I feel bad for plants

For some reason, especially when I was younger, I felt bad seeing how plants were treated.

One of the above is yeast (technically a fungus and not a plant but you get the point), which we use when we bake many breads. We make the yeast come to life and it helps the dough rise. Then we stuff it in the oven and bake it until we get fresh bread. For some reason, I have always felt a little sad thinking about this. We send yeast into the mixture so that it can help us, and how do we repay it? We kill it.

Then one day when I was making french fries with potatoes, I was chopping the potatoes up. I felt bad gouging out their eyes, and seeing their chopped up bodies with their slightly-red juices coming out of them, all while still alive.

I also feel bad when plants wilt and/or die when I fail to water them. I was assigned to water the garden on some days, but I often forgot, resulting in much of the flowers and shrubs withering. I also had a bonsai tree that I failed to water and it died. In such cases I feel the urge to rescue them from death and nurse them back to health. This didn't happen with my bonsai tree and I felt a little sad thinking about it.

I know it's just plain sentimentality, but is it normal to feel this way?