Personally, I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said that it was pricey because by now, I’d have a whole lot of money to fund that supposedly expensive lifestyle of mine. I’d heard this myth so many times, that I just kind of accepted it as a fact and I figured that I’d budget a little differently and cut corners elsewhere.

But when I made the change, my grocery bills didn’t go up. In fact, they went down—way down. And I’m not alone. One study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found that vegetarians spend an average of $750 less on food per year than their meat-eating counterparts, a number that’s likely even higher today.

Why? Put simply, meat is expensive, and over the last 10 years, the prices of animal products like beef and seafood have increased by more than 40 percent. And the better the quality, the higher the prices. Many plant-based sources of protein, on the other hand, are incredibly affordable. “Beans, lentils, chickpeas, and other legumes are the cheapest sources of protein on the planet,” says Robert Graham, MD, an internal, functional, and integrative medicine specialist and the founder of FRESH Med NYC at Physio Logic in Brooklyn. “One bag of beans can last a family of two for days. And if you add whole grains to them—brown rice, quinoa, barley—you have the perfect meal with protein, complex carbohydrates, and all nine essential amino acids.”

And let’s not forget the other stars of the show in your plant-based diet: the vegetables and fruits that provide even more vitamins and minerals, as well as antioxidants. Yes, buying organic produce can get pricey, but not everything you eat has to be organic. Dr. Graham says that certain foods are worth it, though—namely, whatever tops the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen.

This year, that dubious distinction goes to strawberries, spinach and kale, so go organic with those items if possible. For the others, you can keep costs down with non-organic items at the grocery store or, even better, by buying locally. CSAs can be an affordable option, and one that is perhaps even better for the planet than choosing organic since the food doesn’t have to travel. Or, look to Misfits Market, a website that sells and ships boxes of misfit produce, which may look odd but taste just the same, at nearly 40 percent less than grocery store prices.

The real culprits in a high vegan grocery bill? Pre-packaged foods, as well as mock meats and cheeses. Those pre-packaged foods aren’t a whole lot different than what non-vegans buy…except, you know, they’re vegan. They all cost more to some degree because they’re convenient, and you pay a premium for that convenience. And while we’re on the topic, it’s important to note that those healthy-sounding foods might not be as healthy as they seem. There’s a good chance that they’re overly processed and preservative-laden, which means that if you’re not careful, you could be adding a ton of sodium, GMOs, and herbicides into your diet. “[Some products] hide behind the banner of ‘natural,’” says Dr. Graham. “Try to buy foods without labels—the whole, real foods.”

How to Save Money on a Vegan Diet

You can save a bundle and eat healthier, of course, by flexing your own culinary skills. Dr. Graham, who is also a certified chef, says that plant-based cooking lends itself particularly well to batch cooking since you can cook up a bunch of beans, legumes and grains at the same time, but vary up your meals with a few simple tweaks. “That’s the beauty of understanding your herbs and spices,” he says.

“You can make a bean and grain bowl Mexican very easily and also an Indian one.” He’s also a fan of Clean-Out-Your-Fridge Stew, which is exactly what it sounds like—throwing all of the leftover produce in your fridge into a broth base of onions, garlic and celery, then stewing it down. No wasted food, no wasted money, and, of course, it’s delicious.

Making your own non-dairy milk is also a great way to save money, since alternative milk products do tend to be more expensive than factory-produced cow’s milk (though on par with organic versions). While this may sound daunting, it’s a lot easier than you think. “A Vitamix is the best, but you don’t even need one—you just need a good blender,” says Dr. Graham. “You put raw cashews into boiling water, let it sit for 15 minutes, and then you blend it up. You have cashew milk in 15 minutes.” You also make your own oat milk, rice milk and almond milk.

But there’s so much more to the cost of a diet than the amount you spend on groceries every week. The bigger picture encompasses the rising healthcare costs associated with eating too much meat and other animal products. One recent study estimated that if Americans actually ate according to the recommended dietary guidelines, the country could save $180 billion in healthcare costs — and $250 billion if they gave up animal products altogether.

And let’s not forget the savings and other benefits that you, as an individual, could reap. A slew of research extols the positive effects of plant-based diets on everything from weight loss to your mood to disease prevention and intervention. “Vegan diets may protect against multiple chronic illnesses,” says Dr. Graham. “They’ve been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and hypertension. You either pay the farmer now or you pay the doctor later.”

For more research-backed advice, visit The Beet’s Ask the Expert articles. 

The post Is It Expensive To Be Plant-Based? Quite the Opposite, It Turns Out appeared first on The Beet.

We know that giving up meat, dairy and all animal products make an enormous impact on our personal health and wellbeing. Studies have found that plant-based or vegan eaters live longer, have a 32 percent lower risk of heart disease, and a 25 percent lower risk of premature death from any cause. But can we really make an impact on the planet? Just by ourselves?

For that matter what difference does my plastic straw or plastic bag make? These are the kinds of things that we wonder, even as we here at The Beet have given up meat, dairy, and all animal products for the sake of our health and the health of Mother Earth. We want to benefit our bodies, the planet and for that matter animals, but when you ponder the impact of our food choices on climate change, the question is daunting.

Consider this: Meat production increases carbon emissions, water use, and land usage, and is exponentially more costly on our natural resources than any other type of food production. We also know that climate change is accelerating at an alarming rate.

If one person gave up meat and dairy for a year, how would that impact their carbon footprint? How would it slow global warming?

Here Is How Going Plant-Based Is Healthier for You and the Planet:

If one person gave up eating meat or dairy for just one meal a day for an entire year that would have the same impact as not driving 3,000 miles, or LA to New York, according to Suzy Amis Cameron, who launched One Meal a Day For the Planet. She famously enlisted Oprah to try it for a month and the media maven found it easy to do.

If one person eats just one plant-based meal a day they will save 200,000 gallons of water, Cameron continues. Multiply that by three meals a day and the savings grows to the equivalent carbon emissions as driving nearly 10,000 miles and not needing to use up 600,000 gallons of water in one year.

A new study also shows that people who get their proteins from plants have healthier bio-markers for heart disease, are slimmer, and have more antioxidants in their bodies, a result of eating more fruits and vegetables. These are all indicators of overall health and wellness.

Going plant-based for just one month can make an impact.

If one person goes vegan for one month, they can save 620 pounds of harmful carbon emissions, and save 913 square feet of rainforest (since these get caught down to raise beef cattle) and 33,481 gallons of water.

If you simply skip one pound of beef, you are saving 1799 gallons of water, says The LA Times, which is equivalent to flushing a toilet 514 times. The average American man eats 4.8 ounces of meat a day, and the average woman eats about 3 ounces per day, according to the CDC. So if you average it out, if one person gave up meat for one year, that would mean saving 328,500 gallons of water saved. or 93,857 flushes.

“Food is one of the biggest impacts an individual can have,” says nutrition scientist Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., professor of medicine at Stanford. “If you add up all the greenhouse gases from the miles you drive and the electricity you use, food has a bigger impact.”

“You change a lightbulb once every six months, but you eat every day. When can you start eating differently?” he asked. “Now, this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow.”

Food production is the fourth-largest producer of Greenhouse Gases and makes up 11.1 percent of global emissions, and meat is the most impactful on our natural resources, according to the landmark EAT-Lancet Commission, published in 2019.

Eat Plants, Live Longer. And Yes, You Will Get Enough Protein

Protein from plants is now believed to be healthier than any other source, according to a new study that shows people who get most of their protein from plant sources live longer. Gardner notes that most Americans—97.5 percent—are getting more than double the recommended daily allowance (RDA), which is actually not healthy. Just because you need protein does not mean that you need a firehose of it, and many of the fruits and vegetables you’re eating contain enough protein by themselves to supply your body with the healthiest levels. In fact, he says, you can get all of the amino acids from plants and grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes that you can from animals. Plus, a more plant-based diet can combat obesity and diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, making eating mostly plants a healthier choice.

In a paper published in Nutrition Reviews, Gardner and his colleagues posited this hypothetical scenario: If Americans ate 25 percent less protein overall,m and shifted 25 percent of our animal-protein intake to plant-based protein, we would meet 8 percent of the Paris Agreement climate-change goal. “That [50 percent] shift would lower greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent if you’re just thinking of the contribution from food,” he says.

Think About How Social Norms Shift. Meat is the New Smoking.

Gardner believes that this is where your individual contribution can have an even greater impact: to help change social norms. How? Just think about something like smoking or not wearing seatbelts, he says. Years ago, they were common practices, but today, things are very different.

“Right now, it’s a social norm to go to a summer barbecue and have hamburgers and steak,” he says. “But if a bunch of people were eating grains and beans with a Moroccan flavor—other people would start to think, ‘Wow, a bunch of my family and friends are eating differently. Maybe I’ll try that.’ It’s not that we have to get everybody to change—it’s about getting enough people to make a change.”

 The Protein Flip Starts When Food Is “Unapolgeticallhy Delicious”

He stresses that everyone doesn’t have to go vegan to make a significant difference. Any shift toward more plants is beneficial. In fact, Gardner has been working with the Culinary Institute of America on a program called Menus of Change, which includes something called “the protein flip.” It’s basically an extension of what he describes above, where restaurant chefs focus on legumes, grains, and vegetables as a meal’s “unapologetically delicious” focus. Meat, if there is meat, is just one small component.

“We would get more people to eat a lot less meat if we focused on taste and how great it was going to be and a global fusion of flavors,” he says. Menus of Change even has a spin-off that focuses on university dining halls, where “you retrain the taste of young adults who aren’t yet parents and aren’t yet in the workforce, but then they leave and that’s their social norm for the rest of their lives. If that becomes a social norm, I think we’ll get the shift.”

While chefs have the power to change palates, each of us can individually choose what we order, or buy, or eat. Every meal, or month, or year makes a difference in our health and the health of our environment.

The post Eating One Plant-Based Meal a Day is Like Not Driving from New York to LA appeared first on The Beet.

While some of that ad-acquired knowledge may seem dated now, that last tidbit has stubbornly stuck. In fact, very few people seem to question the idea that milk is a dietary must-have, whether they’re from Generation X, Y or Z. We have been told time and again that milk is the way to get the recommended amount of calcium for proper bone health, and this lesson is reinforced every day with kids at almost every meal. In short, our thoughts on milk have been shaped by marketing—and money. Lots of it. Millions are spent every year in advertising, government subsidies and lobbying by the dairy industry.

Sure, cow’s milk is an easy way to get calcium—you can get around 30 percent of your daily recommended intake from a single glass—but it’s not the only way. “With careful planning, attention and [possibly] supplementation, you can absolutely meet your calcium needs on a strict vegan or vegetarian diet,” says Brooklyn-based dietitian Maya Feller, RD, who recommends a simple daily multivitamin for that supplementation. “You can actually meet your needs if you have a balanced diet that is close to the dietary guidelines.”

Milk Isn’t the Only Calcium Game in Town. The real clincher is that milk and other dairy products may not even the best way to get your daily dose of this essential mineral. For starters, Feller notes that most people aren’t drinking a plain glass of milk. Instead, kids often drink chocolate milk, and both children and adults eat dairy products like yogurt that usually have a ton of added sugar. Beyond that, full-fat dairy products contain saturated fats, while low-fat dairy might not keep people full. To be sure, there are plenty of studies extolling the benefits of milk, but others are starting to poke holes in milk’s mythologic status—with drinking too much possibly linked to brittle bones in adults, obesity in children, and higher risks of ovarian and prostate cancer.

There is one thing that’s not in dispute: You do need calcium. The majority of it is used for bone health, and in fact, 99 percent of the body’s calcium is stored in the bones and teeth, where it is continually used to strengthen and build bone. According to the National Institutes of Health, it’s also important for your heart, nerves, muscles and hormonal secretions.

How Much Calcium Do You Need? “How much calcium you need actually varies by your stage of life, which is important to take into consideration,” says Feller. “For most adults, 1,000mg a day is fine.” Women over 50 and men over 70, however, require about 1,200mg. Things get a little trickier with kids: Children ages 1–3 need 700mg, while those ages 4–8 need 1,000mg and ages 9–18 need 1,300mg.

So how can you reach that recommended daily intake if you want to consume less animal milk—or give it up altogether? Feller recommends calcium-packed foods like tofu, which has about 434mg of calcium per serving; Pinto beans (and other beans), a cup of which can provide around 26 percent of your recommended daily intake; Almonds and other nuts; and spinach, kale and other leafy greens. Plus, alternative milks made from soy, nuts, rice and peas are often additionally fortified with calcium. That can also be true of certain cereals, breads, whole grains, orange juice, and non-dairy cheeses. You’ll need to become an expert label-reader to make sure you’re choosing wisely. Some of them even boast more calcium per cup than regular daily milk, so if this is your concern choose almond milk for your am sip.

The Top 10 Sources of Calcium to Make it Easy to Get Your Daily Dose:

1. Pinto beans have 78.7 milligrams in one cup so add these to any salad, dip or burrito.

2. Molasses has 82 milligrams in 2 tablespoons. Use it in baking instead of sugar. Look for Blackstrap molasses, and keep in mind that these have been used in recipes for 100s of years, especially in the South. Molasses is also believed to help relieve stress and anxiety. For more on three easy ways to get more molasses into your diet check out this story.

3. Tempeh has 96 milligrams of calcium in 100 grams when cooked. You can make chicken substitute from it.

4. Tofu has about 104mg in one ounce when prepared pan-fried. Throw it in your stir fry, or order it at your next Chinese meal with veggies. It’s the perfect non-meat protein. (Note look for the calcium quotient on the Nutrition Facts on the label.)

5. Bok choy has 158 milligrams of calcium in one cup. Add it to your soup, stir fry or salad.

6. Soybeans have 175 milligrams of calcium per cup. Sprinkle them on a salad.

7. Kale has 177 milligrams in one cup. The heroic green makes a great salad, goes in smoothies and delivers a healthy dose of fiber as well.

8. Turnip greens have 197 milligrams in one cup. Add them to your favorite soup or smoothie

9. Collard greens have 268 milligrams of calcium in one cup. Substitute it for string beans.

10. Alternate milks like almond, soy or rice milk have 300-500 milligrams of calcium in 8 ounces so use any of these on your cereal or in your morning smoothie.

How to get more calcium: Here’s a great trick from the Mayo Clinic when trying to figure out just how much calcium you’re getting from a food: If a label lists the percentage you’ll be getting from a serving, add a zero to the end of it to find out what that translates to in milligrams. For example, 30 percent of your DV would be 300mg.

The Super Smoothie for Calcium: One of Feller’s favorite and tastiest ways to pack a huge calcium punch is with a strategically devised smoothie. Here’s her simple suggestion: 8 ounces of fortified cashew milk, 3 cups of spinach, 2 tablespoons of almond butter, 1 serving of pea-protein powder, 1 banana, and 1/2 cup of frozen peaches. Mix it up, and voila—you’ve got a delicious concoction that contains 20 percent of your calcium for the day. “Twenty percent is considered high,” she says, “so this breakfast smoothie would be a good source of calcium.”

One note: it’s always a good idea to talk to a registered dietitian if you’re thinking about banishing dairy from your diet—and especially if you have a child who wants to do so. According to Feller, research shows that children who are strict vegans and vegetarians tend to have a slower rate of growth than their meat-eating counterparts and that they tend to be leaner. Don’t worry: They will grow as long as they eat properly, but it might be a slightly different trajectory.

Getting plant-based kids to eat “properly” can be a challenge. “When kids come to my office, I say, ‘Vegetarian means that you’re going to be eating vegetables, so you have to eat the entire rainbow of vegetables, plus beans, nuts, and seeds, to get all of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs so you can continue to grow,’” she says. “A diet that’s high in refined carbohydrates and potatoes won’t work.”

One more important note about calcium: It is possible to have too much calcium in your body. If you have a history of thyroid problems in your family, ask your MD if you could be at risk for hypercalcemia, which is when you have too much calcium in your blood, which can cause bone problems, kidney stones, and other serious health issues. Most people don’t have to worry about too much calcium but find out if you’re at risk before loading up your plate. Certain cancers can also lead to too much calcium in the blood, so any time you find out that you have elevated calcium levels you need to immediately follow up with an MD.

The bottom line: You don’t need milk in your diet…But you do need to do your research and stay vigilant to make sure you’re getting enough calcium. You also probably shouldn’t get your nutrition facts from commercials. For the easiest way to get more calcium, read this piece on the wonders of molasses when it comes to three important nutrients: Calcium, iron, and potassium.

The post The Top 10 Plant-Based Sources of Calcium and How Much You Really Need appeared first on The Beet.