i really think it’s just more nuanced. vegan meals can be both cheaper or more expensive, easier or more complex, depending on the specific meal/where you live/time of year/etc etc

like you can totally just eat whatever plant bits and mushrooms you can get your hands on along with a multivitamin, that will probably be cheap and healthy as hell and the most effort involved is peeling things and spending a few minutes frying or an hour of unattended time stewing it. That is however probably really fucking unappealing for most people, so you have to either spend more effort on making the meals interesting, or spend more money on premade actually appealing vegan products.

As an autistic person who was viewed as “picky” growing up, and having been raised with the culture of a “meal” consisting of starch/protein/some veggies/TONS of sauce; it’s taken a fair bit of effort to even accept the idea of not having any meat in my food, and i still regularly use stuff like ground pork or chicken breasts in my cooking because it’s just such a simple way to produce food that makes me happy.

What i really wish would change is the proliferation of more good, simple, tasty, and cheap vegan or at least low-meat frozen food. One of my absolute favourite food products is Felix vegetarian hash, which is just diced potato, onions, soy-based protein chunks, and some seasoning; which you toss in a frying pan with some fat and fry for like 10-15 minutes and it’s done. Costs 7 EUR per kg and tastes really good, it’s human kibble in the best way possible especially if you just add some frozen peas.