[jamesredd]

Sounds like confounding bias. Seven-Day Adventists abstain from cigarettes, a main contributor to early death. Also any diet that avoids the standard American diet will probably increase your lifespan, even veganism, though probably less so now with all of the processed vegan foods. That has no bearing on whether veganism is an optimal diet for human longevity, it just implies that the standard American diet is a poor diet. If you look at countries with the highest meat consumption - Hong Kong and Australia - they also have the longest lifespan.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6654568/ “It is concluded that evidence was found for the thesis that abstinence from cigarette smoking is the main factor explaining the low mortality from ischaemic heart diseases among SDAs”

[afunctionof]

The argument wasn't "avoiding meat prolongs death." It was "avoiding meat reduces the risk of dementia."

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/114/1/175/617...