I was just pointing out that a paleo diet still has some expensive food choices. If you don't eat grains, legumes, or dairy regularly then you're probably going to have to eat meat or eggs for protein, both of which are considerably more expensive than vegan sources of protein. This is especially true if you try to go a step further and try to find grass-fed beef or free-range chickens.
There exist some very expensive grain based foods. Trying to live off a diet of wedding cake would be very expensive. That does not prove a paleo diet is cheaper, any more than the mere existence of kobe beef proves grain based diets are cheaper.
I eat an awful lot of salads and veggies and fruits, probably less meat than a "real american"... I just eat lots more pears than wheat.
The reason I pointed out grass-fed or free-range meat is that paleo advocates often like to point out the nutritional inadequacies of the more modern "factory farmed" alternatives. I am not in tune enough to know whether this is a firm part of the paleo diet or not.
Whole grains and legumes are pretty cheap. I don't think there is any source of protein from a whole food that is cheaper.
I agree with that meat choice but I have a personality trait to prefer only a little good stuff rather than a big lump of junk. I can't properly discuss that aspect of the diet because of that. This extends beyond the paleo diet, when I occasionally eat something "bad" I usually eat the best bad stuff I can find, no sense eating a quart of horrible dairy ice cream if I can have a truly excellent pint for the same cost.
I would disagree on meat being overly expensive. The USDA theoretical diet claims 50 grams of protein is great. Sometimes I eat more than twice as that, or 100 grams. Its a uniquely american problem that we talk grams but sell in pounds or ounces leading to some weird ideas about portion size. I would suspect the average american thinks they need to eat perhaps 24 oz of steak to get a reasonable daily protein intake. The actual figure is a lot closer to a quarter pound. "a" quarter pound per day not two triple cheeseburger for each meal.
Broccoli stir-fry with thin slices of beef steak, mostly grilled veggie kabobs with some chunks of meat, salads with some meat on the side, that kind of thing. In the winter a homemade slow cooker mostly vegetable stew with some meat. Not meals that are 90% a slab of meat, or even 50% meat 50% carb.
I have not analyzed it but I believe I spend much more in the produce aisle than the meat aisle at the store. Sometimes in the winter my mostly fruit breakfast costs like $3 and I feel ripped off compared to what I pay in the summer, but they are flying this stuff in from another hemisphere so I guess its not so bad. If you're going to complain about expense, complain about $7 pints of organic blueberries rather than $5 little steaks because I eat more blueberries than steaks, by either volume or dollar amount. Out of season oranges flown in from Israel are another ripoff expense, although they certainly taste pretty good. Spinach is sometimes ridiculously priced also. Also sometimes bags of nuts have crazy prices like $8/pound... why decent quality walnuts sometimes cost almost as much as tenderloin confuses me.
