With Veganuary in full swing, I decided to take a look at what you can expect to pay for five basic everyday vegan items compared to non-vegan. More and more people have been converting to veganism with the predicted number of people becoming vegan increasing each year.
But as the cost of living crisis continues to affect families, people are having to make their money stretch further and further. So how much difference is there between the cost of vegan food to that of non-vegan food?
The items I decided to look for were milk, cheese, butter, cream and yogurt. Armed with my list, I headed to my local supermarket, Tesco, to see what I could get.
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After grabbing my trolley, I headed towards the first aisle for the milk. Here I looked for some soya milk, just one of the dairy alternatives, which you can get either from the chilled section or the long-life section. I chose an Alpro one litre bottle from the long-life section costing £1.25 with a Clubcard or £1.90 without.
Next I moved further down the same aisle to the fridges full of cow's milk. I decided I would go for a two pinter of semi-skimmed milk, as it is the closest to the size of the vegan alternative. It was £1.30, which is more expensive than the soya milk when on Clubcard price.
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The next item on my list was butter. Now this could be classed as an essential item as it can be used during cooking or just on toast and in sandwiches. I went for the same brand for both my vegan and non-vegan butter - or so I thought - with the vegan one costing a whopping £3.60 while the 'dairy' counterpart was only £1.75 on Clubcard price or £2.15 without.
On closer inspection it was only afterwards that (as a reader noticed) the cheaper butter was in fact marked as vegan as well, making it even cheaper than most of the dairy butters on offer. In the absence of a product comparison, due to accidentally doubling up on the vegan product, I'll instead refer to the ONS average figure for dairy butter - £2.29 as of November 2022.
After that I went to look at what cheese I could find, I again managed to find cheese for both from the same brand. For the vegan cheese I found a Cathedral City plant-based cheese which would set you back £3.60 for one block. As for the dairy-based cheese I found a Cathedral City mature Cheddar costing £3.49.
The fourth item on our list was more of a treat but something most people have in their fridge - a pot of yogurt. The main plant-based yogurt brand is Alpro yogurt, which has a range of flavours and sizes. I went for the plain yogurt and that cost £1.95 for a 400g pot. As for the normal yogurt, I went for a 450g pot of natural Skyr yogurt, which cost £1.75.
For the final item I decided upon a small pot of cream which can be used on deserts or in cooking. There were a few vegan options, some oat-based and some soya-based, I went for the Alpro single soya cream which was £1.15 for a 250ml carton. While a pot of Tesco's own British double cream cost £1.35 for a 300ml pot.
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When looking at totals, the vegan shop (using the cheaper vegan butter) surprisingly came to slightly less at £9.70 (including Clubcard prices) than that of the normal food shop which came to £10.18, again including Clubcard prices. Had I chosen the more expensive butter it would have tipped the balance, but it does demonstrate that with good deals on offer, a vegan shop doesn't have to be less cost-effective.
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