The Plant-Based Grocery List We Actually Shop From

Most grocery lists on the internet are aspirational. They run to forty items, four of which you’ve never cooked with, and they assume a store you don’t have anywhere near you.

This isn’t that kind of list. This is what’s in our cart most weeks, from an ordinary supermarket. It’s short, it’s repetitive, and the repetition is the point.

The short answer: A working plant-based grocery list has four jobs to fill. Something starchy to build the meal on, a legume, vegetables, and enough seasoning to make it all taste of something. Everything else is optional. Most of us rotate a small handful of breakfasts, lunches and dinners, so the list stays roughly the same from one week to the next.

The four jobs a plant-based grocery list needs to fill

The Grocery List, by What Each Thing Is For

Starches, which are the meal itself

Cooked, these carry roughly 300 to 700 calories a pound (about 400 for potatoes and 550 for brown rice), where most vegetables carry 100 to 200. That difference is the whole reason a plate of vegetables leaves you hungry at nine o’clock and a plate built on one of these doesn’t.

Starches: the meal itself, on a plant-based grocery list

Rolled oats
Rice, whichever whole variety is cheapest that week
Potatoes and sweet potatoes
Whole grain pasta
Whole grain or sourdough bread
Quinoa or buckwheat when we feel like a change

The four numbers behind that are here, and they’re the most useful thing we’ve ever learned about eating.

Legumes, which are the reason it holds

Legumes: the reason the meal holds, on a plant-based grocery list

Red lentils. No soaking, twenty minutes on the stove. If beans are new to you, start here.
Green or brown lentils
Chickpeas, dried and a few cans for the days we didn’t plan ahead
Black beans or white beans
Split peas
Tofu, and tempeh now and then

In a study of 785 people over 70 in Japan, Sweden, Greece and Australia, every extra two tablespoons of beans a day was associated with a 7 to 8 percent lower death rate. If there’s one line on this list worth acting on, it’s this one.

Vegetables, chosen for how long they last

Onions and garlic. Chop or crush them and let them sit for about ten minutes before they go in the pan. The sulfur compounds garlic is studied for only form once the cells are broken open, and heat stops the enzyme that makes them, so give it a head start.
Carrots and cabbage, which keep for weeks in the fridge
Whatever leafy green is cheap that week: kale, chard, spinach, collards
Something cruciferous: broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts
Tomatoes and peppers when they’re in season and cheap
Mushrooms
Frozen spinach, peas and broccoli, which never spoil and never sit there making you feel guilty

The cruciferous line deserves a sentence of its own. In a Seattle study of men under 65, three or more servings a week of cruciferous vegetables was associated with a 41 percent lower prostate cancer risk, while twenty-eight or more servings a week of vegetables in general was associated with 35 percent. In other words, which vegetables you buy matters as much as how many of them you buy.

Fruit, kept for between meals

Bananas
Apples. Dutch researchers followed 20,069 people for ten years and found that white-fleshed fruits and vegetables stood out for lower stroke risk, and apples and pears made up more than half of what people ate from that group.
Oranges, or whatever citrus is in season
Frozen berries, which are usually cheaper than fresh and no worse for you
Dates, in small quantities, for sweetening things

The pantry, which is what makes it taste of something

This is the section people under-buy, and in our experience it’s the reason a lot of plant-based cooking tastes of nothing for the first two weeks.

The flavor cupboard on a plant-based grocery list

Canned tomatoes, both chopped and pureed
Vegetable stock
Tahini, and peanut butter with nothing in it but peanuts
Soy sauce or tamari
Lemons, and apple cider vinegar. Acid at the end of cooking does much of what salt does, from a different direction.
Nutritional yeast
More spices than feel reasonable. Cumin, paprika, turmeric, garlic powder, cinnamon, chili. If a dish tastes flat, double the spices before you reach for the salt.
Ground flaxseed or chia

The Aisles We Walk Past

A grocery list is defined as much by what’s missing from it as by what’s on it, so here’s what we don’t buy.

The aisles we skip on a plant-based grocery list

Oil. This is the one that surprises people, and for us it’s a health position rather than a budget one. Our reasoning is here. We sauté in water or stock, and we roast on parchment paper.
Meat substitutes. Expensive and heavily processed, and beans do the same job for a fraction of the price.
Powders. Protein, greens, superfood blends. We wrote about the protein ones specifically.
Health bars. Dates and oats in a wrapper, at several times the price of dates and oats.
Juice. The fiber is what makes fruit behave like fruit, and juicing takes it out.

Two Things Worth Buying That Are Not Food

Vitamin B12. Not optional, not negotiable, and not expensive. Anybody eating exclusively plants needs it, and so does anybody over 50 whatever they eat, because absorption declines with age.

Vitamin D, but by test rather than by default. Anybody can run low, especially in winter, and in the largest British comparison vegans ran lower than meat eaters, so get the number before you decide.

Venny here. Those two are the only supplements I’d put on a general grocery list. Multivitamins are a separate conversation, and often not a helpful one. Even if you take one, you’re still better off getting your folate from greens and beans than from a tablet, because that way it comes with everything else. The one clear exception is anyone who is pregnant or could become pregnant. For them, a daily folic acid supplement is settled medicine, and it’s worth raising with your doctor.

What We Do With It When We Get Home

Almost nothing, and that’s deliberate. We cook one pot of something, and we cook more of it than we need. A cooked grain, a cooked legume and something roasted go in the fridge, and the rest of the week runs off those three.

What we do when we get home from the grocery store

That’s the whole system, and it’s the reason the list above never gets any more complicated than it is. A few of the things it turns into most weeks:

Venny is a medical doctor and a specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics; Andy holds a master’s degree in psychology. This is general information rather than medical advice, and anyone taking medication should involve their own doctor in any dietary changes.

And, always, seek health consciously.