This article seems to be written taking as a premise that "conventional wisdom" holds vegetarian and vegan diets to be more expensive than the standard western

This article seems to be written taking as a premise that "conventional wisdom" holds vegetarian and vegan diets to be more expensive than the standard western omnivorous diet. To me, this seems ridiculous; it should be obvious to most people that a vegetarian or vegan diet would be less expensive from readily available information: (a) when you go to the grocery store, on a per pound or per serving basis, meat tends to be more expensive than in season vegetables or fruits (or grains, beans, etc.) (b) rich countries consume more meat than poor countries, and as their economies grow or shrink they change their meat consumption (for example, look at China in recent years or the US over the past century) (c) a junior high knowledge of life sciences and trophic levels (remember the 10% rule?) should make it clear why eating animals that we raise on our own agricultural output (e.g. corn, soy, other grains) would be drastically less efficient/more costly than just eating those crops ourselves. What should be surprising is that this sample only finds the vegan diet to be less than 25% cheaper than the omnivorous diet. Admittedly, the omnivore on the sample day didn't eat any beef, or large cuts of meat, but still, I would have thought that the vegetarian and vegan options would have been cheaper. I guess really this is a demonstration of the degree to which meat production is subsidized.