What is the difference between eating 'Plants' and 'Animal's flesh', as they both are living beings?

Question

When we eat plants, we are still eating living beings and they do feel the pain. Then, what is the difference between eating 'Meat' and 'Plants'. Tell me in detail, how eating 'Plants' is good than eating 'Animal's felsh'. Or give me the URL of a website that has all the information.

Answer 1

Plants feel pain now? Kind of grasping at straws aren't we? Did you fall asleep during in the third grade when they did the unit on nervous systems?

Plants might have a stress-avoidance response, but it is quite a stretch to refer to this as “pain.” It is even more erroneous to equate this response with the pain suffered by animals and human beings. Plants lack nerve endings, brains, hormones, and other structures that would allow them to experience pain. They also lack the ability to move away from sources of stress, an evolutionary trait linked with the ability to feel pain.

Even those who argue that plants feel pain and suffer should support a vegetarian diet because the number of plants that must be fed to an animal to produce enough meat for one human is greater than the number of plants required to feed that same human if he or she ate the plants directly. Meat-eaters are responsible for “killing” 10 times more plants than vegetarians, and they also kill and cause suffering to animals.

The argument that plants feel pain and suffer and that killing them is as bad as killing animals is weak and illogical. Those who use this argument to justify their continued consumption of meat should attempt to approach the debate in a more logical, scientific manner.

Just another false argument made by people who eat meat in order to justify what they do. This always amazes me, they say that they do not feel bad about eating animals yet they are always trying to justify why they eat the way they do.

Answer 2

Obviously we have to eat *something* to survive. Plants don't have the same type of nervous system as most animals, so don't feel pain the same way a chicken or a human do. We have no way of knowing whether plants sense pain in some other way, or to what extent. It is still better to eat plants instead of animals b/c when you eat an animal you're the cause--perhaps indirectly-- of the animal's pain, and also the potential pain of whatever plants the animal ate while it was being fattened up for slaughter. Also, it is possible to eat a lot of plants without killing them-- most fruit, herbs, some veggies.

Answer 3

Plants can't run as fast when you're trying to kill them in order to put them on a plate.

Seriously, becoming a vegetarian has a variety of reasons to include diet, religious, empathetic (save the animals), or protesting reasons. It is a decision usually made on an individual basis. Vegetarians aren’t freaks of nature. They are usually very well educated and committed to their lifestyle. However, like all things, you’ll find some that take it to an extreme so that they turn people away from the idea of being a vegetarian. There are others that do it for popularity or passing fad without any real thought to what they are getting into.

Answer 4

Animals/humans only absorb a percentage of the nutrients in the plants they eat. "Meat" is a middle man. Animals absorb a percentage of nutrients from the plants they eat and when humans eat animals they only absorb a small percentage of the percentage of nutrients the animal absorbed from the plant. Therefore eating plants is just more efficient, and they are better for your health, a lot of meats have bad cholesterol that clogs your arteries and is a primary cause of heart disease, high blood pressure and other fun stuff. Don't forget to buy organic, meat or veggies, since they are all living beings I like to think that organic ones had a better life.

Answer 5

Animals have an outstanding presense of mind. They have a complex organ system use for functioning in such a world. Where as plants have a relatively simple system and have not presented any sort of intelligence, senses, or any sort of cognative thought. They cannot feel pain because they do not have pain recpitions in their makeup. There is a big differnce. Its easy if you take a life science class to know what the differnce is.

Answer 6

If you know that you are what you eat. Then it is right to say that would you like it if someone ate you? Animals do have feelings because GOD (and there is a GOD) made them that way. Just as a cow has a baby and groans when she has it, so does a human female. plants are made to be eaten, Genesis 1:29 they are for the nourishment of our bodies. But if a guy needs to go hunting for his meat, then I guess he needs to eat it and stop worrying about if it has feelings or not. It is true that the bad hormones that we emit when we are scared get deposited into our blood stream make us sick. SO it goes with animals also. You be the judge.

Answer 7

Just because plants react to stimulus does not mean they feel pain they its more of a biological reaction than anything.

Like a sunflower pointing to the sun........

Plants don't feel pain now if you just take a step back and look at what you just said you will realize that it is very silly and that it will not convince vegetarians to stop eating.

Answer 8

Give thanks to both everything has a spirit They May lack a central nervous system. But they can React to their enviroment .. Respect them. Thank the plants spirit.

Wound-Induced Proteinase Inhibitor in Plant Leaves: A Possible Defense Mechanism against Insects
T. R. Green 1 and C. A. Ryan 1

1 Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman

Wounding of the leaves of potato or tomato plants by adult Colorado potato beetles, or their larvae, induces a rapid accumulation of a proteinase inhibitor throughout the plants' tissues that are exposed to air. This effect of insect damage can be simulated by mechanically wounding the leaves. The transport of a factor out of damaged leaves takes place rapidly after the wound is inflicted and the levels of proteinase inhibitor, in both damaged and adjacent leaves, rises strikingly within a few hours. The rapid accumulation of a powerful inhibitor of major intestinal proteinases of animals in response to wounding of the leaves is probably a defense mechanism.

Answer 9

you dont know for a fact that plants feel pain!!!! There is no scientific reason to believe that plants bring a consciousness or psychological presence to the world. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. Therefore, they lack the fundamental mechanisms to experience pleasure, pain, and suffering. Fear and pain would serve no purpose in plants because they are unable to escape any threat.

Answer 10

Just because plants do not show a typical reaction to certain stimulus does not mean that a person can definitively say that they cannot feel.

I won't go as far as to say they definitively do but there must be more research into this subject before any conclusions can be made.

Look at a sensitive plant (Mimosa sp.) touch it and the plant colapses instantly. Venus fly traps close to the touch and can even count (a necessary funtion to avoid accidentaly setting off a trap.)

Easy to overlook these two examples and dismiss them as an invlountary function but we still have a long way towards understanding the natural world we live in.