Welcome to Small Bite Sound Bites, a midweek segment of food for thought podcast where I,

your host Colleen Patrick-Gudrow, share short, succinct, thoughtful responses to typical

questions, myths, and misconceptions related to plant-based eating, veganism, and animal

protection.

You can support this podcast today by going to joyfulvegan.com slash donate.

An argument against being vegan is that, quote unquote, vegan food is expensive and accessible

only to the wealthy.

Let's unpack this and start with the fact that historically, meat, dairy, and eggs have

always been products of privilege and symbols of affluence, affordable only by the wealthy

and denied to the poor.

Now, ironically, health wise, that's turned out to be a good thing in less affluent populations

where animal-based meat is served in small portions and they eat mostly plant foods.

They don't suffer from what experts call diseases of affluence, heart disease, cancer type

two diabetes.

Listen to that phrase, diseases of affluence because of their association with rich foods

that are affordable by the rich.

The richer the country, the more animal products eaten, the more prevalent these diseases.

Even with government subsidies keeping animal products artificially cheap, whole plant foods

are still less expensive than animal products.

So I think when people say that vegan food is expensive, I think what they're talking

about is packaged, processed, convenience foods and convenience foods are more expensive,

but whether they're vegan or not, whether they're plant-based or not, because you're

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