Inherently plants are safer to eat than animal products because the viruses, bacteria, fungus and parasites that attack animals could also attack humans. All animals thrive on oxygen, food, water and procreation.
They all have similar types of organs with blood pumping through their veins. So, when we eat other animals, there’s no telling what dangerous organisms we could be ingesting. It increases the potential to get zoonotic diseases such as the swine flu, avian flu, mad cow disease, bovine tuberculosis and HIV. In 2020, the now famous novel coronavirus is supposedly derived from eating bats.
The plant kingdom is totally different. Plants have roots, stems, leaves and many other characteristics humans do not. Their energy is derived from photosynthesis, so they need the sun, water and carbon dioxide (however, there are holoparasitic and semiparasitic plants that are different). That said, the noxious organisms that attack plants have totally different appetites that aren’t satisfied by attacking human-beings.
This all makes eating plants inherently safer than eating animals.
How do we handle this situation? Eating fewer animal products is a great beginning. The closer we move toward 100% plant-based eating, the better we all will be. From a nutrient perspective, there’s nothing animal products provide that we can’t obtain from plants. I would even suggest that whatever nutrients we get from plants is far superior!
