原来素食不仅能够帮你瘦身，还能为你的钱包增肥

A vegetarian diet won’t just help to keep your waist slimmer — it’ll also keep your wallet fatter.

素食不仅能帮你保持苗条的腰，还能让你的钱包更肥。

Researchers from the European Association for the study of Obesity compared a vegetarian diet with the Mediterranean diet, which is based on eating habits of those in Greece and Italy and relies heavily on fish and fruits and vegetables and the so-called “US-healthy diet” based on government-distributed dietary guidelines. And on average, someone following a vegetarian plan would have spent $2 less per day.

欧洲肥胖研究协会(European Association for the study of Obesity)的研究人员将素食与地中海饮食相比较。地中海饮食是基于希腊和意大利的饮食习惯，主要依赖于鱼类、水果和蔬菜，以及基于政府分发的所谓“美国健康饮食”的膳食指南。平均而言，遵循素食计划的人每天会少花2美元。

To produce the analysis, researchers created two-week menu plans assessed for their nutritional quality and used the cheapest price available from Amazon. While all three diets were comparable in terms of nutritional quality, the vegetarian diet only cost $15.40 per day on average, versus $17.00 for the US-healthy diet and $17.30 for the Mediterranean diet.

为了进行分析，研究人员制定了两周的菜单计划，评估他们的营养质量，并使用亚马逊提供的最便宜的价格。虽然这三种饮食在营养质量上都是可比性的，但素食饮食平均每天只花费15.40美元，而美国的健康饮食则为17.00美元，地中海饮食则为17.30美元。

The researchers’ findings echo previous studies that have shown that vegetarians discover major savings from their eating habits. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition calculated that meat-eaters spending roughly $750 more per year on food-related costs.

研究人员的发现与之前的研究一致，这些研究表明，素食者从他们的饮食习惯中获得了大量的储蓄。2015年发表在《饥饿与环境营养杂志》(the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition)上的一项研究计算出，食肉者每年在食品相关成本上的支出约为750美元。

Of course, these studies don’t capture all of the savings that will come about from a vegetarian diet, such as reduced health care costs from the healthier diet. Researchers from the University of Oxford estimated that Americans would save $250 billion if they chose to stop eating meat.

当然，这些研究并没有涵盖素食饮食所带来的所有储蓄，比如从健康饮食中降低的医疗费用。牛津大学的研究人员估计，如果美国人选择停止吃肉，他们将节省2500亿美元。

But America is a long way away from realizing those savings. As of 2016, only 5 percent of the country’s population followed vegetarian or vegan diets.

但美国离实现这些储蓄还有很长一段路要走。截至2016年，全国只有5%的人遵循素食或纯素饮食。