I thought this was a decent quick summary of stoicism, but I'm not sold on this "primal lifestyle" diet book. I highly doubt that any modern day writer knows enough about hunter-gatherers to create a diet plan. Or than you and I could put one into practice. Like say walking. A hunter-gather walks for hours a day. Who's got time for that? And what do hunter gatherers look like? Kind of in shape, but with a little belly according to National Geographic pics. They look good when they're young and shitty when they're old, same as everyone else. They just aren't fat because they're poor and have to walk forever to find their food -- but most people aren't much fatter anyway. Besides which all the weak hunter gatherers die, so only the strong fit ones are left to take photos of. I'm weak and out of shape. Maybe I can't cut the primal lifestyle at all. And funny he's talking about blacking out the electricity, but he's still allowed to write. Jungle people have no writing.
I'm thinking you may have taken the primal part a little bit too seriously, but you did manage to bring up most of the major criticism of the fad. Personally, I was more surprised by the attempt to reconcile the two approaches than really awed by idea. There are better primal bloggers out there, who focus more on looking at parts of past lifestyles, even just to the 1940s, for ways to live healthier. I mean, there is probably something there, because it seems that the incidence rates of every major disease I can think of, from Lyme to cancer, have increased in that period. But for some reason, likely marketing, Mark has managed to gain a much larger following than those likely more worthy writers.