I read this article and it’s full of “gems” that mix up correlation and causation. It’s essentially a hymn in praise of the healthy user bias. People who have healthy habits, and who eat lots of green vegetables, and read articles about what to do to get healthier … (drumroll) … tend to be healthier!
Example:
In fact, it was found that — regardless of their type — legume intake was the only food factor that was directly associated with a longer lifespan, with an 8% reduction in risk of death for every 20 grams (approximately 2 tablespoons worth) of beans consumed daily.
Does that mean that if we eat 12.5 * 20g = 250g of beans, we can reduce our risk of death by 12.5 * 8% = 100%. This means … IF YOU EAT ENOUGH BEANS YOU WILL LITERALLY NEVER DIE! 
[1]
Even after controlling for other factors such as lifestyle, diet, and exercise, research has shown that people who drink 5 or more glasses of water per day, had about a 50% lower risk of dying from heart disease, compared to those who drank 2 or less (16).
OK, so they controlled for lifestyle, diet, and exercise. Did they control specifically for sugar sweetened beverages?
My wild guess here is that if you drink lots of water, you drink less of other stuff. Most “other stuff” that people drink on the industrialized diet is packed with fructose: soda/pop, sugar-sweetened coffee, “healthy” fruit juice (natural uncarbonated soda/pop), energy drinks (soda/pop with vitamins). Concentrated fructose, whether natural or manufactured, leads to metabolic syndrome, hyperinsulinemia, and visceral fat. All of these lead to heart disease.
The whole article is like this. Also, eat 10 portions of hearthealthywholegrains every day and stop eating arterycloggingsaturatedfat. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
[1] paging Dr Ioannidis … https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23193004/