There’s a lot of debate right now about what the healthiest diet for people is. In my opinion the evidence that a good plant based diet is the best we can do is pretty convincing.

But just for the sake of argument let’s say that a small amount of meat is helpful or even necessary. We’re still far far away from the amount of meat people just casually and thoughtlessly eat every day in most developed countries, which also necessitates all the horrible cruelty and environmental destruction of our current farming methods.

So if for whatever reason you feel like you need to or deserve to keep eating meat, you can still cut way down and make sure the meat you eat doesn’t come from doing things to animals that would have you sent to jail for doing to a dog.

You don't need meat at all. Meat is a comfort food. Don't worry about b12, you can find it mushrooms, nutritional yeast, supplements. in the past we'd get it from fungus, etc.

You can get all the nutrients you need from a whole foods plant based diet. No one need ever get heart disease or stroke, simply switch to a whole foods/plant based diet.

Animals get their protein from plants. Eating meat is just eating recycled proteins. If you want to get high quality original protein, you need to eat meat. Vegetables and Beans are extremely high in protein (over 15% of calories come from protein!). Just check out this calculator which shows all the nutrients normalized on a per calorie basis: https://kale.world/c

This is going to sound shocking, but the following is all true. and if you ask the people who actually do the research on this stuff, you'll see that it's right: In the last couple decades protein needs have been grossly exaggerated. The media has brain washed us into thinking that we need vast amounts of protein. You actually only need 5%, according to the WHO. I know some countries will say 10%. In any case, It's almost impossible to not get enough protein from plant based whole foods.

Indeed, we do need some meat. With that said, Americans would be wise to eat more organ meat: often very healthy, and contains micronutrients we can't get elsewhere. Some of these include things we simply can't synthesize ourselves. We do need meat, though we would be wise to consume more of the whole animal, both to minimize waste and get healthier.

Name the nutrient that exists in meat that does not exist in plants or produced in our own bodies

Methionene, tryptophan, lycine, and isoleucine are four essential amino acids present only in low concentrations in most veggie/nut/legume proteins. That's why these proteins are called incomplete. We need them to build and maintain muscle and tissue. I'm sure there are more.