What I take from people who know this stuff better than I do: There's reasonably good evidence that a diet should have a large amount of vegetables and fruit. There's controversial evidence that red meat is particularly bad.
However the big issue with meat in the diet is not health, it's climate. It's pretty clear that on average meat has a much higher carbon footprint than plant-based food, while some forms (particularly beef) stand out as particularly bad.
I’ve been a vegetarian/flexitarian over the last three years, with the decision being entirely climate-related as opposed to welfare-related (although this is important in its own right). When people enquire it always feels like I have to explain the decision and that I don’t necessarily align with more extreme viewpoints, for example veganism
I'm dissatisfied with the state of the science behind the impact of meat on both health and climate. If you search papers/studies on this, you'll find diverging answers.
Pros plant-based people have the movie "The game changers", Pros meat-based people have the movie "The magic pill". You can find a lot of articles that praise/criticize both movies.
What is very clear is that eating meat has a massive bad influence on the environment.
Majority of crops grown are for animals not humans. These animals then become hamburgers and such. The amount of energy it takes to kill, process, transport, refrigerate etc is mind boggling. Not to mention pollution.
For this reason alone, it would make sense to eat less meat, if not quit.
Reducing meat is one of the biggest ways to reduce your own personal carbon footprint and reduce animal suffering. Those two reasons are good enough.
So if I was you, I would do whatever feels reasonable (maybe meat 2 times a week, drastically reduced amount of processed foods, particularly sugar etc).
IMHO in diets like in politics the danger is always in the extremes. I wouldn't go full vegan but I wouldn't eat meat 3 times a day either.
Not just politics and diets, in almost every sphere of life extremes tend to be dangerous.
This is a very weird expression. Is there consensus or not? Always ask for evidence, not appeal to authority.
Eggs? Milk? Fish?
Mostly it comes down to essential vitamins like B-12 that are all up in the meat biz.
There are cultures that have been vegetarian for millennia. Ref parts of India.