The empirical health benefits of vegetarianism vanish once you control for health-consciousness.
Trying to paint some bleak health picture on all meats is plain FUD.
[1] https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whatthehealth/203617202
[2] Vegetarians less likely to develop cancer than meat eaters, says study https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/jul/01/vegetarians-...
[3] Vegans live longer than those who eat meat or eggs, research finds - Every three per cent increase in calories from plant protein was found to reduce risk of death by 10 per cent http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...
[4] 16 Studies on Vegan Diets – Do They Really Work? https://authoritynutrition.com/vegan-diet-studies/
[5] How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXXXygDRyBU
Also, OP made a specific claim about controlling for health-conscious behavior that is not countered here.
Relative risks (RRs) were estimated by Cox regression,
stratified by sex and recruitment protocol and adjusted
for age, smoking, alcohol, body mass index, physical
activity level and, for women only, parity and oral
contraceptive use.
(One possibly life-prolonging behaviour observed more in vegetarians: not considering the Guardian to be a 'sensationalist' newspaper)
It just wouldn't be a very enjoyable life.
I'm sorry if that sounds facetious, but do I really need to demonstrate that most people enjoy eating meat? Well, they do. They enjoy it a lot.
https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eati...
And to clarity my earlier statement, there are plausible reasons to not eat meat: animal suffering, cost, environmental impact.
Avoiding absolutely all meat on the basis of health reasons (the original context of the discussion) is bogus.
If I had to summarise what I remember from when I studied something related, I'd say your best bet is to eat (a) small amounts of (b) mostly white meat.
(a) is pretty obvious: a bit of meat on occasion is enough to ward off any possible malnutrition. If you don't go fully vegan the risk isn't high, but neither is any negative effect the meat may have.
(b) is probably more controversial, but contrary to what a certain crowd has been hyping, it seems like the evidence against red meat is still ahead. More in regards to cancer, a little less for cardiovascular diseases. The mechanisms aren't clear: Harald zur Hausen (Nobel for HPV) thinks it's viruses from undercooked red meat and only eats it well-done. Cholesterol is more of a symptom than a cause...etc.
You can also ward off any possible malnutrition by eating completely plant-based. It's not hard. You gotta eat more varied than when you eat animal products, but that comes with a bunch of added benefits, so it's really a win-win, and even a small portion of white meat on occasion is a huge tax on the environment compared to plants, and it still comes with all the ethical drawbacks, if you are concerned about that at all.
> (b) is probably more controversial, but contrary to what a certain crowd has been hyping, it seems like the evidence against red meat is still ahead. More in regards to cancer, a little less for cardiovascular diseases. The mechanisms aren't clear: Harald zur Hausen (Nobel for HPV) thinks it's viruses from undercooked red meat and only eats it well-done. Cholesterol is more of a symptom than a cause...etc.
In any case, science is clear that it's a lot more unhealthy than eating a plant-based diet. It baffles me that people focus on the "it's possible it's not as bad as they say, even though science agrees it's bad, so lets eat it", instead of the "well, there is a lot of controversy about how quickly eating animal products is gonna kill me, so lets just eat the things that don't and that also doesn't unnecessarily destroy our planet and is ethically corrupt".
Nobody is saying 'a steak a day keeps the doctor away'. But red meat is good for you: it's full of all sorts of essential nutrients that you need. It's tasty, and if it were in any serious way harmful then we wouldn't be eating it.
The unhealthy aspect of red meat is 1) it contains a lot of stuff you don't want to consume, like cholesterol, hormones, too much saturated fat, recycled drugs and shit and 2) you can get all these good and important nutrients from other food sources that does not contain the bad stuff, and since there is no benefit to consuming these things via red meat compared to say plants, red meat turns out to be a negative to your health instead of a positive.
Some activities are worst than other; but all have some effect on the environment. Mussel farms release sediments to the sea floor below, modifying its granular structure. This changes the communities of organisms living in the area.
Less unhealthy does not mean something is healthy, and since meat is basically saturated fat, hormones, cholesterol, not to mention all the drugs fed to the animals that are recycled through it and shows up in the meat too. And about B12: that is recycled too. Livestock are fed B12 (and other stuff) which is why it's prevelant in meat as it is. If you worry about B12, it would seem to me that you worry about health, so getting B12 through meat where you also get all kinds of bad stuff sounds illogical instead of just taking a vitamin pill.
American Heart Association made some recommendations like this in the 90s that caused everybody binge on carbs and weigh 300lbs.
Recent studies (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9635993 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995) failed to find ill effects from saturated fats. (Trans fats are another story.)
> hormones
It's been years, and we're still waiting for any actual evidence on this one. If it concerns you, there is hormone-free meat, just there there are pesticide-free veggies.
> cholesterol
Scientific consensus is that eating cholesterol has zero effect on cholesterol levels, since the body regulates production of it anyway.
> Livestock are fed B12 (and other stuff) which is why it's prevelant in meat as it is.
True, though cows, sheep, goats, deer, etc. naturally produce B12 themselves (or more accurately, their bacteria do).
> getting B12 through meat where you also get all kinds of bad stuff sounds illogical instead of just taking a vitamin pill.
It seems a little bit of red flag if a diet is deficient enough that you need pills to compensate, but I have no opposition to them per se. I take multi-vitamins now and then.
I didn't make a comprehensive list of meat's better-than-average nutrients (e.g. iron comes to mind). Can you get the same nutrients without meat? Yes, it's possible. On the other hand, there's a reason humans are omnivores, even if we like to pretend they're not.
An unhealthy diet is an unhealthy diet in any case. Saturated fat is not good for you. It's the reason you get type 2 diabetes, among other stuff. No one will tell you it's healthy.
> hormones
Still one reason less to eat meat when the alternative is free of that crap and healthier in every other way too. And there is also all the science that says it is a problem. Especially in dairy, but also in meat. We don't need it, and we (possibly) suffer from consuming it, so doing so is plain stupid when there are alternatives.
> Scientific consensus is that eating cholesterol has zero effect on cholesterol levels, since the body regulates production of it anyway.
That's not true at all. The scientific consensus seems to be that it (dietary cholesterol also called ldl cholesterol) contributes about 0.3-0.4 of what saturated fat does when it comes to raising your blood cholesterol. But the fact is that humans need to consume zero dietary cholesterol - nothing at all - and consuming it has unhealthy effects, so doing so is plain stupid health wise when their is an alternative with zero dietary cholesterol.
> True, though cows, sheep, goats, deer, etc. naturally produce B12 themselves (or more accurately, their bacteria do).
So do humans. Still not a good reason to consume humans nor livestock.
> It seems a little bit of red flag if a diet is deficient enough that you need pills to compensate, but I have no opposition to them per se. I take multi-vitamins now and then. I didn't make a comprehensive list of meat's better-than-average nutrients (e.g. iron comes to mind). Can you get the same nutrients without meat? Yes, it's possible. On the other hand, there's a reason humans are omnivores, even if we like to pretend they're not.
You don't get the B12 from meat because of some special properties of the animals as a food source. You get it from meat because 1) the animals consumes supplements (which you can do too instead of getting it through an animal that consumed a supplement) 2) they consume poop (by accident or by choice) 3) their food is bacterially contaminated 4) they themself eat animal products where the occurrence are the same yet again.
The reason why we need a pill in 2017 if we don't eat animal products or food that is fortified (like one could argue meat is, and that lots of plant-milks are for example) is because our water and our food is sanitary compared to what livestocks and our ancestors consumed. Health wise, getting B12 from meat is highly disadvantaged compared to a vitamin pill, which is a great thing for people to consume in any case.
For one, the WHO beg to differ
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf
tldr Red meat is group 2a, probably carcinogenic to humans, processed meat is group 1, carcinogenic to humans.