Reddit reviews Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day: A Game Plan for the Budget Conscious Cook
We found 18 Reddit comments about Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day: A Game Plan for the Budget Conscious Cook. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Being vegetarian is very easy. The meals are not bland. The typical meat-eater cook will marinate meat, cover it with tons of spices, bake it to perfection. Meat by itself is bland. My point is that it's all in the flavors and spices, and learning how to cook vegetables, tofu, etc in new ways. Indian vegetarian food is delicious for example, as well as Japanese, Mexican, etc. You get to be adventurous and try new food!
It's absolutely possible to be vegetarian on a small budget. Beans are much cheaper than beef after all. The key is to stock your kitchen with bulk items such as beans and rice, potatoes, pasta, canned goods, so that you always have some core meal ingredients on hand. Then you can buy fresh vegetables and fruits on sale.
I eat a lot of black bean tacos, tortilla chips with salsa, etc.
Also pasta with vegetables. Veggies with dip such as hummus. Breakfast food (such as eggs and potatoes). Homemade vegetable soup. Etc.
I think it's awesome that you're considering vegetarianism. It's important to do your research however.
Here's some links to get you started:
i'll try to change your view by taking it to a further position that i believe you do not hold, which would require you to either move to that position or reject your view on animal abuse altogether. the position, of course, is veganism, and i don't believe you hold that view as evidenced by "The person has no intention of eating the bird", which implies that you would find killing an animal acceptable if that person intended to eat the bird. essentially, i'm going to argue that if you hold a position that grants animals any rights then you must find it absolutely unacceptable to kill and maim them unnecessarily. establishing this is necessary to have any meaningful discussion concerning animal rights or consideration, and it will point out some flaws in your CMV.
first let's establish that killing and/or torturing animals for food is not necessary in our modern society (and for you). please abstain from arguments such as "but if you were on a desert island" or any variation of it that implies you are unable to go vegan. if you live in the first world and you are able to make decisions on what you eat, then these do not apply to you because you are perfectly capable of going vegan. i am not arguing against someone on a desert island eating meat, i am arguing against you eating meat and animal products.
now, the line of defense is usually to claim that veganism is unhealthy. it is not. this study by the ADA (full text) demonstrated that a vegan diet improved lipid and glycemic control in type 2 diabetes, more so than an ADA approved diet. not to mention of course that there are many vegans out there doing just fine, and they in fact tend to be healthier and have decreased mortality ("Our review of the 6 studies found the following trends: 1) a very low meat intake was associated with a significant decrease in risk of death in 4 studies, a nonsignificant decrease in risk of death in the fifth study, and virtually no association in the sixth study", and abstract only on this one). so clearly there are no health reasons for a normal, healthy human to eat meat. if you are not a normal, healthy human in this context then that is a different discussion, but if you are, any point regarding someone who must eat meat for whatever reason is irrelevant, as you are not that person, nor are most people. and to grab this as well, many argue that it is too expensive for most people to go vegan, but on the contrary one can go vegan for $4 a day, and linked is a well known cookbook that outlines how you can eat vegan on a budget, and often vegan eating can be cheaper than omnivorous options. it is essential that we establish that the only reason one would kill an animal for food in our situation is for taste pleasure. this is entirely trivial and is no different than the abuse you say you abhor. it's not for health reasons, it's not for economical reasons, the only things that remain are lack of education on the topic and taste pleasure. lack of education can be addressed; taste pleasure is entirely unjustified.
now to the ethics. to quote you, "if a person intentionally causes harm to an animal in an abusive way, then that person should be penalized just as harshly as if they had committed that act against a human". why? i mean i know the reasons you listed, but none of them are sufficient. the only one that's reasonable is your second point, which i want to highlight:
> Abusing animals is wrong in and of itself. It causes pain and suffering, regardless of the species. There is no good reason to do it intentionally.
i agree, this is an excellent argument for veganism. in fact, an extremely well-respected bioethics professor and powerhouse in vegan philosophy is Peter Singer, who wrote a book called "Animal Liberation" on the topic and summarizes its purposes in this paper, it's a good read. his argument goes a bit further, though, and examines equal consideration of interests. Singer proposes that animal pain and suffering should be considered, as should their desire to live, which is just as much as the former. it readily follows that if it is unacceptable to disregard an animal's desire to avoid pain and suffering, it must be unacceptable to disregard an animal's desire to live. similarly, if it is acceptable to disregard and animal's desire to live, it follows that it must be acceptable to disregard their desire not to feel pain and suffering. you cannot have one without the other, they are inseparable.
"well", one could say, "there is an obvious flaw in your argument. if the animal is killed instantly and painlessly, then there is no harm done, for the animal is unaware". this is an untenable position, though, because there is no good reason why this should also not apply to humans. if we replace "animal" with "human" in that argument, what has changed from a moral standpoint? surely we are repulsed by the idea that it would be acceptable to kill a human for any reason so long as it's painless, but why? and particularly, what trait is found in humans that changes the argument? why is it acceptable to do this to an animal, but not a human? is it because the human is more intelligent than the animal? this cannot be, because rights are not distributed to humans based on individual intelligence, so how can we distribute them to animals on that basis and maintain moral integrity? more concretely, if there was a severely mentally disabled individual with similar intelligence to a pig, would it be acceptable to kill and eat that individual? you must be appalled by such a proposition, but there is no justification to be if you find killing the pig acceptable. the only difference between the two is that one happens to be a member of your species. how is this not arbitrary? sure, in the natural state it's necessary to find your own species more valuable than any other, but that is not the case here. from a purely moral standpoint, why would one be acceptable and not the other? what trait is present in that particular human which is not present in the pig that gives you moral justification for killing and eating that pig unnecessarily? remember, the pig and the human are cognitive equals. they exist in a vacuum; nobody knows or cares about either one. why is one acceptable and the other not?
in fact, what about a normal, healthy human grants it the moral right to kill and eat an animal unnecessarily? here is a succinct argument for you to ponder:
> P1 - Humans are of moral value
> P2 - There is no trait absent in animals which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless
> C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in animals, we contradict ourselves by deeming animals valueless
here we establish that animals have moral value. therefore it follows:
> P1 - Animals are of moral value
> P2 - There is no trait absent in animals which if absent in humans would cause us to consider anything short of non-exploitation to be an adequate expression of respect for human moral value.
> C - Therefore without the absence of such a trait in animals, we contradict ourselves by considering anything short of non-exploitation (veganism) to be an adequate expression of respect for animal moral value
the answer here is plain and simple. if you assign any rights to animals, you forfeit your moral justification for killing them unnecessarily. you must name the trait present in animals which if present in a human would make it acceptable to exploit that human. i've already gone over why intelligence is not this trait, for we do not distribute rights or moral value among humans based on intelligence, nor would we find it acceptable to kill and eat a human which lacked the significant intelligence we have over animals, so this clearly is not the trait. species membership cannot be this trait either, since it is arbitrary from a moral perspective. if we discriminate based solely on the fact that we are members of a species and others are not (not citing any specific differences between the species, just the fact that they are different), why not discriminate based on the fact that we are a different sex? or different race? they are all arbitrary.
so, unless you can name that trait, it is impossible to refute veganism and assign animals rights of any kind. even without all this, it is common sense that if you grant animals protections against pain and suffering, you must obviously grant them protections against the taking of their very lives. there are two ways you can go with this. the first is accepting consumption of animal products unnecessarily as in the same category as the senseless abuse you describe. if you were to keep your current view, then you would also need to believe that any meat-eater should suffer the same punishment as would be expected from a murder charge. this is an absurd position, most people eat meat and don't even think twice about it, they do not deserve such punishment for that. the other is to refute this claim to veganism, but that would require you to refute claims to animal rights as well, which would leave your argument in the dust, as in order for animal abuse to be wrong, they need to be moral agents and have some level of rights. if an animal is of the same moral value as a table, then there is no reason for abusing that animal to be any different than abusing a table. either way, your current position can't remain the same.
Alright, I'm gonna give you the advice that I've tried to practice myself and that I have heard from other radical vegans and folks who are poor vegans.
First off, you have to start buying bulk foods. For example, instead of canned beans or lentils, buy bulk beans, bulk lentils, etc. These should be in an ordinary grocery store, like stop and shop, a big box store, whatever. These, along with bulk grains, will provide most of the bulk and calories in your meals. I would recommend finding an indian or asian grocery store near you if you can, and make a plan to go there once. See if you can find bulk brown rice, bulk soybeans, and large sizes of seasonings like soy sauce. Also, shit like beans you have to soak if they are bulk, so just leave them in a bowl while you are at work and cook when you get home. Or get a slow cooker if you can find one thrifted.
Second, buy vegetables as cheaply as you can. I recommend frozen vegetables, cause frozen broccoli is often cheaper than fresh, and the same is true for most other veg. Make sure to compare the prices though, as you can get screwed sometimes. Canned might be cheap too, but I don't know really. Bananas are a good cheap fruit, and you can buy frozen berries and stuff and make smoothies easily. Frozen foods will also be better for you out of season. In season you should try to find farmers markets or farm stands, they might be cheaper, and CSA's can be cheap if you are okay with a lot of the same vegetable.
For vitamins, I would recommend eating a variety of vegetables, have like two or three in each meal (you can make a lot at one time and refrigerate) and then switch that up week to week. For B12 and vitamin D and Iron, I would recommend eating either nooch or purchasing a large bottle of like 250 sublingual (that's imprtant) pills, Vitamin D you can get from the sun if you get like a half hour each day from 10-3 you'll be good in the summer and the body should store some. Soymilk is often fortified with D as well. Iron you can get from green leafy vegetables, and if you eat them with vitamin C you'll absorb more, but cooking in a cast iron pan will also help, you can find these at a thrift store usually. Cook in Canola or olive oil and eat walnuts or ground flaxseeds occasionally for omega 3's.
This cookbook would also probably help you out.
In an average day I eat
Breakfast
Oatmeal cooked in soymilk with 2 tbs of peanut butter
Lunch
Apple, Banana, PB&J, and Pistachios (buy these in bulk)
Dinner
(I can give the recipes I use for these, but they are pretty informal, and all should be served with rice or noodles, which can be bought in bulk for cheap.)
Stirfry, with garlic sauce (include tempeh/tofu, broccoli, onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, and seasonal veggies)
Burrito meal (includes potatoes, beans, broccoli, kale (frozen), onions, peppers, tomatoes)
Lentil Dal (includes lentils, tomatoes, coconut milk (depending on the recipe), and spices, serve with spinach or kale on the side.)
Snacks
Hummus with veggies or crackers
Raisins
Fruit smoothies
Instant Pot should dramatically increase the things you can cook. Stop being so picky. Vegan is the cheapest diet. https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious/dp/1570672571
First of all, good for you two for jumping in, it seems like a huge challenge at first so good for you for taking it on. Having a partner puts you both at a serious advantage, the transition is completely painless.
I would suggest the website vegankit.com for help getting started. I found the site a few weeks after I had been vegan and if nothing else it can point you in the direction of other references. Also I suggest the book eating vegan on $4 a day . I haven't read the book but I have seen it recommended several times on vegan youtube channels. That's another huge resource, youtube has a ton of recipes and tutorials.
I would also try your best to forget things people have told you about veganism especially that it is "expensive". This is simply not true.
Also from what I have researched on soy, (I am not a doctor) just a passionate vegan that wants to encourage you both, consuming normal amounts is perfectly fine for you, anything you can get from too much soy is probably not nearly as painful as the consequences of too much meat (colorectal cancers, bowel cancer, heart disease, etc.) I feel like many of these arguments are just based on things that are spread solely by word of mouth and don't really hold up to argument whenever you look at them critically.
Go into this experience with an open mind, and a positive outlook knowing that you are making a simple and exciting change (read that improvement) in your daily lives and in your health while simultaneously excluding yourselves from supporting mass torture and killings of innocent, sentient individuals.
One other thing, you don't even need that much soy, a lot of the easy pre-made kind of stuff is soy based, but definitely not all of it. I personally eat about as much lentils as I do soy (maybe more?), there are a ton of options. I have been vegan for about six months now, and from what I hear it has never been easier; and I believe it.
You don't have to be vegan chef to cook vegan food. Check out eat vegan on $4 a day and /r/veganrecipes :) Eat lots of soups, dried(not canned) beans, rice and produce. I do a lot of vegan cooking so pm me for recipes! Good luck!
>Except that eating is necessary. Killing someone would only be beneficial in the same way if you're a cannibal.
But you already admitted that meat is a choice. If you can eat something that doesn't require the death of an innocent creature, why in the world would you choose to kill an innocent creature for your meal? I view this as ethically impermissible. In fact, I view meat eaters in roughly the same way as cat torturers. I can't imagine why a person with a choice in the matter would actually choose to kill innocent animals because they taste good. I find it deeply disturbing, and I can't view those people as anything other than soulless monsters. For that reason, I have great difficulty with the idea of dating a meat eater. I wouldn't date a hobo-killer either.
> my goal is to cut out that expense and prepare food at home which is where my plan tends to fall apart.
You can be vegan on four dollars a day.
> I just don't think the OP's tactics are right. Making him hide his food, making him hide when he eats, "rewarding" him by allowing him the use of a room in his own house...it's so degrading. You don't come at someone like that if you are hoping to convert them.
I agree, but I also understand the sentiment. I've been vegan for nearly four years and I approached it initially in roughly the way you seem to be doing now. My problem now is that I have been exposed to too much information. I believe I suffer from mild Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I think many vegans can claim likewise.
The problem, of course, is that we live in an omnivorous world and it's very difficult to find love even without the added constraint of ensuring that our loved ones are vegan. I once had a girl who was interested in me hint that I must get lots of girls because I'm vegan. Girls are often attracted to my dedication when they find out I am vegan, but you've heard enough from me to understand the problem with that. My life would be a lot easier if I just gave up and went back to killing animals, but I would hate myself (to put it mildly). So even though I don't agree with OP's approach, I have a lot of sympathy for her.
>I can agree we can survive, however I do not believe judging if humans are able to thrive on something if that means it is natural.
So you're saying you'd rather choose a diet that is more destructive to animals and the environment, because you deem it to be more natural? Even though the other option is perfectly fine and can't even prove that one diet is more natural.
>Dogs can thrive off of dog food however it is not their natural diet.
What's more important? Thriving on a "unnatural" diet or thriving less on "natural" diet?
I'd argue all the nutrients are "natural" btw.
>It is hard to claim which one is clearly more more ethical as it does need close attention to make sure you have the nutrients you need on a vegan diet.
What nutrients do you get in animal flesh that you can't get in plants?
Like I said, all the major dietetics and health organizations in the world agree that vegan and vegetarian diets can be perfectly fine.
This had been paid close attention to.
>It is also generally more expensive and hard to upkeep which can give people with low income tough results.
This is another weird myth I hear occasionally.
If you go into any grocery store, the most expensive foods tend to be the animal flesh and cheese. The cheapest foods are the beans, rice, potatoes, pasta, lentils, etc.
Since going vegan I actually spend less money on food than I used to, as the majority of my diet consists of ingredients like oats, starches, carbohydrates and vegetables, all of
which are among the cheapest foods you can buy. The only time where vegan food can be more expensive is when buying the substitutes, for example, frozen vegan ‘chicken’ nuggets are still more expensive than non-vegan chicken nuggets, but this is to do with supply and demand. As more people go vegan and buy those products, the cheaper they will become.
Plenty of material out there to help people on a budget. Here's a book on how to live vegan $4 a day.
https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious/dp/1570672571
This book will show you how to eat a vegan diet very inexpensively:
http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious/dp/1570672571/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369194374&sr=8-1&keywords=eat+vegan+on+%244+a+day
In theory that would bring you down to $28 a week.
Out of curiosity are you eating a lot of vegan fake meat products or other packaged foods?
Don't forget "Eat Vegan for $4 a day"!
http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious/dp/1570672571
Your post made me think that we should have our own "Random Acts" sub. There are several specialized ones--Christmas, Food--heck, they even have one just for games! Why not one where people who are already living compassionately can help one another out? I see we have /r/veganexchange but it's more about, well, exchanging.
I'll start--I have about 20 packages of pasta that I'm not supposed to have any more due to stupid GERD :( If you'd like them, PM me the address and I'll send them over
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304125639.htm
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious/dp/1570672571
My apologies if I came off as a dick-- I didn't realize you were honestly asking the question. I thought it was rhetorical (but I answered anyway, heh).
As for the protein powder, GNC probably sells way more whey protein than soy. If you're really interested in protein powder, though, here's 2lbs of soy protein powder that's way cheaper than either of the GNC links: http://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-Iso-Rich-Soy-32/dp/B0013OQG64/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371059605&sr=8-1&keywords=soy+protein+powder
A few other things:
Further, one pound of dry beans is about 12 servings. So one pound of beans has 12 servings x 8g protein = 96g protein for one pound of beans. Finally, the price you quoted is far more expensive than most canned beans, which are more expensive than bagged (dry) beans (see http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post.aspx?post=0d2d3ebc-1ee5-4734-a34a-53ad26b5e3e7).
See this info sheet for nutrition facts on pinto beans: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/facts/hhpfacts/New_HHPFacts/Beans/HHFS_BEANS_PINTO_DRY_A914_Final.pdf
There's vegan for $4 a day. I can get you a pirated copy if you want it. I don't know what your budget is, but you can follow this and then spend the rest on proteins like TVP and seitan as others have mentioned.
Have you seen this book http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1570672571?pc_redir=1405488280&robot_redir=1 eat vegan for $4 a day?
google is your friend.
"eating vegan for cheap at trader joe's" - first result
"cheap vegan recipes" - first result
"vegan budget recipes" - first result
this way you can make a list based on stores around you & recipes tailored to your tastes/skill level. i love throwing veggies in a skillet with some tofu and brown rice, or black bean burritos with whatever veggies i have on hand. good luck, you got this!
edit - this book is called "Eating Vegan on $4 A Day" and I think the author is on social media!
> "And what if Aliens space bats came down and killed humans because they said they weren't proper anarchists like the aliens, would you support them then?" Don't be fucking absurd, even with the microscopic chance that aliens do somehow exist and would come down with a taste for human flesh, of course I'd not support them because I'm a fucking human.
I'm highlighting a hypothetical to show that in a different frame of species reference, you wouldn't hold the same position of needless inter-species consumption. If you hold that a being with higher sentience or intelligence or moral value than humans, you would then have NO problem of being eaten, by the same logic you apply to sentient animals. I see no resolution to this on your end.
> You seem to forget humans are sentient, animals are not, and even if they were they aren't even the same species as us anyways.
Animals are sentient, this has been shown extensively, since they do experience a subjective experience, which is the crux of sentience.
If you want to apply a sentience argument to plants, then we agree because plants do not have qualia, nor can they because they do not have brains to create subjective experience. For animals, again this argument does not hold up.
> Because you can stand against murder and decrease the amount of it.
Ok well I can stand against climate change and help decrease the amount of it too.
> Climate change you can put off for a few years at best or end if you held the entire world hostage and forced everyone to live in mud huts.
Ok well back to murder then, everyone is going to die anyway, so why do anything about it?
> Which, once more, goes back to my point of Climate change being impossible to stop.
>....Secondly even if we did abolish it, even you just admitted that can't actually "stop" Climate Change, merely slow it down.
Ok well to be clear, I agree that climate change is real and there will be climate change that will happen over the next 100 years at least. However, this is no justification to not to ANYTHING about it or to not do anything to mitigate it.
If you are about to get into a car crash going 50 miles an hour, and you're going to hit a wall and you know you're going to hit the wall, are you going to hit the brakes? Or the accelerator?
> You somehow think you can abolish a major aspect of humans diets for centuries and enforce such an absurd law without immediately being toppled, it's sheer idiocy.
Ok so you're now appealing to tradition to justify eating meat
Well we could have applied the same thing to slavery at one point in human society, yet this would not be a valid justification for it. Tradition is not a valid justification.
> Which once more goes back to what I was saying: it's impossible to actually stop it without a massive quality of life decrease.
What is the "massive quality of life decrease"? Vegan diets are generally healthier than vegetarian diets and omnivorous diets, with an abolition of animal agriculture, we can feed more people in the world, reducing world hunger. Hell, in the U.S alone, we could feed an extra 800 million.
> "I don't understand, why do you think the idea of being completely poor"
So veganism makes you poor? Thats weird.... because you can eat vegan for about $4 a day
> dominated by a foreign culture and people
Again, I see no causation or justification that if we go vegan, then China wins. This just sounds like xenophobia as a justification to continue the needless suffering of animals.
> and all of these sacrifices we expect you to willingly make doing absolutely nothing but giving a few of us a few possibly extra years on this world is somehow a bad deal?"
.... and again, reducing greenhouse emissions, increasing global food security, reducing water consumption ("For producing 1 kg of cheese we need for instance 5000-5500 kg of water and for 1 kg of beef we need in average 16000 kg of water"), and huge reduction of deforestation and loss of biodiversity, caused by meat-centric diets.... just to name a few.
Eat Vegan on $4 a Day
You can't afford canned beans, bananas, rice and other grains, pasta and potatoes but can afford animal products? Read this or at least this.