La vegan diet it's more economic of the omnivorous one? According to a new study, diets considered healthy - vegan, vegetarian or in any case mainly plant-based - are often perceived as rather expensive due to the presence of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, but in reality they are cheaper than diets that include meat. and animal derivatives in abundance.
Lo study in question was published in the scientific journal Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition with the title of “Economical Healthy Diets (2012): Including Lean Animal Protein Costs More Than Using Extra Virgin Olive Oil”.
Experts calculated the costs of two 7-day food plans. The first food plan is based on an economic version of MyPlate, while the second is based on PBOO, a mainly vegetable-based diet in which extra virgin olive oil is used as a condiment.
La MyPlate diet is based on the food guidelines of the USDA, the US Government's Department of Agriculture, and includes fruits, vegetables, grains and proteins of animal origin, such as meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheeses, giving each of these elements equal importance.
La PBOO diet it is mainly based on plant foods and offers only a small part of ingredients of animal origin. Furthermore, it considers extra virgin olive oil as a source of beneficial fats for our diet and uses it as a primary condiment.
From a comparison of the two diets, the experts determined that the MyPlate diet (among other things, in the economic version) costs $ 746,46 per year (about € 656) more than the PBOO diet, while including smaller quantities of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, that is, precisely those ingredients that are perceived as more expensive by the population.
The comparison suggests that, at least as regards the United States with the relative prices of food products, there is a widespread misperception among the population regarding the costs of a vegetarian, vegan or in any case mainly plant-based diet.
Indeed, it became clear that a diet that regularly includes meat, fish and other animal products is more expensive of a diet based mainly on ingredients of plant origin.
This is the US confirmation of what has already been observed regarding the eating habits of University students of UK who recently prefer to follow an exclusively vegetable diet because buying meals based on vegetables, cereals and legumes rather than dishes rich in ingredients of animal origin allows them considerable savings, as emerged from a comparison among the most popular dishes among young people, in a vegan or omnivorous version.
Do you think this type of comparison could also be valid for your country?
: Vegan Magazine
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