willing to die for a cause, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer. If vegan was expensive and unhealthy, yes, I would still do it, even if it killed me. I am that punk rock! Lucky for me and the growing mass of ethical vegans out there, plant-based diets are neither expensive nor hardcore.