I've looked into a few of the studies you mention a while back because of personal interest.
Most of the conclusions of large scale studies are not very solid and can often be dismissed with correlation is not causation. Your point is valid, but also very often popular health habits align with the view of what a healthy diet is in society. Therefore lower meat intake often is connected to more exercise, more sleep etc. Of course they often try to correct for it, but it still makes many of the conclusions debatable.
There is however one association that seems to hold up for red meat, whether that's a steak or a shitty burger, which is the connection between heme iron and certain form of cancers:
Somewhat agree on the habit assertion. I say it's more of a regional culture habit issue than health habit issue. I changed my health habits to a more MMA diet strictly because I view that "body type" as more well rounded in capabilities. Good stamina, good strength and not overly stacked in one body aspect. Like, you need good upper body, lower body and core strength all around. You cant really focus on just one part. Their diets are mostly meat and veg based. Obviously there are a few exceptions, but most are pretty big meat eaters. But eating lots of meat doesn't mean they tend to be unhealthy in other aspects of their life.
The biggest problem, most people in the modern 1st world are lazy af. No change in diet is truly going to fix the lack of movement and lack of sun exposure. A 12 hour a day, everyday, call of duty gamer is equally unhealthy and useless whether herbivore, omnivore or carnivore in diet.
Most of the conclusions of large scale studies are not very solid and can often be dismissed with correlation is not causation. Your point is valid, but also very often popular health habits align with the view of what a healthy diet is in society. Therefore lower meat intake often is connected to more exercise, more sleep etc. Of course they often try to correct for it, but it still makes many of the conclusions debatable.
There is however one association that seems to hold up for red meat, whether that's a steak or a shitty burger, which is the connection between heme iron and certain form of cancers:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261306/#:~:tex....
But at the same time the effect is still very small and not well understood.