for me, the question isn’t, “Does being vegan cost more?” But, rather, “Is healthful food that is nonexploitively produced (regarding human, other animals, and the earth’s resources) accessible to everyone?”

The problem I have with the title question of this post is that I think it fails to challenge the ideology of capitalism. That is, I think these sorts of questions tend to assume that we are rational individuals in the marketplace each acting towards our own self-interest, and that if being vegan is most cost effective way to live then the market will select for it. (This is what I see when cost analysis is being discussed, whether comparing the price of vegetables to meat or health costs of a vegetarian diet to a nonvegetarian diet, either way it’s a question about what’s the most rational choice in the marketplace.)

So I think the question relies too much on class privilege, because if you’re poor then by definition you don’t have access to the marketplace. That is, you first have to have money before you can participate in marketplace, and the more money you do have the more you access and power you have to participate. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a plant-based diet or not, all food costs more than you can afford when you’re poor.

So that’s why I believe the question about access is important, because it hopefully gets beyond capitalist ideology and leads to a deeper understanding that many people don’t access to healthy, nonexploitive foods. And the next step — after we recognize that not every on can eat, let alone eat well — to asking why that is and what can we do about it. That’s the kind of discussion I would like to see taking place.

— Dani commenting on Does being vegan cost more money?