German Households Could Save Over €1,000 a Year on a Healthier, More Sustainable Diet [with more plants], Study Finds (vegconomist.com)

submitted 1 week ago by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/germany@feddit.org

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[-] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

That is a common misconception. The costs are generally lower both in real world and modeling. Local or seasonal has less to do with it. Things like rice, tofu, beans, lentils, etc are generally cheaper. Things like beyond meat are only pricier because of R&D costs and economies of scale. Even still those have reached parity in a number of countries

Evidence from studies published between 2000 and 2025 indicates that whole-food PBDs [plant-based diets] are generally associated with lower food expenditures than omnivorous diets across diverse geographic contexts

https://www.academia.edu/3067-1345/3/1/10.20935/AcadNutr8137#sec7-Acad.Nutri.-3-319439

For some specific studies

It found that in high-income countries:

• Vegan diets were the most affordable and reduced food costs by up to one third.

• Vegetarian diets were a close second.

• Flexitarian diets with low amounts of meat and dairy reduced costs by 14%.

• By contrast, pescatarian diets increased costs by up to 2%.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study

For some studies looking at spending around the world

Compared to meat eaters, results show that “true” vegetarians do indeed report lower food expenditures

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915301488?via=ihub [US]

Based on primary data (n = 1040) collected through an online survey, representative of the Portuguese population, through logistic regressions, it was possible to conclude that plant-based consumers, particularly vegan, are associated with lower food expenditures compared to omnivorous consumers. In fact, plant-based consumers are shown to spend less than all other consumers assessed

https://agrifoodecon.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40100-022-00224-9

[-] drre@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thanks for the reply and links. Thats really interesting! I just restarted eating meats after a 10 year hiatus and apparently i budget meat in the oh-i-feel-fancy-today budget. It seems i misattributed the effect of inflation specifically to veggies. Anyways, here is the table from from Springmann et al 2021 (cited in the oxford link above). I converted 2017 US $ to 2026 EUR (shady, i know) and then to EUR/kg to get a somewhat familiar metric. It seems somewhat plausible:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:95ab5488-5945-4e83-8871-9c54fa2943e5

| | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | staples | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.266212 | 0.23160444 | 2.3160444 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | vegetables | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.289675 | 0.25201725 | 2.5201725 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | fruits | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.35201 | 0.3062487 | 3.062487 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | fish | DEU | 2017 | mean | 1.70926 | 1.4870562 | 14.870562 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | sugar | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.130812 | 0.11380644 | 1.1380644 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | legumes | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.343277 | 0.29865099 | 2.9865099 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | poultry | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.412988 | 0.35929956 | 3.5929956 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | pork | DEU | 2017 | mean | 1.18281 | 1.0290447 | 10.290447 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | eggs | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.282612 | 0.24587244 | 2.4587244 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | nuts | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.732499 | 0.63727413 | 6.3727413 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | dairy | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.209272 | 0.18206664 | 1.8206664 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | oils | DEU | 2017 | mean | 0.660179 | 0.57435573 | 5.7435573 | | SSP2_BASE | USD/100g | beef&lamb | DEU | 2017 | mean | 1.34651 | 1.1714637 | 11.714637 |

Note. (in case it might be useful) Table was converted from selection in libreoffice calc to markdown via

$ xclip -out -selection "clipboard" | ./tsv2md.awk | xclip -selection "clipboard"

with ./tsv2md.awk from https://gaultier.github.io/blog/tip_of_day_3.html:

#!/usr/bin/env -S awk -F '\t' -f

{
    printf("|");
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
        # Note: if a field contains the character `|`,
        # it will mess up the table.
        # In this case, we should replace this character
        # by something else e.g. `,`:
        gsub(/\|/, ",", $i);
        printf(" %s |", $i);
    } 
    printf("\n");
} 

NR==1 { # Output the delimiting line
    printf("|");
    for(i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
        printf("
***
| ");
    }
    printf("\n");
}

[-] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Inflation is actually significantly higher on many animal products, so the gap is almost certainly stronger than that study too

Partially because of problems everyone has been warning about that the industry around the world has happily ignored in order to keep growing. For instance, for beef, drought related to climate change has been a big factor. For various different types of meat because of disease which these system help create and spread

And increases to plant prices affect meat more because meat production inherently requires more plants for feed (it takes a lot of feed per farm animal since most of the feed energy is lost)

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026

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