Why are vegan and gluten free items more expensive? - eviltoast

So I shop around to get some bits and pieces for a good home made meal, and I notice some items say, a pack of vegan burgers, these are more expensive than regular burgers!

I’m not a vegan but I’m curious as to why these items are priced as such, it’s a bit of a pain for people who can only eat gluten free food as those items are priced high too. The bread we get for me grandpapa is pricey for what you get.

Is it different production methods that make it pricey? You’d think with healthier, easier to get ingredients would be cheaper than producing regular non vegan items.

  • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
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    3 months ago

    Vegan =/= health, salted fries, palm oil and ketchup is all vegan and I doubt you think of it as healthy.

    But anyways, only reason healthy food would be cheaper than non healthy one is if there’s taxes on the non healthy stuff. Non healthy stuff is sold because it’s cheaper or tastier. If they can add the healthy label to sell more they will.

    Have a friend that did a masters in psychology which paper was about Biological food. Anything you see with that label gets a price hike. Rarely the on the actual products tested there were feasible differences because biological isn’t a well defined concept.

    Father of a friend plants biological tomatoes for himself. For his peers, you just need to not add chemicals and treat that plant biologically. He however only accepted produce as biological if the seeds came from a platelet treated as such, so his biological stuff is second generation onwards.

    Since the concept isn’t clearly defined, it’s bs and companies use whatever they can to make a buck.

      • Doll_Tow_Jet-ski@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        @Nougat@fedia.io

        Indeed. My guess is that @AdNecrias@lemmy.pt speaks a germanic language where the English word ‘organic’ translates to ‘biological’

        • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
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          3 months ago

          Latin one! And in this context in Portuguese, yeah they do translate to that.

          But we still see both labels being used, sometimes in the same product. I’m saying label here because I don’t think what companies use the word as and what it actually means aligns.

      • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
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        3 months ago

        I was now informed by my friend that over here the term biological sometimes refers to more a non-gmo nature of the product, and organic the non use of chemicals. It’s still pretty messy with how they used but what she saw defining it tended to that distinction.

      • AdNecrias@lemmy.pt
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        3 months ago

        It means that, but both labels appear in Portuguese here. Orgânico and biológico.

        Given your question I assume in English the term has a more biohazardy connotation?

        • Nougat@fedia.io
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          3 months ago

          In English, “biological” is a relatively neutral word when used by itself. It just means “of material caused by life.” Organic, in the context of food products, carries the notions of “natural purity” and “without laboratory-made additives/pesticides/fertilizers.”

          But, as you say, “organic” doesn’t really mean that, the US guidelines for what qualifies as “organic” are far looser than most people think, and will vary between different kinds of products. Kind of like how “cage free” eggs are not necessarily any more humane, and could arguably be less humane depending on the farm.