Plant-based food has many options.
There are countless dietary choices that could be healthy, unhealthy, cheap, expensive, low-calorie, high-calorie, low-protein, high-protein, etc.
This page is about ways to eat well with at least 95% of protein/calories coming from plants.
Despite a lot of misinformation out there,
It is possible to meet all of your nutritional needs by eating plants(...)( meaning: without relying on animal products. These plant-based diets still do include low-cost supplements). It also doesn't have to be expensive.
To eat more healthy and more cheaply than most people do,
Use these principles as a guide:
Get most of your protein from dried peas, lentils, and beans.
Use these to make soups - eat soup with every meal.
Get most of your calories from basically anything you want.
Cheapest options include grains(...)( i.e. rice, pasta, oats, cornmeal etc ), potatoes, oils, any baked goods (even sweets). [Note about carbs]~ For most people, carbohydrate-rich foods should be okay as long as you exercise and include all the nutritious foods in these guidelines.
~ When in doubt, choose whole grains.
~ Not suited for people with diabetes.
Even junk food is also okay, surprisingly. The overall diet will still be healthy, if you eat the soups and take the multivitamin.
This doesn't mean you should go crazy and always binge on carbs & fats(...)( because if you eat more calories than you burn, you will eventually gain weight ), but you still need some. And if you only eat lentils & vegetables(...)( which do still have some carbs, just relatively less ), you won't get enough calories (despite getting enough protein and other nutrients). See nutrition examples below.
Other useful foods include sunflower seeds, peanut butter - these have both protein and calories.
Include root vegetables such as carrots, onions, beets and garlic - whichever are cheap. They can be added to the soups.
Buy fresh fruits occasionally, when they go on sale.
This diet doesn't rely on them for vitamins - but over-ripe fruits have a probiotic effect which can greatly improve digestion.
This is essential for any diet that doesn't include massive amounts of expensive fresh fruits & vegetables.
Nutrients lost when extending the shelf life of fruits & vegetables: Vitamin C, and to some extent certain B vitamins.
The absolute cheapest possible diet would be just grains and legumes. These don't naturally have any vitamin C to begin with, and a few other nutrients are lacking as well. But a multivitamin would fill in almost everything that is missing. [Nutrition calculator example coming soon]
The human body needs over 30 different nutrients; most people are lacking in at least a few.
Vegan or not, most people could benefit from a cheap(...)( typically amounts to about 15 cents per day )multivitamin. You will likely feel a difference.
If this doesn't seem balanced on first glance, see some of the examples below - it is.
Note: These examples may not be perfect, but they are far more balanced than a typical diet in most countries.
Note: You can also play around with the nutrition calculator to analyze your own options.
Nutrition examples
cheap home cooking
A balanced diet with beans, root vegetables, and other ordinary foods.
Calcium is supplemented too (typically costs about 10 cents per day), because the cheap foods aren't naturally high in calcium.
This analysis shows the raw ingredients. Cooking instructions / recipes will be added to this wiki soon. In general, when you boil any food, do not drain the water; keep it for the soup. You don't want to lose some of the minerals (nutrients) (...)( relevant info: Heat doesn't destroy minerals(...)( scientific reason: the minerals are elements (on the periodic table); the vitamins are molecules that can break down at high temperatures ), but it does destroy some vitamins. The multivitamin fully compensates for this: Most multivitamin tablets have 100% the recommended daily intake of all B vitamins and vitamin C, which are the ones that can be lost in cooking. ).
Yes it's all vegan!
junk food method
Yes, it is possible to construct healthy diets with junkfood, in some cases. This is one example.
If you really want to avoid processed veggie burgers, you can skip it, eat a bit more of the other foods, and get your B12 from nutritional yeast.
For maximum absorption of nutrients from the raw kale, make it a smoothie.
typical western diet
Not an example of the principles above. This tab is included for comparison.
This section has not been filled in yet.
Rationale
Reasons for choosing plant-based:
Humanitarian & environmental:
Feeding crops to farm animals is a net loss of food. This makes it harder to feed the world. It also worsens all the environmental impacts of food: more crops have to be grown; more land is needed - thus more habitat loss.
Factory farms (where animals are treated very badly) meet most of the world's demand for meat, milk and eggs. Less-cruel farming practices exist, but are less productive. To get rid of factory farms, we're going to have to consume fewer animal products. (...)( And maybe lab-grown meat could change this one day, but it's not scalable enough yet. )
Health:
Vegan or not, either way it's possible to get all the nutrients you need.
Plant-based eating might have additional benefits via consuming more antioxidants and fewer carcinogens. [RESEARCH needed]
Just make sure you actually get enough nutrition. A plant-based diet done wrong will cause your health to suffer. Hopefully this page has enough guidelines to prevent this.
In summary
If people ate fewer animal products(...)( this does not require 100% veganism, but let's just suppose if people collectively decide to cut out 2/3 of all animal consumption (changes would be biggest in developed countries, as that's where most meat is currently consumed) ),
With all of this, it also helps to reduce food waste(the gap between production and consumption)(...)( Part of this involves personal choices. Part of this involves systemic changes, especially with regards to farm subsidies).
FAQ
Veganism is a heated topic. This section can hopefully clear up some misconceptions on both sides of the debate.
If you want to add more Q&A to this section, please join the 💬discussiondiscussion.
Don't vegans eat mostly salad and greens with little protein & calories?
Not necessarily. See examples above.
Does eating this many beans make you fart all the time?
Not if the beans are cooked well enough. Gas might also be a sign that your gut needs more variety of bacteria to digest the variety of plants you eat. Include more probiotic foods such as over-ripe fruits or saurkraut. It may help to eat them towards the end of the meal.
Aren't plant proteins less digestible?
Not if they're cooked/blended properly and you have good gut flora. [new page needed]
Aren't chickens needed on farms to control pests by eating the bugs that infest crops?
Sometimes yes. However, this alone wouldn't even come close to producing as much chicken as people eat.
What about fertilizer? Don't we need animals to fertilize the soil by pooping?
Animals don't add minerals to the overall system. They can only poop out whatever minerals were already there in the soil/plants. Also, mass production of meat/dairy/eggs requires more crops, which just increases the need for fertilizer even more.
Q:What to do with all the animals if everyone goes vegan?
A:
Option 1: Keep them until they die of old age.
Option 2: Keep slaughtering them at the same rate they currently are.
In either case, the farmers stop breeding more animals(...)( except to maintain the species by keeping around ~0.1% of their population(...)( maybe that's more in the realm of scientists, conservationists, zookeepers etc. - but no matter who does it, it's viable)).
In either case, people would still eat meat for another year or so, after pledging to go vegan.
Maybe the "pledge" part is weird and hypothetical, but so is the idea of everyone going vegan tomorrow.
If everyone gradually(...)( as in, people slowly phase out meat in their diets - or people go "cold turkey" vegan but each starting from a different day - or anything in between: there wouldn't need to be a whole lot of coordination between people necessarily; just a general trend of being more plant-based )went vegan, there'd be no "shock in demand"(...)( as economists would say ), and thus no "what do we do with the animals". Farmers already control how many animals are bred. They would just breed fewer of them.
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