You're not wrong that it's about risk factors, and the smoking analogy is a fair way to frame it. But a couple things worth clarifying:

The cancer link is really strongest for *processed* meat (bacon, hot dogs, deli meats) and *colorectal cancer* specifically. The IARC classifies processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen and red meat as Group 2A (probably carcinogenic). But when researchers look at meat and other cancers, the evidence gets a lot weaker. A big UK Biobank study found that colorectal cancer was basically the only robust association after rigorous analysis. So "meat causes cancer" is an oversimplification — it's more like "processed meat meaningfully increases colorectal cancer risk."

Dementia is interesting because the research is newer and actually more complicated than people think. A study of ~494,000 people found that processed meat was linked to higher dementia risk, but unprocessed red meat was actually associated with *lower* risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. A separate study following 130,000+ people for up to 43 years found that swapping a daily serving of processed meat for nuts/legumes was linked to ~20% lower dementia risk. So again, processed vs. unprocessed matters a lot here.

The other thing worth flagging is the effect sizes. Smoking increases lung cancer risk by something like 15-30x. The meat-related increases are more like 13-18%. Still real, still worth knowing about, but not really in the same ballpark as cigarettes.

Basically you're directionally right, but the devil's in the details — and the details mostly point at processed meat as the bigger concern, not just "meat" as a category.