What? Have you ever heard of soy, beans, lentils, chickpeas or the huge variety of seeds? You don't need meat to get your protein, as many eastern folks have proofed over many many years.
All that is meaningless considering that some of the most essential elements do not naturally exist in plant based food. Creatine, Taurine, Vitamins D3 and B12 just to name a few.
Taurine is not essential. The body makes its own creatine and taurine.[0][1] B12 is available in a number of vegan sources[2], though vegans should generally supplement it.
Exactly, this huge variety of non-meat protein sources is new. As recent as 100 years ago you ate whatever you could get ahold of. And that always included some meat if you didn't want to die.
Many of these new sources don't have complete protein profile needed to be healthy.
Look at amino acid profile of these foods. Many of them do not provide "complete" protein. As in, they're missing some building blocks the human body can't fabricate.
It's possible to have a healthy vegan diet but it's a lot of work because you have to look at what amino acids and various nutrients are missing. It's much easier to just add meat to your diet. And anecdotally, a lot of vegans buy the "healthy" marketing and don't even pay attention to things like amino acid profiles. Which is unhealthy and frankly dangerous