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celebratedrecluse wrote

I find that foods that have more protein in them tend to be priced more expensively, across the board. There's kind of a class gradient to it, that I've been thinking about a lot recently. I think it is certainly possible to eat a vegan diet for cheaper than an omnivorous one, subsidies be damned-- however, is it a nutritionally equal diet? Honestly, I think that once you start looking at what is actually contained within the meals, you start to notice how many carbohydrates are in most affordable vegan diets. Protein profiles, vitamins and minerals, lipids, I think these are all nutritionally important, and they are priced to a premium when you get these nutrients as special supplements rather than as part of your food which you already paid for.

There's also the element of how contemporary vegan diets have been economically made possible. Having a high quality vegan diet which equals or excels an omnivorous diet nutritionally is very possible, but it's going to require variation. In the economic context of monocultural agriculture, colonial axes of capitalism, results in disastrous consequences for people all over the world. For example, the consumption of quinoa by western coastal libs has made it unaffordable in many of the areas where it is a traditional food of poor people. However, the demands of the vegan consumer market have imported it, because it is now an important part of how vegan diets are constituted.

Now, if we werent wasting all our soy and corn on cowfeed, and instead just cultivated the land with plants for human consumption, it would be a different story of course. But in the moment we are in, I think that eating both vegan and healthily can have some negative social consequences because of the overall mode of production. The reason I bring things like this into discussion, is because I think many vegans (people who self-identify and find a sense of identity and community in it) articulate that this is their brand of politics, but it's just consumerism. there are limits to what can be achieved with consumer politics, and it is also very alienating to other people when you take an attitude of moral purity to activity under capitalism.

Many people already struggle to eat properly every day...I think I am more concerned with just encouraging a social environment where dietary choices aren't this incredibly important decision, but instead is an easy thing for people to do healthily. that, to me, means making great vegan food accessible, and changing other peoples' impression of vegan diets as a practice anyone can pick up, rather than a proscriptive code, exclusive clique, or rigid identity.

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