before you knock the whole foods vegan diet read the studies they are citing especially those cited in Dr. Greger's book "How Not To Die". He also is not advocating for a vegan or even vegetarian diet. He's advocating for a plant based diet. I would say given what we know a whole foods vegan diet with proper supplements significantly decreases your chances of dying from the top 15 diseases. But you don't need to eat a completely vegan diet to get the same effects. You can eat a whole foods plant based diet with small amounts of meat similar to the diet of native Okinawans and get the same benefits. However, it matters for both the plant based diet and the vegan diet what you eat to get those benefits. After all you can eat a diet completely made up of junk food and it's still vegan i.e. french fries are vegan. Also, the research on processed meat including lunch meats and bacon is in and the verdict is they are carcinogens you don't have to like it, but hundreds of studies have been done. If you want more evidence look at the article from the international agency for research on cancer ( IARC) which reviewed 800 studies that have been done https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf . You can also see the following: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/10/26/processed-meat-and-cancer-what-you-need-to-know/ The following overview is also good: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108955/