The assertion that non-meat diets are automatically more healthy than meat diets is patently not true. Sure, if you look at the standard North American omnivorous diet, it’s not hard to see that by taking meat out of that diet, you are improving it, and many studies have proven that fact. However, the North American diet is a bad example for any omnivore. I have vegetarian friends that eat all sorts of shit, that I would not go near. Sugary things. Deep fried things. Highly processed things. I would not call theirs a healthy diet by comparison to mine. Diet needs to be viewed as a whole, not as a collection of parts.
While your own diet, presumably, is a very healthy example of a vegetarian (vegan?) diet, there are countless other examples of omnivorous diets that have relatively large amounts of meat in them, that also result in a very low incidence of heart attack. In fact, while coronary health might be used as one yardstick for a healthy diet, there are many other factors that could be used to measure individual health, and all these need to be viewed in balance. Indeed, I would be willing to wager that the addition of small amounts of high quality meat, eaten at the right time, and in combination with other suitable foods could improve the diet of many vegetarians and vegans (maybe even yours :0), and the possible (but not guaranteed) slight increase in likelihood of cardio-vascular disease (very slight if the quantities are small enough, and the meat is the right kind), could then become outweighed by the benefits.
Funny, for example, how Ted’s bingo game didn’t include the oft cited fact that mediterranean/european diets (French, Greek, Italian), which include a good deal of meat, are extremely healthy with some of the lowest incidence of heart disease in the world. The French Paradox. The Inuit live almost entirely on seal meat and fat, with very little vegetables. Same again there.
The point is, that there is no magic formula to a good diet, and no one set of rules, that guarantees good living. There are healthy ways to be a meat eater, there are healthy ways to be a non meat eater. Focusing on single food groups and nutrients is a bad thing
The trick is to choose carefully what you eat, make sure it is varied, balanced, high quality, fresh or processed as little as possible, and is in sensible quantities. It should be a diet that suits the individual. The trick is also not to be conned into thing that any one "diet’ is suitable for all people.
The socio-economic and environmental concerns over a meat eating diet are a different question entirely