Cost of eating meat

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Scott 2
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Post by Scott 2 »

I've been vegetarian for 12 years. From what I've seen:
1. Vegan = Poor Health. Unfortunately, every person I've known who went vegan, sees their health decline within 3-6 months. They usually end up swinging entirely the other direction and resume eating meat. It is absurdly hard (maybe impossible) to maintain your health on a diet with no animal products.
2. Vegetarian can be cheaper, but a person's approach to their shopping and cooking is far more critical. I wouldn't go vegetarian just to save money. Especially if someone still tries to eat a healthy diet, protein just costs money. There's no getting around it. IMO, people that insist veg is cheaper are really insisting a low protein diet is cheaper, which is true. You can eat flour and water for pennies a day.
3. If someone eats the nutrionally best diet they can, a diet with some lean meat and fish is healthier than a vegetarian diet. The reality is, the health improvements associated wtih going vegetarian come from people cutting crap from their diet. Also, people that decide to go vegetarian have already decided to think critically about their diet and will eat better than average anyway.
4. I do think eating vegetarian is more ecologically efficient. It makes shopping / storing / preparing food simpler. It results in killing fewer animals.
Ultimately for me, it comes down to the fact that I could milk a cow or take an egg. I couldn't bring myself to slaughter a pig or behead a chicken. I'm not comfortable with outsourcing the activities I'd find so distasteful to someone else. Factory farming makes that especially true.
When possible, I even pay the premium for organic diary / pastured eggs. Again, it comes down to how I'd want my food animals handled. If I were to eat meat, it would need to be "happy" meat.


Chad
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Post by Chad »

I agree with Scott 2. The cost difference would be minimal at best unless you want to "eat flour and water."
I'm not convinced meat or fat is the cause for our health problems. Studies seem to suggest properly fed meat (grass, wild fish, etc.) is rather healthy, as are fats such as olive oil, avocados, etc. While, The China Study has some serious flaws and may point more to refined carbohydrates and modern wheat being the problem.
It appears that our main issues are:

1) We eat too much of everything, even healthy foods

2) Refined carbs are bad

3) Animals that don't eat their natural diet aren't healthy(corn fed cows, farmed fish, etc.)

4) Carbs, even good ones, shouldn't be the base of the food pyramid

5) Modern wheat may be an issue (not definitive yet)
Those first 4 seem to be the real culprits. Unfortunately, #2-4 make the diet a little more expensive.


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GandK
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Post by GandK »

I'm a vegetarian who occasionally eats fish, shrimp and eggs, although nuts and legumes are the main sources of protein in my diet. I don't eat much dairy or wheat.
I grew up on a cattle farm; we always had all the meat we could eat, and I don't have any sort of moral or psychological objections to meat consumption. But after years of tinkering, I find that I just feel better when I eat a plant-based diet.
Breakfast for me is usually oatmeal with berries, pecans and brown sugar. Lunch is usually a salad. My favorite salad dressing is olive oil with some spices. Dinner is often stir-fried beans and/or veggies over rice (with sauce), plus broiled meat for the rest of my family, and baked fruit - plain or in a crisp - as a dessert. When I do eat bread and cheese, it's because I'm out somewhere.
With regard to the @OP cost question: I find that I can almost always eat fruits and vegetables less expensively than store-bought meat if I eat them seasonally and allow myself to mixed in canned fruits/veggies and lots of legumes. Really it's when people try to buy things way off season that they run up costs. Some people pick 2 or 3 favorite fruits or veggies and insist on consuming those repeatedly all year long, and then they wonder why their produce bills are so high. If they'd branch out more that wouldn't happen. Farmers' markets are great resources, too.


anastrophe
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Post by anastrophe »

Reverse perspective: I was lacto/ovo vegetarian, and occasionally vegan, my entire life until this year. When I started eating meat, my food prices shot up dramatically.
This is perhaps because I insist on high-quality food (no factory farmed anything if I can help it, I am lucky to live in an area with many small farms that grow most things except wheat). But even the cheapest poultry from Purdue costs more than my bulk beans (.70/lb).


gueco
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Post by gueco »

my diet is mostly meat, its great !


RelicO
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Post by RelicO »

Anastrophe, why did you start eating meat? Did you feel you weren't getting enough nutrition?


Noob
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Post by Noob »

I think the topic is lost. The OP was asking about price differences and it's turned into which is healthier. Veering off course here....
@squashroll.. if you have the right place and space, you could possibly look into something like growing some of your own food. A small aquaponics setup would cost you a little up front, but I'm not sure the cost savings if any, but at least you'd be raising your own fish meat. I'm with the others though above, and since, my last post. Unless you want to eat very minimal meals it won't matter veggies or meat will still get you in the end.


jacob
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Post by jacob »

Cost trimming can be done by diversification in recipes and seasons. Eat what's cheap WHEN it's cheap.
Like this ...

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/wiki/ ... _and_sales
Thinking strategically about when and where to shop makes more of a difference than what you buy. Price increases from switching diet tend to have more to do with just not knowing how to get good deals as the familiar buying patterns.


thebbqguy
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Post by thebbqguy »

@Noob I have some limited experience with aquaponics. It is not a cost savings opportunity IMHO unless you do it on a fairly large scale but it does give you control over some of the food you are eating. I do not believe you could eat 100% from your aquaponics system unless you had good year round weather patterns like southern Florida or someplace similar. If you have to do the system indoors like I would here in Michigan, the cost vs. yield increases dramatically. If you want to research aquaponics further, here are a couple of suggestions: http://youtu.be/yJFlYyG2hR0 http://www.aquaponiclynx.com/ I have toured numerous aquaponics farms and can put you in touch with several individuals that are experts in aquaponics farming for anyone interested.


Noob
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Post by Noob »

Thanks. I was wondering about costs. I've read over a few websites, but there doesn't seem to be a big calling yet for small scale personal setups. I've seen a lot of very small ones and very large ones, but nothing in-between that would allow for an individual or family to sustain themselves on. Now I know you can't grow things that grow underground like carrots, but one of the things I had been wondering about is cost effectiveness of building my own greenhouse that would allow me (in PA) to grow veggies year round and possibly some fish too. I know it wouldn't be instantaneous, but was trying to calculate if there would ever be a ROI. Because you have the extra electricity running there, and the initial costs(greenhouses can run a few thousand dollars). But my initial research and from otheres I had talked with showed that the only way to ever really show a noticeable ROI would be if I sold my veggies, in which case I'd need a bigger greenhouse.


Scott 2
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Post by Scott 2 »

In the US, growing your own food almost never makes financial sense. Outside of break-even costs on supplies and land, the time involved yields an extremely poor hourly wage.
It would need to be a hobby you enjoy.


Aquarama
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Post by Aquarama »

In America, you could grow about half the food you need with about two hours per day of effort during growing season. I garden per concepts I learned in "Gardening When It Counts" by Steve Solomon. I use minimal tools: a spade, a wheelbarrow, a five gallon paint bucket, a rake, a scuffle hoe and a regular hoe. In the theme of economy, I have reduced the inputs to lime, rock phosphate, and a mineral called greensand. I put nitrogen in the soil with free bags of coffee grounds I get at Starbucks. I also make a lot of compost.
My wife and I don't garden for subsistence, we garden because the food tastes so good. Imagine fresh lettuce that melts in your mouth. Our food is also more nutritious.
I keep greens growing well into December. I grow enough potatoes in sixty square feet that we have all the potatoes we need until April. We put up butternut squash. When we have excess waxed beans, we can them, but we don't do much canning.


Noob
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Post by Noob »

@Aquarama, what state are you in? and what size garden overall would you say you have?


Aquarama
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Post by Aquarama »

Hi Noob. Our garden is 1000 square foot perimeter, as measured by our 25 x 40 electric deer fence. Two of our planting beds are dedicated to cranberries and strawberries for fun. The remaining "raised beds" are about 500 square feet, total. We produce about 20 or 25 pounds of potatoes in a bed that is 25 feet long. Look up "raised beds" on the internet for some idea of what we are doing.
Author Steve Solomon uses a 2000 square foot garden to produce the kind of yields I mentioned. He is also very skilled to get those yields. My wife and I certainly don't subsist on our vegetable garden, but I do consider growing a lot of my own food to be a lifetime goal that I continually work on.
We live in Ohio near Lake Erie. It is an advantage to have soil that freezes solid every winter because the freeze kills pests and diseases. Our climate is buffered by the lake, like the vineyards at the other end of the county. Our frost comes late. I think I can get reliable greens into January if I tried. I could also start and overwinter some carrots, too, by protecting the plants with straw mulch. I have been gardening for eight years or so.
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Ed Smith is an excellent book on raised bed gardens.
If you want to garden "under cover", consider growing in soil under a plastic tunnel. That is the convention for produce farmers these days. We extend our growing season with "row covers" that keep the frost away for a while.


before45
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Post by before45 »

95% of what I eat is vegan--the other 5% is sardines. Sticking to food costs, meat eating is more expensive unless you're eating really cheap meat, which all my meat-eating friends says is gross and bad for you and the environment. Of course, you can spend a lot on plant food, too, if you're going organic, but that's really not necessary for most foods.
(@Scott 2, I'm sorry about your vegan friends' poor health. I've never felt any different as a vegan than I did as a meat-eater, but then I've always eaten a variety of foods. Some folks when they go vegan don't eat enough or enough variety and that's not good for you.)
I was pure vegan for 6 years and only last year added the sardines as a health insurance policy, and they haven't made me feel any different. If you like sardines they are a cheap way to get pretty much anything you might be missing with an all-plant diet. (I also eat a lot of nutritional yeast, which is not cheap.)


Scott 2
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Post by Scott 2 »

I'm glad the vegan diet works for you. Dairy / egg production is not kind to the animals involved.


thenagain
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Post by thenagain »

A few years ago I realised that a lot of meat dishes owed most of their flavour to the spices and fruit/vegetables whereas the meat was bland and just provided fat and texture. Therefore, I resolved to go without meat from Monday to Friday(ish) and instead buy quality meat/meat-dishes, ideally from a butcher/local market, over the weekends.
I did that for a while and it worked out well: (generally) cheaper, tastier, and nutritionally better.


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