I don't really measure my ratio of "fake meats" vs. getting protein more "naturally" from beans, nuts & stuff as fake meats (especially organic) aren't filled with any kind of noticeable amounts of any kind of unhealthy artificial (or non-artificial) crap that anyone should be worried about unless they eat 3kg of the stuff everyday (which is in the realm of "too much of even the healthiest shit can be unhealthy"). I switch around mostly because eating seitan or soy granules or tofu or falafel everyday would get boring pretty quickly. Sometimes it's just nice to have something that doesn't have anything that does meat's "job" in a food (i.e. a protein source that has a somewhat chewy texture that feels good in all kinds of food instead of all of it being mushy or crisp vegetables).
That said, seitan made purely out of gluten flour doesn't have all the necessary amino acids (it's missing lysine), so seitan is one protein source that shouldn't be your only source unless you make sure to add stuff with lysine in it. So add a bit of chickpea and/or soy flour into the seitan floud mix and/or spice it with something like soy sauce and that problem disappears. Chickpea flour & soy flour make seitan's texture better anyways (seitan made purely out of gluten flour isn't all that good), so no one should be eating purely gluten based seitan anyway.
As far as price goes, the only "fake meat" that are/can be expensive are higher quality, marinated tofu and all pre-made stuff. If you make falafel, soy steaks, seitan etc. from scratch yourself, the main ingredients like chickpeas, soy granules, gluten + chickpea flour etc. are INCREDIBLY cheap. I can buy 1kg of seitan ingredients for 6 (+ some spices) and make at least 4-5 sizable servings (that I can eat for 2-3 days per a batch of seitan) out of it, which is far cheaper than pre-made stuff or even actual meat. Or I can make maybe about 60-70 soy steaks out of a 500g bag of soy granules that costs 3,50 vs. a pack of 4 pre-made soy steaks that can cost the same or even more than that one bag of soy granules.
Now, all kinds of other animal-product replacements ARE expensive. Vegan cheeses are so expensive that I can rarely afford them. So far I've been too lazy to learn to make the vegan cheese myself but I've read some recipes and it shouldn't be all that hard, just requires me to get off my lazy ass and experiment with some recipes.
