Can You Do Vegetarianism On A Budget?

The household budget represents a substantial part of most families' expenditure and of that the greatest part of the bill is for food. Meat probably forms the largest part of that food bill too, so you would be forgiven for thinking that you could save a lot of money by giving up meat. You would suppose that becoming a vegetarian would save you some money.

However, that is not always true. You can save money by taking up vegetarianism on a budget, yet it does not necessarily work out that in that manner without some effort on behalf of the vegetarian. The fact is that vegetables, on their own, often seem boring to someone who used to get pleasure from a good steak or barbecued spare ribs, so food manufacturers have come up with all manner of accoutrements to liven up vegetarian dishes yet these are not usually all that cheap.

Even some of the fairly regular vegetarian staple foodstuffs like nuts are not necessarily cheap, particularly if you want variety. After all, you can not just eat salted peanuts, not that all that salt would be good for you anyway but when you begin to buy macademia nuts or pistachio nuts for a change, you will find them dearer than meat.

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Eating out at vegetarian restaurants is also pretty expensive, because the market is relatively small. There are not many restaurants that refuse to cook meat and the percentage of the populace that is vegetarian is still fairly small. This all leads to higher charges, yet that is if you can find a vegetarian restaurant outside a large city. A sandwich bar is likely the nearest thing you will get to it in most towns but there will be meat on the premises too.

The price of vegetarian food is made worse if you insist on eating organically grown food. Eating just organically grown food can add 30% to your food bill constructing vegetarianism on a budget impossible. So what can you do to reduce the cost of your food bill if you are a vegetarian?

The first thing to do is make a decision if you really have faith in the whole organic story. Some do, some do not. Either fashion, you could try increasing the costly vegetables in your garden, your greenhouse or in an allotment. If you can not do that, you could offer to purchase these vegetables from friends, if they will grow them for you. Numerous pensioners take up gardening but many pensioners would be happy of the extra income.

Another fashion is to shop at farms or farmers' markets. I know that time is valuable, and if you can just go to such a position once a week, you could purchase enough food for three or four days without it deteriorating. Buying in bulk like that should get cheaper too. A sack of potatoes will last a month but it is far cheaper than purchasing a few pounds at a time from the supermarket.

Another method of reducing costs is not to purchase your fresh fruit and vegetables from supermarkets at all, because it easy to be enticed to buy the latest fad fruit or vegetable from halfway around the world at an exaggerated cost 'just for a change'. Stick to locally grown fruit and vegetables that are in season and you might just about manage vegetarianism on a budget.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several topics, and is now involved with low carb vegetarian recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our site at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com