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Comment by chillingeffect | Hacker News Reader

not surprising because eating properly plant-based can be challenging, especially in old age which is less forgiving. Eating animals is a decent hedge. But my money is where my mouth is that my proper plant-based diet will win out.

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Except that's contradicted by this study. An example of witchcraft over science - believing what you want to believe, even when presented with its contradiction.

I think what they are saying is that animal meat has nearly everything a human body needs in terms of mineral, vitamin, fats, etc. On the other hand unless you take extreme care a plant based diet will often be lacking one or more critical resources for the body.

There are dozens of studies that support plant-based diets as reducing all-cause mortality. THIS study is the outlier, and thus demands a pretty high burden of proof.

Is it really much of an outlier? I eat a plant-based diet but most of what I have seen has been quite mixed

Food studies are always all over the place.

The only real consistency is that eating loads of processed food (think chips/soda) is strongly correlated with health issues.

Food studies are all over the place because they never account for genetics.

Look up Nutrigenomics to understand more, But a great example is changes in the FADS genes and how they impact the intake of long and short chain Omega 3s

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/6/758

Unless they are testing people with the same genetics, a meat versus plant diet will continue to result in different outcomes.

This study cannot be used to contradict or support hypotheses. The study is too small, local (do you live in Tuscany?), and is highly confounded. What other traits covary incidentally with eating more or less meat? Hundreds. This is a paper that may advance a few careers but it will not advance our understanding of aging and health span.

I tend to feel this is true. If anything this study shows that for many people the efforts they put into living longer via steering their diet might not pan out in the long run as other factors probably have more effect.

Why ignore the other articles the conclude the opposite?

This study is just a prospective cohort study, not a gold standard RCT or anything close to it.

Also just one region in one country. How do you extraplote that globally?

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