Do the math

Another added side benefit of a whole food plant based eating program is your food cost will go down.  You eliminate the cost of meat, dairy, and cooking oil entirely.  Yes, you'll replace it with something else like soy or almond milk, beans, legumes and veggies, and if you get exotic and make seitan it's about $1.00 per pound.

In my previous post I showed you how to make roasted vegetable stock.  Now, in doing a comparison of my roasted stock to store bought it's a little difficult as there aren't a lot of options in the store for the roasted version of this stock.  So, I'll just show you based on the no fat, low sodium version of vegetable stock.

An average cost of vegetable stock is between $3.50 for 16 oz up to $8 for higher end stocks.  Here is what a label off a box of low sodium (emphasize low) Kitchen Basics Organic Vegetable Stock looks like and this is the fat free version.

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size                                   1 cup
Servings Per Container		4
Amount Per Serving
Calories		20
Calories from Fat		0
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0g		(-)
Saturated Fat (-)		(-)
Trans Fat  (-)
Polyunsaturated Fat 0g
Monounsatuated Fat 0g
Cholesterol (-)		(-)
Sodium 330mg		14%
Total Carbohydrate 5g		2%
Dietary Fiber (-)		(-)
Sugars 1g
Protein 0g
Vitamin A		(-)
Vitamin C		(-)
Calcium		(-)
Iron		(-)
(-) Information is currently not available for this nutrient.
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depeding on your calorie needs:**
** Percent Daily Values listed below are intended for adults and children over 4 years of age. Foods represented or purported to be for use by infants, children less than 4 years of age, pregnant women, or lactating women shall use the RDI's that are specified for the intended group provided by the FDA. Calories: 2,000 2,500 Total Fat Less than 65g 80g Sat. Fat Less than 20g 25g Cholesterol Less than 300mg 300mg Sodium Less than 2400mg 2400mg Total Carbohydrate 300g 375g Dietary Fiber 25g 30g Calories per gram:  Fat 9     •    Carbohydrate 4     •    Protein 4

This is the cost of my no fat, no salt version for 16 oz.  40¢  3 hours of your time, plus cooling time, so if you want to factor that in, that's fine, though cooking and cooling are passive times so you can really only count the 7 minutes prep time.

And you get all of this for about $7.00 (about 5 quarts or 10 16 oz boxes).