Meat intake is positively correlated with life expectancies

In other words, they did not control for wealth or income, which quite obviously confound this entire exercise. Probably this paper is actively worse than useless.

With the caveat that I'm not familiar with the data sources and methods used in this study, it sounds to me like what it shows is not so much "eating meat is good for you" as "living in a country where people eat more meat is good for you". Which I think is a pretty significant distinction when the potential confounders include virtually everything that affects the price and availability of meat relative to vegetarian foods (infrastructure capacity and robustness to support CAFOs and regulation/monitoring of such to avoid disease/contamination, access to international markets, political stability, monetary policy, agriculture subsidies, etc.).

I'm not saying that there can't be a nutritional effect. I suppose it's entirely plausible that, as the authors suggest, some of the correlation is explained by trace mineral and B12 intake. I just don't see how this particular study does much to establish support for such an explanation.

(Disclosure: I find myself pretty biased against this study because some of the wording is burying the needle on my personal paleo-woo-bullshit meter. For instance, the authors refer to "unique nutrients from meat" in what I read as a non-hypothetical way, and I'm reasonably sure such nutrients have not been shown to actually exist unless the definition of "meat" is expanded to include dairy and egg products.)

This isn’t a study that tracked individuals, they looked at population level aggregate statistics.

They attempted to predict average life expectancy using linear regression with just a seven, yes only seven, population level statistics. Wow I’m so surprised they found average meat consumption was predictive… not. I just wasted my time skimming that.

I love the intent of these kinds of papers, but at this point in time (2024 now!), surely there are resources for definitive studies, identifying every possible confounding variable.

Or a series of coordinated papers between researchers, progressively identifying every non-causal correlation so they can be taken into account.

Otherwise, we just get tantalizing paper after paper with its own mix of unaccounted for confounding factors and conclusively ambiguous correlations.

> The underlying reasons may be that meat not only provides energy but also complete nutrients to human body.

It seems that these issues can be addressed by modern vitamins and supplements. I've heard that you can be just as healthy as a vegetarian as long as you're still getting the necessary ones from another source. Another user (zhivota) mentioned the article not accounting for wealth or income, which can certainly limit access to the alternatives.

So basically the trend was observed everywhere except the region which contains pretty much the only country where a significant population is historically vegetarian due to culture and religion.

Instead, here's an obligatory PSA to eat your lifestyle and social responsibility "vegetables": industrial meat agriculture is undesirable for 6 factual reasons.

0. Opportunity cost: It's an inefficient use of capital and resources that could be more effectively spent producing a greater volume of calories and nutrition as crops.

1. Pandemic evolution at the agricultural worker<-->CAFO<-->wildlife interface.

2. Antibiotic resistance evolution of harmful pathogens.

3. GHG emissions driving a large fraction of anthropogenic climate change.

4. Vast amounts of air, water, and soil pollution. (Ever seen or smelled a hog farm spraying liquid shit into the air over a waste lake?)

5. Meat agribusinesses from farms to meat processing plants exploit undocumented people, including children too young to legally work, in dangerous and sometimes slavery-adjacent conditions. In fact, meat processing plants advertise salaries in Central and South American newspapers precisely to increase the number of workers they can hire illegally and exploit. Undocumented children are exploited in foster care by being put to work illegally (too many hours, too young) where foster parents take some or all of their wages, or accept kickbacks.

(It's a terrible reason to list animal cruelty because no one cares as evidenced by their actions as most people are willing to pretend animal suffering doesn't exist if they don't see it and they get their tasty Big Mac out of it. And too many people will violently argue "MEAT is required for life" and will often present a cacophony of tired, false, dogmatic nonsense to justify their high-consumption lifestyle choices.)

BTW people who use the Mediterranean diet tend to live long, healthy lives.

I.e. for people who are struggling to get enough to eat, of course they should eat meat. In contrast, I guess most readers of HN get enough calories and there will be no problem with eating veg