This article has a good summary: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
Excess heme iron on red meat is harder for the body to regulate absorptions and is linked to cancer.
In general, there are no nutrients in meat that don't exist in an equivalent or better form in plants, that's where they come from after all.
Including ALA, DHA (flax seeds for example), and many of the nutrients are made by the body itself. We are animals too, our body has all the same essential mechanisms to process plant foods as animals do.
Of course, we can't eat grass like a cow, but fruits, vegetables, root vegetables, nuts and seeds all that we can digest easily.
There are certain amino acids the body can't make itself, meat and fish contain those in high levels getting them from plants is of course possible but a pure plant only diet without dairy and fish you have to be careful that you are eating the right mix to get all the amino acids.
This is a common myth, plants contain all the essential amino acids. A cows gut does not magically create essential amino acids, it takes them from plants, and so can we.
There is no magical ingredient in animal products, they are completely optional for a healthy diet.
Meat and eggs are complete proteins in and of themselves, as a single source they are complete in all the essential amino acids, plants aren’t so you have to be more careful to get a decent mix.
I’ve no dog in this fight, I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but I also eat very little meat for medical reasons so I made sure I ate an increased range of plants to compensate.
One can live on pure animal product alone and not need any supplements, yet one can't do the reverse. If you eat only plant food you must consume supplements.
There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants.
B12 is the big supplement not found in plant foods, and the supplement was invented in 60s. So no true vegans could exist until then. Vegetarians existed, but they ate some animal products.
Plants also have no Vitamin A, only carotenoids which is difficult for our bodies to convert to Vitamin A.
The vitamin D found in plants is inferior to the vitamin D in meat. Most of us don't get enough sun for adequate vitamin D.
Vitamin K2 is also severely lacking in plants.
Heme iron is also only found in animal products. You need heme iron. For most people iron overload is not a worry, you need some genetic disposition to absorb extra iron.
We can't eat grass like a cow, but we can eat that cow.
You've made some claims without an examples. Can you give me an example of nutrients that are found in plants and not in animals?
Also the definition of an "essential nutrient" is a nutrient that we can't synthesise ourselves in our bodies. So no we can't make any essential nutrient because that's the very definition of the phrase.
You don't have to eat the cow, but it would be a waste to give it to the dogs when it dies. And you would thrive more if you did eat it.
> You need heme iron.
If you live on only animal products you are likely to get diseases like scurvy, or like the Inuit have a rampant rate of atherosclerosis.
B12 is produced by bacteria in the dust, meat in modern factory farms only has it because it gets injected in the animals.
Living in nature drinking from spring water and not washing everything so throughly we would get all the B12 we need. Instead of injecting the supplement in the cow and eating it, just take it straight.
> There are plenty of nutrients found in meat and not found in plants
Literally all nutrients in meat come from plants, or can be made by our body based on plants, there are no magical nutrients in meat it's myth.
> They are also in a less bioavailable form,
Certain nutrients like iron are excessively concentrated in meat, and eating it every day 3 times a day is toxic, so having less of it per volume is a good thing not a bad thing.
All the vitamins that you need are available in plants, A, K2, you name it. There is no magical nutrient missing they all come from plants.
As you mentioned, your body also produces vitamin D, you can go outside which is healthy anyway and that's it. Your body produces Vitamin D just like the animals.
Our body can either consume directly or produce based on plants anything that it needs in sufficient amount.
There is nothing magical about meat, its completely optional for a healthy human diet in all stages of life - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
B12 only comes with veggies if you don't clean them, i.e., if you risk food borne diseases. Otherwise you need supplements.
Meat is optional if you eat enough unwashed veggies. Veggies are optional if you eat enough meat. Societies have survived for centuries with both diets, but the thriving societies were all omnivorous.
I have always hated the taste of meat. My pet theory is that some bodies simply can't handle it.
Most Americans don't think they eat organs, but they are a big component of most processed meat foods, like sausages. But offal consumption is prevalent in the rest of the world. Even in the US, you can find offal in many Mexican restaurants.
https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20001025/too-much-i...
And comparing nutrients, animal products have far more, in better format, and more available then vegetables. For example liver is about 20 times more nutritious than fruit by weight.
Plants, have hundreds of active compounds in them that meat products do not. Those more bioavailable micronutrients from meat are linked to problems and cancers (heme iron) because our body can't regulate them as well as from plant sources.
Now I am not saying that liver is not packed with micronutrients, but I am just replying to a hilarious claims that plants are somehow drasticaly lacking in nutrients