While some people eat to live, I live to eat. After spending two decades riddled with anxiety so strong it caused dysphagia and frequent vomiting, I began taking antidepressants, which enabled me to get out of bed and into restaurants. Yet the world of eateries is not quite my oyster – not that I would want it to be, because I don’t eat them. Or any fish. Or any meat. Or any dairy. Yes, like much of Brighton’s population, I am a vegan. And according to London North Eastern Railway (LNER), which analysed Google search data, Deliveroo’s vegan options, and HappyCow restaurant listings across the country, I am in the right place: Brighton was ranked the most vegan-friendly city in the UK in 2024.
But despite the number of restaurant options to choose from, veganism is far from friendly to the bank account. In 2023, The Times reported that pack sizes of planet-based meals are, on average, 15 percent smaller than their meat-based equivalents, and 11 percent more expensive on a price-per-kilo basis. Additionally, the University’s Co-op has a very limited range of vegan meal deals, with the mains often put in the “premium” section, costing £1.50 more in total. But the contentious debate surrounding whether a vegan diet is truly more expensive than the alternative rages on, with research from Oxford University conversely revealing that consuming less meat could reduce the cost of food shopping by up to one third. Money may not be the root of all evil, but could be the root cause of why many stick to the diet they know. Citing the first study, carnivorous Brits can dismiss their vegan friends on the grounds that they can’t afford to embrace a plant-based lifestyle, when in reality it’s simply because they’ll miss McNuggets. Vegans, on the other hand, can provide evidence as to why forgoing meat is, in fact, cheaper, whilst lobbying for a tax on animal products to widen the difference in cost.
Due to this constant arguing, it’s no wonder that Brighton often decides to split up vegans and meat-eaters, in the manner of naughty school children. The latter can choose one of 500 Subways Brighton inexplicably seems to boast, whereas vegans are prescribed Purezza, where even thinking about a beef burger is forbidden.
Plant-based meals are, on average, 15 percent smaller than their meat equivalents.
If, as a vegan, you choose to leave Purezza and mingle with the future faces of the NHS’s leaflets on heart disease, the only way you’re getting a cheap meal is when chain restaurants accidentally bring you a meat dish instead of the plant-based version. Wagamama – I didn’t ask for my money back to be a Karen, but rather because, after three years of not eating meat, your mistake led me to believe I’d mistakenly consumed my cat’s Whiskas.
Looking at the evidence, the main reason behind veganism’s cost is seemingly artificial meat. But do plant-based diets have to contain OMV and Quorn products? Well, not really. My grandmother grew up in a village in Cyprus in the 1940s and involuntarily maintained what would now be considered a vegan lifestyle. She once told me that she and her six siblings loved it when the neighbourhood cow would stroll into their two-roomed house because its chewing served as a bedtime lullaby. Rich she was not. Yet the Mediterranean diet of fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes was all they could afford, and she is still thriving at 86. Luckily, it finally seems as if meat-emulating produce is going out of fashion, with sales of vegan alternatives falling by 16.8 percent year on year. But if the campus Co-op introduced a fake BLT? I wouldn’t complain.