So... eat a carrot?

I will admit there is a societal trend to just relabel high meat low carb atkins type diets as paleo, and be done with it. That doesn't mean the paleo diet is "eat organic steaks every night".

As a programmer/hacker community the best analogy I can give is my impression of a venn diagram of a atkins/low carb type diet is the circle for the diet mostly contains meat and not much else. And the venn for a paleo diet also contains a small circle for meat, along with a whoppin big circle for fruit/veg/nuts. True both don't have grains/beans, and neither are vegetarian, but thats about it for similarity.

Another interesting analogy is the ideal stereotypical atkins low carb meal probably is a steak as per your example. The stereotypical paleo meal is probably a big ole salad full of veggies with a normal sized grilled chicken breast on top (not one of those mutant ones the size of your forearm).

Finally having fooled around with both diets a low carb ketone mode diet is super sensitive to what you eat; highly disciplined. Eat one apple and you've ruined days of work getting into ketone mode. On the other hand a paleo type diet has more to do with priorities and general trends. Always have more bags from the produce aisle in the cart than bags from the breakfast cereal aisle, that type of thing. I had a bowl of ice cream at a celebration for my son last night; under a paleo diet that's fine, once in a while... just don't eat that kind of stuff every day (or every week). Its not good for you. I drank a beer last weekend too.

Finally grains and legumes will make you fat then die, assuming you get enough of them (not starvation mode). If life's worth living, find a way not to fail at it. Right back to the first line, eat a carrot or something.

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.