I agree when it comes to veganism. It is more of a religion than a rationale.
I was curious about your claims that meat could be cheaper than tofu, so I made a few notes on my last shopping trip. For comparison, I chose the cheapest cuts of chicken and pork, which happened to be chicken breast and pork butt, both relatively decent cuts, and I compared them to the cheapest package of tofu available to me.
I did not bother comparing against other meats (beef, fish, etc) because all of those are substantially more expensive where I live. Canned tuna may be cheaper, but I rarely eat it, so I also left that out.
So it looks like you're right: some meats are cheaper, or are at least competitive with tofu. But tofu is still near the bottom of the price range for me. Given that you are using €, I wonder if tofu is cheap(er?) for me because the US produces tremendous quantities of soybeans.
Re: your comment about paying with time, I would argue that it depends on whether you enjoy cooking or not. I definitely enjoy cooking. I do it to relax after work. And in my experience, producing tasty tofu is not much work. Pan-fried and salted tofu is already good in my opinion, and it's easy to pair that with a simple sauce (e.g., soy sauce + ponzu) or a stir fry. For a little more work, one could marinade it. In my experience, it requires about as much prep as meat. I spend dramatically less money than most of my peers on food, because I tend to prepare most of my food myself. I also grow a substantial amount of food during the summer months which gets stored for later (e.g., canned tomatoes, squashes, potatoes, etc). Again, I trade some time to do this, but gardening is an activity I enjoy, and so does my wife, so we spend time doing it together.
I do think it is an important question as to which approaches are the most "efficient": with respect to time, monetary cost, energy input, digestible calories, carbon pollution, etc. I listened to a story on the radio recently [1] that made the case that factory farming of meat is better for the climate than organic and so-called sustainable farming. I'm sure that the answer is not simple, but it does have me rethinking my food sources. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation and myth out there about _both_ factory-farmed food and organic food. I tend to see things from an engineering perspective, so I'd love to see more data before I draw any conclusions. It's hard to argue with the basic premise that favoring a vegetarian diet over a meat-heavy one makes better use of the energy from the sun. But I am not a purist and I gave up on a strict vegetarian diet many years ago in favor of pragmatism. It turns out that adding a _little_ meat to a dish can add a lot of flavor, and to a first approximation, you're not eating much meat.
I was curious about your claims that meat could be cheaper than tofu, so I made a few notes on my last shopping trip. For comparison, I chose the cheapest cuts of chicken and pork, which happened to be chicken breast and pork butt, both relatively decent cuts, and I compared them to the cheapest package of tofu available to me.
* tofu: $2.49/397g * chicken breast: $2.49/453g * pork butt: $5.29/453g
Per 100g, which is (for me) a rather healthy serving of protein, this comes out to (in USD):
* tofu: $0.62 * chicken breast: $0.55 * pork butt: $1.17
I did not bother comparing against other meats (beef, fish, etc) because all of those are substantially more expensive where I live. Canned tuna may be cheaper, but I rarely eat it, so I also left that out.
So it looks like you're right: some meats are cheaper, or are at least competitive with tofu. But tofu is still near the bottom of the price range for me. Given that you are using €, I wonder if tofu is cheap(er?) for me because the US produces tremendous quantities of soybeans.
Re: your comment about paying with time, I would argue that it depends on whether you enjoy cooking or not. I definitely enjoy cooking. I do it to relax after work. And in my experience, producing tasty tofu is not much work. Pan-fried and salted tofu is already good in my opinion, and it's easy to pair that with a simple sauce (e.g., soy sauce + ponzu) or a stir fry. For a little more work, one could marinade it. In my experience, it requires about as much prep as meat. I spend dramatically less money than most of my peers on food, because I tend to prepare most of my food myself. I also grow a substantial amount of food during the summer months which gets stored for later (e.g., canned tomatoes, squashes, potatoes, etc). Again, I trade some time to do this, but gardening is an activity I enjoy, and so does my wife, so we spend time doing it together.
I do think it is an important question as to which approaches are the most "efficient": with respect to time, monetary cost, energy input, digestible calories, carbon pollution, etc. I listened to a story on the radio recently [1] that made the case that factory farming of meat is better for the climate than organic and so-called sustainable farming. I'm sure that the answer is not simple, but it does have me rethinking my food sources. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation and myth out there about _both_ factory-farmed food and organic food. I tend to see things from an engineering perspective, so I'd love to see more data before I draw any conclusions. It's hard to argue with the basic premise that favoring a vegetarian diet over a meat-heavy one makes better use of the energy from the sun. But I am not a purist and I gave up on a strict vegetarian diet many years ago in favor of pragmatism. It turns out that adding a _little_ meat to a dish can add a lot of flavor, and to a first approximation, you're not eating much meat.
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/10/24/the-climate-imp...