I've been vegetarian now for 12 years, and vegan for 4. When I first started, it was 100% for the animals, and at the time, the common belief was that you were hurting your health, but I did it anyways. Now, in a strange way, the research has begun to surface showing it's actually healthier.
Anyways, you can eat crap or good, or cheap or expensive. But I will say this, there is no food you could eat that's as bad as a double cheeseburger. You will never eat any cholesterol (by definition, vegan foods do not have cholesterol) and have almost no trans fat whatsoever (only found in hydrogenated oils, no other vegan food).
I think there is a beautiful simplicity to it all. Life does become simpler. I realized a year ago that there was no point to refrigerating food anymore. You would never eat milk left outside for 2 days, but an apple? Vegetables can be left outside for as long as weeks depending on what it is. In the same way, most food (chopped up and cooked vegetables basically) really doesn't need refrigeration if you eat it in less than 2-3 days (use your judgement). I now make dinner, leave it in the pot, eat from it whenever and just pack lunches from it the next morning or the day after. That saves me the time/effort of transferring it between various containers, having to wash the containers, etc... This whole refrigeration thing is really a big simplifier in food prep/storage. You also pretty much don't have to worry about bacteria on cutting boards/contamination/etc...
I'm sure that saves us money. Food waste is definitely down drastically, but I'm less OCD about cleaning and refrigerating and all that. So it's a win-win. On the food waste front, I used to toss Broccoli all the time since it goes bad or wilts so quickly. Now I buy frozen. Some canned/frozen foods are the cheaper way to go, especially if food waste is an issue.