Having been spending $900/year to eat an omnivorous diet, you’d have to be eating a huge amount of meat to save $1K/year by going veg. Something like eating 16oz steak every day.
Having been spending $900/year to eat an omnivorous diet, you’d have to be eating a huge amount of meat to save $1K/year by going veg.
I spend roughly four times that, eating an omnivorous diet which, as it happens, does not include any large slabs of meat, and I’m curious to know where the difference lies. If you were specifically working to economise on food outlay, then it would not be a surprise to you that people not trying to economise have room to cut down by $1000 a year. But if you are not, how does your cost come in at less than $3 a day?
I’m in the UK, where food is more expensive than the US, but not four times more expensive, and while I generally shop at the better supermarkets rather than the cheap ones, I have no inclination towards “luxury” goods, and rarely eat out.
If you were specifically working to economise on food outlay
I was.
The surprising thing to me was not that people would spend more than $1K on food per year, but that the projected savings by eliminating meat would be $1K.
I was generally under the impression that eating on less than $3/day was not particularly typical beyond poverty. I expected roughly $100/month for food, $200 if you indulge in anything like eating out/etc, if you were trying to save money.
A quick search pops up $~150/week as the average American food bill (four times what I came up with), and I found this page which gets more detailed.
What I take away from this is that most people probably could benefit financially from reducing meat intake, and most people seem to be spending more on food than is strictly necessary in general, at least in the US.
ETA: Unclear if we’re talking about specific people or general groups. The $3000 for avoiding meat in Qiaochu_Yuan’s informal survey tells me people value eating habits that come with lots of ridiculous drawbacks a bit more than I thought (and I previously thought people’s values regarding eating were kinda screwy).
under the impression that eating on less than $3/day was not particularly typical beyond poverty
You’re right that no one else I surveyed was spending that little, so it is unusual. I was just surprised to see expected savings larger than what I’m used to spending.
Your link says that “typical family of four in the United States making the median household income would have to double its food expenditures in order to eat what USDA nutritionists consider a healthy diet” but bases that claim on the cost estimates from the Thrifty Food plan. The problem is that these estimates come from a ridiculously limited optimization process where they group food into about 60 categories (“whole fruits”, “orange vegetables”, “whole grain cereals”), then assign costs and nutrition information assuming that people are eating from the category in the proportion people do on average. So if the “whole fruits” people tend to eat are 40% apples, 35% oranges, and 25% bananas, then the cost will be a weighted average of those three. Once they’ve assigned costs and nutrition, they run some optimization to figure out how cheaply one can get the needed nutrients. The problem with this is that they can’t say “eat bananas to get more potassium” because the only knob their optimization thing can tweak is the “whole fruits” one. This means that if a category is not homogeneous in terms of either nutrition or cost, they’ll not be able to optimize well.
I can definitely believe going veg would save $1K off of $6K, but I have trouble imagining how you could spend that much without eating out for most of your meals.
Having been spending $900/year to eat an omnivorous diet, you’d have to be eating a huge amount of meat to save $1K/year by going veg. Something like eating 16oz steak every day.
I spend roughly four times that, eating an omnivorous diet which, as it happens, does not include any large slabs of meat, and I’m curious to know where the difference lies. If you were specifically working to economise on food outlay, then it would not be a surprise to you that people not trying to economise have room to cut down by $1000 a year. But if you are not, how does your cost come in at less than $3 a day?
I’m in the UK, where food is more expensive than the US, but not four times more expensive, and while I generally shop at the better supermarkets rather than the cheap ones, I have no inclination towards “luxury” goods, and rarely eat out.
I was.
The surprising thing to me was not that people would spend more than $1K on food per year, but that the projected savings by eliminating meat would be $1K.
I was generally under the impression that eating on less than $3/day was not particularly typical beyond poverty. I expected roughly $100/month for food, $200 if you indulge in anything like eating out/etc, if you were trying to save money.
A quick search pops up $~150/week as the average American food bill (four times what I came up with), and I found this page which gets more detailed.
What I take away from this is that most people probably could benefit financially from reducing meat intake, and most people seem to be spending more on food than is strictly necessary in general, at least in the US.
ETA: Unclear if we’re talking about specific people or general groups. The $3000 for avoiding meat in Qiaochu_Yuan’s informal survey tells me people value eating habits that come with lots of ridiculous drawbacks a bit more than I thought (and I previously thought people’s values regarding eating were kinda screwy).
You’re right that no one else I surveyed was spending that little, so it is unusual. I was just surprised to see expected savings larger than what I’m used to spending.
Your link says that “typical family of four in the United States making the median household income would have to double its food expenditures in order to eat what USDA nutritionists consider a healthy diet” but bases that claim on the cost estimates from the Thrifty Food plan. The problem is that these estimates come from a ridiculously limited optimization process where they group food into about 60 categories (“whole fruits”, “orange vegetables”, “whole grain cereals”), then assign costs and nutrition information assuming that people are eating from the category in the proportion people do on average. So if the “whole fruits” people tend to eat are 40% apples, 35% oranges, and 25% bananas, then the cost will be a weighted average of those three. Once they’ve assigned costs and nutrition, they run some optimization to figure out how cheaply one can get the needed nutrients. The problem with this is that they can’t say “eat bananas to get more potassium” because the only knob their optimization thing can tweak is the “whole fruits” one. This means that if a category is not homogeneous in terms of either nutrition or cost, they’ll not be able to optimize well.
I think most people spend much more than that on food. The internet seems to think it’s about $6000 a year.
I can definitely believe going veg would save $1K off of $6K, but I have trouble imagining how you could spend that much without eating out for most of your meals.
I guess it involves buying more stuff than you’ll be able to eat before it goes bad, and hence having to throw lots of stuff away.