Nutritional Review of "Eat Vegan on $4 per Day"

Would you be able to eat healthfully on a food stamp budget?  Here in Colorado, a household of 2 is eligible to receive a maximum of $5.91 per day per person.  That's 5.91x2x7=$82 per week for two people.  The average American spends about $151 per week.  That is consistent with our current food budget.   More than 47 million people in the U.S. use food stamps.  I would imagine that sometime in my future career as a dietitian I'll need to consider such a restrictive budget when making meal recommendations for my clients.

Ellen Jaffe Jones has authored a book called Eat Vegan on $4 A Day. I purchased this book and decided to do my own experiment to determine if it is possible to eat a satisfying and vegan diet that meets the MyPlate specifications on a food stamp budget.

After reading through the first part of the book which covers the benefits of a vegan diet and gives tips on eating healthfully on a very strict budget, I jumped to the section of the book that contained a 7-day food plan. I scanned the plan and really felt like it was not enough food for me. The meal plans consist of 3 small meals with one or two items, plus a small snack. I normally eat three meals plus 2 snacks each day. Many of the recipes seemed to have a mexican influence. Lots of beans with cumin and whole grain tortillas. I've included a listing of the meals below. The author listed the price for each meal, but did not list the nutrient or calorie content. So I took on the task of painstakingly entering the entire week of recipes into the the free online application created by the USDA on the MyPlate.org website. The SuperFoodTracker on this site allows you to track your daily food and activity intake, and has a feature that allows you to enter your own recipes and calculate the nutritional value of a single serving. I must say, this application contained only about 95 percent of the ingredients for very simple recipes in the book. If you are attempting to figure out the nutritional content of gourmet-style recipes with unusual ingredients, you may want to try to using another app rather than this free one. But for my purposes, this free application was fine.

It took me about 2 hours to enter the data for the 7 day plan, and when I was done I was able to generate reports for the week. I didn't do a a daily analysis, simply because I think you get a better result if you use weekly averages. We all tend to eat a bit differently each day, and if you are eating a variety of foods from all of the food groups, your daily intake of nutrients will vary from day to day. The reports provided showed a comprehensive comparison between the meal plan I entered and the federal nutrition guidelines. The Nutrient report is also shown below.

Did the 7-day plan meet the USDA MyPlate requirements? In some areas, yes, in some areas no.

Low Calories - too low?

First of all, the daily caloric recommendation for someone of my age (50) and activity level (moderate) was not met. My daily energy intake should be around 2000 calories per day to maintain my current weight. This plan only provides 1127 calories per day on average. So if I followed this plan, I'd end up losing a little more than 1.5 pounds per week. Even when dieting, I rarely consume less than 1500 calories per day since I try to exercise for at least 75 minutes each day. The 1127 calorie average concerns me.

Plenty of Protein

 The guideline recommends that I get an around of 46g of protein each day, somewhere between 10% and 35% of all calories should come from protein. The analysis shows that this plan will provide an average of 42g of plant-based protein each day, about 15% of the daily calories. So even on an extremely low-cost, vegan diet, you can see it's possible to meet the AMDR for protein. The analysis of this eating plan shows that most of the protein comes from beans and the rest comes from whole grains and soymilk.

Low Fat/High Carb.  As Expected

This plan provides for an excess of calories from carbohydrate. The USDA AMDR for calories from carbohydrate is 45%-65% of calories with 25g coming from fiber. This plan provides 71% of calories from carbohydrate, and 37g grams coming from fiber. This was not a surprise to me since this is a low-fat diet so most of the energy will come from carbohydrate and protein. Very little oil is used in the plan. And most of the grains eaten are whole-grains rather than highly processed, so I expected the fiber content to be quite high. Again, the majority of carbohydrate comes from the starchy vegetables and whole fruits, such as beans, bananas, plus the whole grains such as whole wheat bread and tortillas.

This meal plan is close to the recommendation for fat intake. According to the USDA recommendations, 20-35% of your calorie intake should be from fats, and that less than 10% of your calories come from saturated fat. Nineteen percent (19%) of total calories are from fat sources on this diet, and less than 2% of the calories are coming from saturated fats. There is no cholesterol in this diet due to the absence of animal products. The recommendation for Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids was met, but since the sources are plant based, the EPA and DHA intake was zero.

Minerals and Vitamins

The 7-day plan provided ample copper, magnesium, phosphorus. The amount of selenium and zinc were very slightly under the recommendation. The plan provided insufficient amounts of calcium, potassium, and iron.

Recommendations for vitamins B6, C, K, folate and thiamin were met, but the plan did not meet the recommendations for Vitamin A, B12, D, E, riboflavin, niacin and choline. I believe a multi vitamin could provide for the missing nutrients at a lower cost than it would take to get these from food sources. A once-daily multivitamin supplement is sold for about 33 cents per capsule. While I normally would not recommend obtaining nutrients through supplementation, vegans do require B12, most people don't get enough Vitamin D, and if the budget does not allow for plenty of nutritious food, a supplement might actually be beneficial.


Thinking about the types of foods I might be tempted to buy if I were on a food stamp budget, I can imagine that the nutritional content of this plan far better than what most food-stamp recipients are consuming.   There are no convenience foods included.  Foods are whole-foods, and very little fat and oil is used.  The recipes in the diet look pretty simple, but the plan does require food preparation for every meal.  The ingredients in the recipes are easily found in any grocery store, making a special trip to a health food store unnecessary. 

Below are the nutritional analysis reports and meal listing for the 7-day plan. 

Nutritional Analysis for the sample 7-day Plan from "Eat Vegan for $4 a Day"

Meals form 7-day Plan from "Eat Vegan on $4 a Day"