The OT law very clearly prohibits the eating of blood because the life is in the blood.
Jesus could NOT have drank of the cup of the new covenant if it had indeed turned into His blood because He then would have not been sinless, the perfect sacrifice.
Nor could He have remained guiltless if He had changed the wine into blood and demanded that the disciples drink it.
Peter himself in Acts said that he had never eaten anything unclean. That would include the Passover meal where Jesus instituted communion. If he had thought that cup contained blood, he would have not drank it as an observant Jew celebrating the passover.
Nor is God going to command anyone to break a Law He Himself established.
The cup is wine and the bread is wheat a symbolic representation of His body and blood.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the new covenant?
Christ and his Apostles weren’t bound by the old law.
1 Cor 11:23-29 is very clear that receiving the Eucharist unworthily means you are guilty of his body and blood.
That would not be true if the act were symbolic.
From the KJV: 1 Cor 11:27-29
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.