The point is that wild game is much less available for sale in the US, as a result of legal protections which prevent hunters selling their meats, the idea being they should only hunt occasionally for sport, if that. So, even though the UK has far fewer sources of wild game than in the US, due to the UK having c.12 times the population-density, per square km, of the US, the UK still has far more resources.
So are you saying that it's legal to sell hunted meats in the UK? If so, that's interesting and I'm curious how they address the concern that this might lead to overhunting of some species (which is apparently a concern of the US federal and state governments and environmental organizations)? I suppose that this is where strict hunting laws and enforcement in the UK come into play?
As for what I said above, it stands. I have always heard of countless RVAFers complaining about how limited supplies were or were becoming, and in all cases, it was simply a question of not searching in the right areas for the right sources.
Again, if you can find grassfed meats for sale from equivalent source types (such as farmer vs. farmer or supermarket vs. supermarket) at lower prices than agrarian staples like beans, corn, rice, and potatoes, then you are lucky indeed. There are strategies of course, like eating more organs and fats and less muscle meats, buying in bulk, asking for unwanted parts for free, etc., but that only goes so far and those strategies can be applied with agrarian foods too (and I have done so in the past when I was eating them).
It also puts food costs in better perspective to think more in terms of cost per nutrient than cost per calorie or per. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of data on cost/nutrient.
Economizing tips can help, but I think the emphasis on minimizing overall cost is the wrong emphasis. I think it pays in the longer run to think more in terms of investing in one's health as much as possible given one's budget. The long term savings in health bills will probably dwarf the extra costs of buying higher quality foods in most cases.
I remember, for example, how, as a RVAF diet newbie, I used to think that raw wild game was far too expensive in the UK, as, at the time, I was under the false impression that one could only buy raw wild game from wild game-specialised butchers. Subsequent tens of hours spent on visiting tens of farmers' markets at weekends eventually led me to find, even so, large numbers of high-quality sources of cheap raw meats. I even found sources offering, for free, things like raw suet, kilos at a time, simply because they were throwing it all away given no customer demand for such.
If one only cares about cost, then such things are easier. I have quality and health interests also. What were the sources? Was the raw suet grassfed? I can't stand conventional suet from feedlot cattle--there's simply no comparison--and the only way I would eat it is if I rendered it first, which I know you don't recommend.
As I understand it, based on what you and other sources have reported, you are quite lucky to have multiple farmers' markets within London alone, and the biggest one is apparently one of the best in the Western world (and GS' in the Philippines looks even better). As I've asked before, please try to keep in mind that not everyone has equally great farmers' markets or equally great overall access to high quality foods, nor necessarily at the same prices. I uploaded a photo of the biggest farmers' market in my state, which even you must surely admit is a disgrace.
I do investigate different sources and have a hunting brother-in-law who saves organs from his kills for me and he buys in bulk too, so if one of the ranches or farms has free unwanted parts like organs or fat, he saves it for me. Unfortunately, such windfalls only happen occasionally and most of the time my only decent local sources are the healthfood markets, as my diet is not sufficiently set yet to buy in bulk from a ranch or farmer myself. Luckily one of my local markets started selling suet that is of good quality at a low price of only $0.49/lb. It doesn't say grassfed, but by the appearance and taste I can tell that it is from at least mostly pastured animals, as it is much better quality than the supermarket stuff. They obviously don't realize the value of it, as they currently sell it for a lower price than the supermarket crap. Unfortunately, they only had a small quantity, but if they keep it at that price I will probably ask them to get more for me.
I've noticed that one somewhat misleading thing that proponents of nearly every diet out there do to make their own approach look more cost effective is to compare apples to oranges. In other words, the do things like compare the bulk prices of their favored foods to the supermarket prices of foods of other diets, or talk about free giveaways of their sorts of foods but ignore the fact that there are free giveaways of the foods of other diets too. For example, I know how to get free rice and canned beans too and have done so for a friend in the past, so to compare raw Paleo giveaways to agrarian supermarket prices is not a fair comparison. To be fair, one would need to compare like to like, such as raw Paleo giveaways to agrarian giveaways. In my experience, there are even more of the latter if you just know where to look. Plus, SAD dieters can choose from all food categories, so by definition their diet will be cheaper than raw Paleo because they can choose the cheapest foods from every food category, including raw Paleo foods. There's nothing to stop them from including the suet you mentioned in their own diet (and likely rendering it) if it's cheaper than other sources of fat they might use, like vegetable oil or pasteurized butter, if cost is the only question. But again this misses the more important point of investing in one's health. I think that raw Paleo wins out in the health aspect more than in the cost aspect, though thinking more in terms of price-per-nutrients does help ameliorate the cost issue.
