How do you go vegan/vegetarian in a household with limited funds and everyone else eats animal products?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

These foods are almost always cheap: dry beans and chick peas, canned beans and chick peas, rice, oats, tomato paste, pasta, lentils, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, carrots, canned pumpkin, potatoes, onions, garlic, bananas, (sometimes) greens like collards.

Recipes for them here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/…
More tips here:
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/0…

http://www.ehow.com/how_4677136_be-fruga…

I am a vegetarian following a mostly Vegan diet (With the exception of sugar once in a while... I say it that way because I haven't gone through my clothing yet and all that stuff that comes along with being a Vegan). We live off of a low income. Dried beans are cheap and would give you the protein you need. Bags of rice don't cost much either if you get the store brand. As far as fruit and veggies we buy whatever is on sale that week. We mix fresh, frozen, canned and dried to get a good variety but still not pay much. In the Spring you could plant a garden for the Summer with your own fruits/veggies. That would save you some money. You could bake your own gluten free breads which would be cheaper then buying the ones made already. We have been doing alot of baking in my house lately. It really does save some money and is healthier.

Hey, I'm allergic to a lot of things, and like you I felt sick my entire life because of what I was eating. Then I went vegetarian. I've been veggie for five years now, one year of that I was totally vegan, and I found that actually for me it's cheaper to eat vegetarian. I'm not rich and never have been- for the last two years I worked at McDonald's until I got injured and now I have no income at all. Like you, my boyfriend is a complete meat eater. I could never afford all that fancy stuff that's in a lot of recipes. I eat tinned vegetables because they're cheaper and you don't have to eat as much of them. I also eat a lot of quinoa- I don't know how expensive it is in the states, but I think it's gluten free. For protein, sprinkle a handful of peanuts or sunflower seeds on your meal (bags of sunflower seeds look expensive but a 200g bag will last for ages). A lot of the poorest people in the third world are vegetarian, in countries such as India, Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Mostly, the hardest part is adjusting to thinking about food in a different way- instead of thinking that you need meat and something on the side, get used to planning meals around quinoa, rice (probably not pasta if you're gluten intolerant) or a vegetable such as cauliflower. Vegetables may seem expensive but ones like cauliflowers or broccoli will make about three days worth of meals for one person. Cover them in cheese or tomato pasta sauce and just treat them like pasta for cooking and eating- you can substitute the pasta in most recipes for broccoli or cauliflower.

Also one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that beans (baked beans out of a tin) on toast is one of the cheapest, healthiest and most nutritionally balanced meals you can eat as a vegan, if you are leaning more towards vegetarian, try sprinkling cheese on top because people think cheese is empty calories but if you work hard and are very busy, you need those calories.

A lot of veggie recipes are just not realistically doable if you're on a tight budget, and you have to spend a lot of time reading through the recipe books . Lastly, with it being spring, now's the perfect time to put a plant on the windowledge, if you don't have a garden. You can grow plenty of things yourself, that are tasty and don't need too much looking after, like tomatoes, chillis, chives and spring onions, and growing stuff yourself is like getting free food. :)
Hope you find a way to do it, you'll feel so much better if you do :)
Good luck,
Torrie.
PS: If it's too much to go completely vegetarian/vegan, you could try making two or three evening or lunch meals a week vegetarian and gluten free. It will still make a difference!

Been fighting to stay vegetarian from below the poverty line for years.

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glutenfre… (probably not super helpful but thought I'd put it in anyway)

http://vegan-diets.info/whats-cheap-vega… (this site's a lot better than the one above)

I'd go over your budget, really
im sure you can cut something out
eating healthily is so important, especially when you're doing it for your children.
you can replace meat (for your son) with a lot of beans, legumes, eggs- proteins
a word of advice: try veggie first b4 vegan- going vegan is extremely hard---you should be vegetarian for like 2 yrs before attempting.
Emeril makes a really good vegetarian chili that is so filling and it even tastes meaty. Im sure your boyfriend would love it.

If you dont make a lot of money, I would suggest googling CSA's. You can join them (some even have plans for those who dont make that much $$). It's a way to get healthy, seasonal, farm raised food- they have them for meat, veggies, fruits, everything. And I find that its a cheaper alternative to buying vegetables/fruit piece meal @ the grocery.

If you cant do that- just scour the coupons at your grocery store. I live near 3 and I check to see who has the cheapest what. I also join their free program, where they scan the barcode on my card, and I get points, and free things.

Processed food is more expensive that making yourself. Glad you're looking for a better lifestyle. You deserve it!

It can be done, but you'll have to make right decisions with your spending. Don't expect to eat a lot of imitation meats and specialty vegetarian foods, because they are rather expensive. Instead, buy canned or dried beans and lentils and things like that. Buy frozen fruits and veggies, or whatever is in season and cheapest. Keep dairy minimal because milk and cheese tend to be expensive too. Have you ever made bread? It's much much cheaper than buying it and tastes better too

You'll actually save a lot of money going vegan or veggie. In the grand scheme of things, meat is very expensive. I know when I became vegetarian (in all practicality a near vegan diet), I saw huge savings on my grocery bill.

Grains, dried beans and the like can easily be bought in large bulk quantities. Properly stored, they last practically forever. You can buy when on sale and then use as you need.

I buy fruits and veggies when they are in season at the farmer's market, and then freeze or can. This means I am getting high quality, local produce for pennies. I know where my food comes from, and I am not paying for packaging. Yes I pay for my deep freeze to run, but I've still found the savings to be huge.

Stock up on basics when they're on sale - whole wheat pasta, rice, even pseudograins like quinoa can be purchased bulk and very cheaply. Dried beans are great, and canned beans and produce are awesome to use when you're pressed for time. Again, I stock up when on sale. Just drain and rinse to get rid of any excess sodium and you're ready to go!

Eat in season when you can. It's much cheaper. Through the winter things like squash, root vegetables, etc. store very well for long periods of time and are very healthful. Think more soups, tagine or casserole style dishes through the winter and salad for the summer. It doesn't mean you can't buy salad, etc if that's what you like and want - but by eating more seasonally, you'll pay less of a premium on out-of season veggies.

As far as alternative proteins - if you mean meat analogues, yes, they're expensive, but you don't need them. Tofu is very inexpensive in comparison to even cheap meat like hamburger. Personally, I make my own seitan very cheaply (not an option for you to eat, but you can make for your son as a protein source) - I even buy the gluten flour in bulk.

If you're buying gluten free breads and baked goods, consider investing in a cookbook and learning to bake your own. There is really no special trick to baking, and you can get alternative flours for a fraction of the price that you are paying for the already-made breads. Rice flour, potato flour, amarath, quinoa area all readily available now at bulk stores or health food stores. There was a time that these items were very hard to find, but that's not the case any more.

You may need to start thinking a little differently about how you eat. Sounds like right now, you're buying processed foods and convenience foods and in the end they really are much more expensive. Brown rice, cooked beans topped with sauteed frozen veggies like peppers and spinach makes a very filling and wholesome mean quite inexpensively - and is completely vegan and gluten free.

Go to the library and see if there are any veggie cookbooks for loan. Search websites like vegweb and PETA for recipes. Aim for simple recipes and stay away from meat analogues - you'll find you'll probably be saving on your groceries as compared to now and eating much more healthily.

Good luck.

LOL "I cannot eat gluten already but I do anyway because I cannot afford a lot of alternatives. I am sick all the time I just want to eat healthy"

Yeah right.
You are CHOOSING to eat pasta and bread over gluten free alternatives. My brother can't have gluten either ... he substituted CORN TORTILLAS for ALL bread products. You want sandwiches? Put them on a tortilla and roll it up. Yeah, pasta is cheap. But they also make RICE pasta, which tastes the same and is just a little more expensive (I believe about $1.50/pkg instead of $1/pkg for regular pasta). And it tastes pretty much the same -- I know because I've eaten it.
"Poverty level" is about $20K. For that you can easily hit the farmer's markets/Sprouts type grocery stores that specialize in cheap veggies. At Sprouts here in Phoenix I can get 5 zuchinni squash, an eggplant, and 2 pounds of roma tomatoes for about $5. Add a big box of 5 min rice and any kind of meat (chicken breast, steak or hamburger), and you have a whole meal for under $10.
You just need to hit the recipe pages and meal plan, then grocery shop according to the plan.
Good luck.

start dumpster diving. You'll get more food than you can eat and it is healthy (provided you wash it). Plus it's free so you can use the money saved from your food budget for your nipper if he needs it, also you aren't contributing as much to the environmental problems of the world because you are actually reducing wasted nutrients which were generated for human consumption. It's win win, provided you don't get so grossed out by the idea of eating food from the garbage that you are actually unable to eat it.

Become normal, and eat normal, human food.