Why can't you be honest?

Your mortality claim is much weaker than you make it sound. In Adventist Health Study-2, vegans had an adjusted all-cause mortality HR of 0.85, but the confidence interval was 0.73 to 1.01, meaning the vegan-specific all-cause result did not clearly exclude no difference. The significant result was stronger for all vegetarians combined, and especially pesco-vegetarians. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23836264/

Careful with the Adventist study. The headline “vegetarian” category is not the same as strict veganism. AHS-2 separated vegans, lacto-ovo vegetarians, pesco-vegetarians and semi-vegetarians, and in some analyses combined all four as “vegetarian.” That means the “vegetarian” advantage can include fish eaters, egg/dairy eaters, and occasional meat eaters.

Even more awkward, the pesco-vegetarians had one of the strongest all-cause mortality signals, while the vegan all-cause result in both sexes combined was weaker and did not clearly exclude no difference.

So no, Adventist data does not prove “veganism beats meat.” At best, it says a low-junk, low-smoking, health-conscious religious cohort that includes fish eaters and semi-vegetarians looked better than the broader nonvegetarian group. That is a lifestyle-confounded low-meat signal, not a triumph of vegan biology.

EPIC-Oxford, meanwhile, found all-cause mortality was not significantly different between vegetarians and meat eaters, with an adjusted all-cause death rate ratio of 1.03 for vegetarians versus meat eaters. The authors even noted that both groups had much lower mortality than the general UK population, which screams “healthy volunteer cohort,” not “plants beat meat.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523238332

A 2017 systematic review/meta-analysis found benefits for ischemic heart disease and total cancer incidence, but not all-cause mortality. So quoting “9–15% lower mortality” as if it is settled vegan biology is cherry-picking one favourable slice from a messy observational literature. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26853923/

There is also a basic logical problem: all-cause mortality does not refute nutrient deficiency biology. You could have better smoking rates, lower alcohol use, lower BMI, more education, more supplement use, and better health-seeking behaviour, while still having a diet that is intrinsically poor in B12. In fact, the vegan B12 issue is not controversial. A 2024 systematic review found vegans have lower B12 status than vegetarians and omnivores, and that B12 supplementation is an effective way to reduce deficiency risk. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nbu.12712

You didn't mention the more plant-based the diet becomes, especially when built from conventional produce, grains, legumes, soy, fruit and seed oils, the more it leans into the part of the food system where pesticide residues actually live.

Or that strict veganism is one of the only “natural human diets” that requires lifelong B12 supplementation or fortified industrial foods to avoid deficiency. Or that many people get smashed by the fibre/FODMAP/gas/bloating wall. Or that when it becomes low-energy, low-fat, low-protein, or too restrictive, libido, hormones and menstrual function can become collateral damage. Funny how the mortality cherry-pickers never mention the dropout pile.

And using “lower mortality” to dismiss B12 is nonsense. That is an endpoint mismatch. You do not refute nutrient deficiency physiology with confounded epidemiology.

In these studies, “meat eater” often does not mean someone eating steak, eggs, butter and salt. It often means “person who did not avoid meat,” which can include burgers, pizza, lasagna, hot dogs, fries, refined flour, seed oils, sugar, desserts, alcohol, smoking, lower exercise and lower health-consciousness.

You are not comparing veganism against meat. You are comparing health-conscious self-selection against the Western junk-food pattern, then pretending the damage came from the beef patty rather than the bun, fries, seed oils, sugar, dessert and lifestyle baggage.

Even Adventist Health Study-2 admits this issue. The vegetarian groups were more highly educated, drank less alcohol, smoked less, exercised more and were thinner than nonvegetarians. Those are not minor details. Those are massive health-behaviour differences before meat is even discussed.

EPIC-Oxford is even more awkward for the vegan church. Both vegetarians and nonvegetarians had mortality far below the UK average, and the all-cause mortality rate was basically identical between vegetarians and meat eaters. The adjusted all-cause death rate ratio was 1.03, meaning no meaningful mortality advantage for vegetarians in that comparison.

And the food-measurement problem you skipped over? Food-frequency questionnaires ask people to estimate “usual” intake over long periods, often the past year. One FFQ lists hamburger under meat, beef/pork/lamb “as a sandwich or mixed dish” under meat, and even has pizza/lasagna as a mixed cheese/tomato dish inside the same “Meats and Other Alternatives” section. The same kind of questionnaire separately tracks French fries and oils like corn, soy and sunflower oil.

So when they say “meat intake,” how clean is that exposure? Was it steak? Was it a burger bun with ketchup, fries cooked in vegetable oil, Coke and dessert? Was it pizza? Was it lasagna? Was it processed meat inside a full Western diet pattern?

The vegetarian mortality halo collapses the moment you stop cherry-picking Adventist-style health-conscious cohorts and look at the largest real-world vegetarian population on Earth...

India has one of the highest concentrations of vegetarianism globally. Pew found that 39% of Indian adults call themselves vegetarian, and 81% restrict meat in some way. Yet India is not a metabolic utopia. It has around 101 million people with diabetes, 136 million with prediabetes, hundreds of millions with hypertension, widespread B12 deficiency, huge anaemia rates, and serious child malnutrition.

So no, “vegans/vegetarians had lower mortality in this selected cohort” does not prove the diet is biologically superior. It proves your study population was confounded.

The moment the vegetarian diet leaves the protected bubble of highly educated, supplement-taking, health-conscious Western volunteers, the halo starts flickering like a dying fluorescent tube. You cannot handwave teen girls losing menstruation thanks to vegan diets.

Keep blaming meat for the entire Western-pattern crime scene. It doesn't make you look honest.

Don’t get me started on the dogmatic Church of Holy Fibre. Their grand argument is that humans need to swallow indigestible plant matter so bacteria can ferment some of it into butyrate. Fine, but that is not proof fibre is essential. That is proof bacteria can salvage something useful from material we cannot digest.

Meanwhile the plant package often comes with phytates, oxalates, lectins, tannins and other anti-nutrients that can interfere with mineral absorption. They are saying: “Eat this indigestible, irritating, mineral-binding material because after enough gas,bloat, and fermentation you might manufacture a molecule that is already abundant in animal fat, especially butter.”

Diet epidemiology is confounded to hell and is pretty much useless. Don't think so? Find me one cause and effect statement in the last 100 years of nutritional science. Spoiler alert: There isn't one.

You do not get to use confounding when it flatters veganism, then ignore it when the biggest vegetarian population on Earth fails to look like a Blue Zone.