Is living as a vegan expensive in India?
While it might seem ironical that excluding something from a lifestyle adds expenses to it, or makes it expensive, some strongly believe this to be true in the case of the vegan lifestyle. When I asked Vikas, a student, if he had to incur a load of expenses after moving to a vegan lifestyle, he said,
When I used to visit the gym, my diet was the cheapest ever – it was approximately just rupees 1,000. If I were not a vegan, I would have easily incurred close to rupees 3,000 [towards expensive supplements, eggs and so on, as against simple home-cooked and protein packed plant-based food]. This level of simplicity and affordability are the major advantages I have found.”
Can we attach a price to the lives and freedom of animals? Deciding to go vegan means taking a moral stand against all use of animals. Changing what we consume and buy can happen in a couple of basic ways. In the context of food, first, we must be open to identifying all that is already vegan around us and by using simple DIYs, veganizing what is not. Secondly, we could try replacements; although not necessary, we can make these at home and if not making at home, then be willing to spend to buy them. In this article, I will expand on these aspects, which will hopefully help see how inexpensive veganism is. I will also analyze why some products come across as expensive and how it is totally up to us to avoid them. However, avoiding them should not stop anyone from going vegan.
Home-made and DIY products are often ignored
Yes, it is true that some of the packaged vegan products available off the shelf cost higher than the average spending. For example, people consider vegan milk such as almond milk and soya milk to be on the expensive side. However, we can make most of these products at home with minimal effort and just a little bit of initial patience. There are plenty of videos on how to make plant-based milk, curd, cheese and so on. There are several bloggers and websites such as Ofdonkeysanddhokla that demonstrate how to prepare vegan food at home. The content in websites like these is built to be generic using ingredients affordable for everyone.
Take cashew butter as another example – of course, it could cost a few hundreds or even above INR 500 for a 250 gram jar if you buy it from the supermarket. On the other hand, one could simply buy 250 grams of cashew for about INR 150 from the same supermarket. Making cashew butter at home would sure need you to spend about 10 minutes to clean up thereafter, but you would be saving a lot of money! It is nearly impossible for any person to not undergo a change curve while adopting a lifestyle change. One could easily excel at these recipes in terms of both quality as well as speed, with practice.
Being vegan does not need expensive alternatives all the time!
The word that commonly pops up in the mind on thinking of the vegan lifestyle is “alternatives” – are they available, are they affordable, are they beneficial, etc. This is because we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned into believing that we must have alternatives. It is a fair ask that when you are not using or consuming a certain type of product, you immediately think of a replacement for it. However, if you look keenly into the habit of replacing one thing with the other, not all of it is an utmost necessity.
For instance, some people give up certain vegetables for religious reasons, some more give them up for health reasons. This giving up does not result in them actively looking for similar replacements for those vegetables or fruits. As long as the meal fulfils their nutritional requirement and tastes good, they move on with any other meal made of any other vegetable or fruit.
When asked if vegan eating is expensive with his strict discipline of eating healthy, a friend, Mahesh, says,
I don’t have any income right now and I’m living on my savings from my ex-corporate job. It’s important for me that my savings don’t get depleted before I find a stable source of income from doing things I love. I get most of my nutritional requirements from what I can afford, picking the cheapest item from each checklist of Michael Gregor’s Daily Dozen diet that I follow, which is what most middle-class families are used to doing on a daily basis with everything. All my nutritional needs are met with less than Rs. 4000 per month, which accounts for all the beans, grains, seeds, nuts, veggies, fruits and supplements.”
Making vegan alternatives at home is easy and not expensive!
Even half the conviction that drives other lifestyle changes is sufficient to adopt a vegan lifestyle successfully. This conditioned response of needing “alternatives” (and shunning veganism if not using alternatives), will no longer seem like such a necessity, with determination. If vegan butter is not available in the city or within your proximity, it is okay to move on since it is not something that is necessary for survival. Find some other topping for your bread or move on to some other vegan breakfast idea.
On the other hand, if soya milk is not affordable, making it at home could be a good option since it is a nutritionally healthy vegan product. Cracking the difference between necessity on one hand and comfort/luxury on the other, can sometimes be the key to having one less reason to not go vegan. This is because a vegan lifestyle does not mean deprivation, it only means an attempt to lead an ethical lifestyle.
Can we justify our spend on other expensive products?
Veganism has been under the magnifying glass for quite sometime in the context of vegan food and vegan lifestyle being too expensive. Let’s look at our expense pattern *without* including the vegan products. When it comes to branded footwear or branded phones, although we are sometimes aware that the brand does not yield as much benefit as we pay for it, we still make the purchase. We do not mind splurging on some of the most extravagant parties and meals in some of the most expensive restaurants. It will not be wrong to say that it is possible to lead a vegan lifestyle in India by adding just a few hundreds every month to our expenses.
When inquired if he finds vegan products expensive overall, Mahesh, says,
Being a vegan is not just about what we eat, and most of the clothes and other household and work products we buy and use are already accidentally vegan, from shoes to hats, wallets and sweaters, everything has synthetic or other natural alternatives which are also coincidentally inexpensive compared to their animal-based counterparts.”
Economical Indian vegan cooking
Of all the places in the world, veganism in India is one of the least expensive and effortless affairs. Consider this – the vegetarian food we eat at home primarily consists of rice, dal, roti, sabzi (curry), pickle, salad, and curd. If we are able to skip the curd or replace it with home-made vegan curd made from peanuts, there is no other obstacle standing in the way of following a vegan diet. Most of us follow this diet at home anyway (unless we are heavy meat-eaters mainly surviving on meat daily); hence there is minimal amount of change in terms of including vegan food products and excluding non-vegan products. If anything, cutting ghee and expensive paneer out of our diet (and replacing it with healthy, inexpensive, and cholesterol-free tofu when needed) should only result in a drop in expenses!
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Consider other factors why vegan products come across as expensive
Why do some vegan products fall in the higher price range?
- If we bring economics into the picture, the concept of higher the demand, lower the price might not be new to many of us. For example, idlies in the southern part of India are usually vegan and are available at a pretty affordable price. This is because there is sufficient demand in the market for idlies. This enables the restaurants/carts to cover their costs while still maintaining impressive profit margins. However, products that are only now increasingly gaining popularity as a part of the vegan lifestyle such as almond milk, vegan cheese, and mock meats are yet to arrive at the scale of production (driven by demand) that can help them break even at the least. Until that point, it is economically reasonable for them to recover any extra costs from the existing sales.
- A few vegan restaurants and stores are sometimes located in prime areas to cater to and be accessible to the elite group as well (this also brings more attention to the vegan lifestyle and thereby aids in promoting it). This means that they incur additional costs in rentals and utility bills that eventually are understandably charged back to the customers.
- The ingredients used by many vegan entrepreneurs come at a cost, in general, especially if they are willing to maintain very high standards in all possible ways. Examples are natural food colors instead of artificial food colors that are harmful for the body, environment-friendly material to replace leather, and so on. These products often come at a premium price owing to the shortage in their production and availability. Conscious consumers who are willing to make specific purchases such as these will need to pay for the resource costs involved.
- Long-term health benefits should be non-negotiable for everyone. By eating vegan, imagine all the medical bills we can avoid with a shift to a low-cholesterol, rich in fiber and vitamins, nutrition-filled diet! Plus, think of all the inconvenience that we can avoid in future by spending days on the hospital bed. For example, most popular vegan nutrition bars contain several ingredients that are extremely energy-boosting and highly nutritious such as nuts, oats, grains, dried fruits, etc. Consuming some of these could lead to immense health benefits in the long run by ensuring that the body gets enough calcium, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats.
Vegan and expensive: Conclusion
As discussed earlier, several social media channels now exist just to help people make the switch to a vegan lifestyle easy and affordable. They are trying everything from making the simplest recipes using basic ingredients to the most lavish dishes aimed at satiating human cravings. Such content challenge the myth that living vegan is expensive. Videos by the popular YouTube channel Pick Up Limes is a great example to show how vegan bloggers and youtubers have been experimenting with delicious vegan food while trying to make it affordable for the majority. Further, nothing can make it easier than having the support of India-specific channels such as MaddyKoko and Vegananu to veganize your palate, fulfilling both nutritional requirements as well as cravings.
If animals could retort and ask us questions such as, “why should I let you steal my milk?” or “why should I let you touch my skin and rip it off so that you can stay warm?” we would not have valid answers. It is only because their language is incomprehensible to us, we continue to exploit them in all possible ways. We can certainly make a genuine effort towards change with the ever-increasing options and alternatives, we just need to make informed choices.
About the author, Sowmya Lakshmi
“I have been vegan since 2013 and it originated from my love for animals as I could no longer make sense of the disconnect between my love for them on one hand and my actions that were contributing to their harm on the other hand. I eventually decided to take it upon myself to spread the message of veganism as widely as possible as I realized that veganism paves the way to animal liberation.”
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