If you try to eat healthy, non processed foods, vegetables, etc, your food budget doubles if not triples.
https://thebeet.com/is-it-expensive-to-be-plant-based-quite-....
You can just google this, or, you know - try it.
The vegetarian stuff that costs a lot is:
- If you shop at WholeFoods, but their prices are insane anyway
- If you only eat Organic AND are picky about what you eat if you're ONLY ORGANIC. Organic has HUGE price swings, so if you're only organic you need to swap out what you want to eat, if you care about cost.
- Meat substitutes - which can be good, but don't fit your bill generally - they are often heavily processed.
Yes, it takes a GOOD amount more effort. You have to literally eat more, yes. That means you have to cook more. If you are cooking, the cooking is often more involved. Of course. But you also don't have to go full veggie either.
The people in my apartment were all pretty young and were surprisingly confused every time I was making something fresh from scratch. And I am by far not a good cook by any standard in Europe - I'm far from average probably.
I did the math (because I was broke) - on my "lazy" weeks where I didn't cook much fresh I spent much more money on average. I had access to 10 different fast food locations before I hit the first grocery store, this is the actual problem.
If you cook for two and/or reheat the leftovers the next day, I think you come out ahead.