Vegan diets may offer significant economic benefits

Key takeaways:

• Compared with a control diet, adhering to a vegan diet led to an estimated 16% decrease in total food costs.
• Savings on meat and dairy more than made up for the extra expenditures to sustain a plant-based diet.

Adhering to a vegan diet led to a significant decrease in total food costs per day for those with overweight, according to the results of research published in JAMA Network Open.

Food costs might represent a barrier when it comes to dietary change, Hana Kahleova, MD, PhD, director of clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and colleagues wrote. Given that fact, “the costs of vegan diets merit examination,” even though they have been previously recognized for numerous health benefits.

“As reported previously in a randomized clinical trial, an ad libitum low-fat vegan diet resulted in weight loss, improved body composition and increased insulin sensitivity in overweight adults,” they wrote. “As the prices of staple foods, such as rice and beans, are much lower compared with meat and dairy, it was hypothesized that food costs would be reduced on a vegan diet.”

To learn more, the researchers conducted a secondary analysis of results from the randomized study, which was conducted from January 2017 to February 2019 in Washington, D.C.

In the trial, 223 participants with overweight were assigned to a control group (86.9% women; 43.4% Black; mean age, 56.7 years) or vegan diet (86.1% women; 49.2% Black; mean age, 52.9 years) in a 1:1 ratio. Participants in the vegan group followed an ad libitum low-fat vegan diet consisting of legumes, grains, fruits and vegetables. Those in the control group were asked to make no diet changes, the researchers reported.

Each participant completed a 3-day dietary record at baseline and week 16. The researchers then used the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thrifty Food Plan to link intakes from dietary records to a national food price database to assess food cost.

Kahleova and colleagues found that, in the vegan group, mean total food costs per day decreased by about 16% compared with the control group, and the difference between groups was significant.

The biggest savings, they found, were on dairy and meat. The savings were enough to outweigh the higher spending on whole grains, legumes, produce, etc.

Citing further evidence in a survey that found “food expenditures for vegetarians were lower than for their meat-eating counterparts,” and a 2021 study that found diets including more plant than animal foods were up to 29% less expensive than purely omnivorous diets, the researchers concluded that, “in addition to health benefits, a vegan diet may have economic advantages.”