I struggle to understand how the strict paleo people out there get 1g/lb of protein on a budget. It used to be easy when I was spending $1000/month on food for 2 people ((!!!!)) but now that I'm trying to keep it under $350/month it's all about making compromises. And unfortunately going with lower quality food sources is the only way to do it.
I eat primal, not paleo. When I did very strict paleo, I found the expense was on average $300/person/month.
Primal lets me get tons of protein from dairy and more grain, otherwise I don't think I'd be able to hit my macros.
I don't mean to derail your thread, but, can you elaborate? I don't really understand what you're saying.
Oh man, to avoid an awesome, radical derail into the idea of a new alternative horticulture and permaculture food chain, I'll just say this.
We currently live in a system that prioritizes linear production and depends on the specialization of tasks at each point in that line. Resources go in, are processed, sold, consumed, and disposed of, over and over forever. Most technological or engineered solutions to the problems of finite resources, dehumanization, and waste that directly result from this system simply seek to either externalize the negatives (so we export our feedlots and child labour to poor countries) or focus on asuaging guilt by putting a bandaid on the problem (recycling, "organic" industrial agriculture).
In the future, we will have to settle with the fact that linear systems are a fundamentally unsustainable, expensive myth. Rather than talk about taking animals out of the equation of meat eating through engineering, we should analyze the natural world and learn how animals have been sustainably produced (by healthy soil and sunlight), lived, and were consumed (by other animals and, eventually, healthy soil) to make room for new animals since the beginning of time. If you plug humans into this system so that our requirements for community, food, and shelter are all met as part of cycle, and our waste is integrated into the cycle's natural regenerative properties in order to capture any resources that we don't consume as a consequence of living, growing, and expending energy.
The reason I no longer eat $2/lb chicken breast is because that is an absolutely insane prospect. $2 cannot possibly capture all of the costs (externalities) associated with the chicken's feed, waste processing, processing, transport, sale, and then processing when it comes out the other end of my body. It's all held afloat by an obscene system of subsidies and head-in-the-sand ignorance on the part of consumers.