Inflation making plant-based foods cheaper than meat and dairy

Plant-based foods now cost less than meat and dairy equivalents at nine major supermarkets in the Netherlands, according to new research published by food organisation ProVeg.

“It’s remarkable that this is happening,” Martine van Haperen, nutrition and health expert at ProVeg, told DutchNews.

“It’s normally been very difficult for plant-based products to compete with animal-based ones. What we’re seeing now is that store brands like Albert Heijn have expanded their own-brand products, making them more affordable.”

The bigger driver, she said, is inflation. “Inflation has hit animal products much harder than plant-based ones, and that is because animal products require much more resources to be produced.”

Cheaper across the board
ProVeg, which has tracked the price gap since 2022, compared the cheapest plant-based version of each product with the cheapest animal one, priced per kilo, at nine chains in late April.

A basic basket of six items stocked everywhere – mince, burgers, butter, milk, yoghurt and cheese – was cheaper in its plant-based form at every chain, by around 18% on average.

Shoppers buying staples such as mince and milk can save up to 30%, the organisation said, with the widest gaps at Plus and Dirk and the narrowest at the organic chain Ekoplaza. Plant-based butter came in 48% cheaper.

The plant-based versions of some products remain far more expensive, however: mayonnaise costs almost four times as much as the animal version, while vegan yoghurt and kwark are both more than double the price.

The bigger basket
ProVeg also compared a wider basket of 14 products – adding items such as sausages, shoarma and mayonnaise that not every chain sells in a plant-based version. On that fuller list the plant-based basket costs more at four shops: Dirk, Hoogvliet, Jumbo and Picnic. At Albert Heijn the two come out level.

Dirk is the odd one out, with its plant-based basics are among the cheapest of any chain, but its wider basket ends up 25% more expensive than the meat one. It stocks a plant-based version in all 14 categories – just not a cheap own-brand in every one, and those pricier extras drag the total up.