Going Vegetarian Can Actually Save You Big Money At The Grocery Store

As beef prices reach record highs, it might be time to consider a new diet: vegetarianism. Don't worry, this isn't a moral argument, it's a purely financial one. Depending on how much meat you consume, a vegetarian diet can lower your grocery bills by more than $100 a month. Even if you don't eat that much meat, it's been demonstrated that vegetarian eaters, on average, spend less on groceries.

Saving $100 a month might not seem like much, but at this point every penny counts. With grocery prices still staying quite high, Americans have changed the way they shop. Global demand for and production of meat is soaring (meat remains a marker of a developed country), but meat is extremely inefficient to produce. This is partly why it's so expensive. But, it's not as simple as swapping ground beef for a ground beef substitute (which is usually more expensive per pound, which might be why fake meat is struggling to stay relevant). In order to maximize your cost savings as a vegetarian, you have to truly embrace vegetables, plant based proteins, and unprocessed foods. Might we suggest adding beans to your meal?

A well thought out vegetarian diet doesn't rely on fake meat, but instead finds ways to use tofu, seitan, grains, and beans to stay healthy and full. I was vegetarian for a few years and people always ask about protein. The good news is we don't actually need to be as protein obsessed as we are. It's really easy to get all the macro nutrients (fat, protein, carbohydrates) you need on a vegetarian diet.

Think of it like this: Tofu is, on average, $2 to $3 per pound. Each serving of tofu, which is ⅕ of a standard block you can buy at the store has about 8 grams of protein, depending on the firmness of the tofu. Beef, on the other hand, is now roughly $6 per pound. Each serving of beef (which is also about ⅕ of a pound) has 22 grams of protein. If you eat 2½ servings of tofu, you've caught up to the amount of protein you'd get from beef. Plus tofu has fiber, potassium, calcium, and iron. Even if you double your tofu servings to accommodate for this, you're still saving quite a bit of money. In today's grocery prices, every little bit counts.