Is eating animals the same as eating plants, because plants too have life?

The following excerpt is from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.

And he said:

Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like air plant be sustained by the light.

But since you must kill to eat and rob the newly born of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship.

And let you board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,

“By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed.

For the law that delivered you into my hand…