That is a well known symptom of being hard up and then achieving some success.

Your fears don't magically disappear when your circumstances improve.

Two dimensions to interpret this:

- article author judgement on what’s healthy based solely on its personal nutritional knowledge at the moment.

- the judgement of his decision, solely on the details of this post.

IMHO the only fault here is to omit more information he was basing his decision. But reading between the lines: he repeat being "hungry" but never saying "staving". That’s a huge difference: being hungry isn’t a health hasard.

> "Some part of the story are clear failures of the system."

I think in some sense, this is a bit of a "failure of the system" if one considers that healthy foods (regardless of vegan or not) ought to be just as readily available as the ultra-cheap (ultra-processed) unhealthy stuff, and should maybe be at a similar enough price point as to not deny even the poorest in a properly civilized society at least the option to eat healthy if that's what they want, but somehow we've decided that maximizing for profit above all other things (including health) is the way to go for everything in society, including our food system. Fail.