There have been cultures in certain blue zones like in Okinawa where people traditionally ate very little meat.
Less than 1% of their diet was fish; less than 1% of their diet was meat, and same with dairy and eggs, so it was more than 96% plant-based, and more than 90% whole food plant based—very few processed foods either. And, not just whole food plant-based, but most of their diet was vegetables, and one vegetable in particular—sweet potatoes. The Okinawan diet was centered around purple and orange sweet potatoes
Also adventist vegetarians in California:
The plant-based nature of the diet may trump the caloric restriction, though, since the one population that lives even longer than the Okinawa Japanese don’t just eat a 98% meat-free diet, they eat 100% meat-free. The Adventist vegetarians in California, with perhaps the highest life expectancy of any formally described population.
Adventist vegetarian men and women live to be about 83 and 86, comparable to Okinawan women, but better than Okinawan men. The best of the best were Adventist vegetarians who had healthy lifestyles too, like being exercising nonsmokers, 87 and nearly 90, on average. That’s like 10 to 14 years longer than the general population. Ten to 14 extra years on this Earth from simple lifestyle choices. And, this is happening now, in modern times, whereas Okinawan longevity is now a thing of the past. Okinawa now hosts more than a dozen KFCs. Their saturated fat tripled. They went from eating essentially no cholesterol to a few Big Macs’ worth, tripled their sodium, and are now just as potassium deficient as Americans, getting less than half of the recommended minimum daily intake of 4,700 mg a day. In two generations, Okinawans have gone from the leanest Japanese to the fattest
Source : https://youtu.be/mryzkO5QWWY
How else do you plan on tracking 34000’s peoples diet for 12 years? Lock them in a lab?
How else would you measure life expectancy accurately? You you must track people until a statistically significant portion of them die.
I don’t really understand how statistically this would matter. They had a large enough study group , tracked them for 12 years and isolated the variables.
Yeah and I never claimed it was only cuz of not eating meat.
Why do you think natural selection optimizes humans for longevity? (living 85 years free of chronic disease). Evolution just optimizes for survival to reproductive age and successful child bearing.
Just because humans can digest meat and relied on it for survival in harsh conditions does not biologically mean a meat-heavy diet is the optimal fuel for a 90-year lifespan in a modern environment with caloric abundance.