Imagine running from a grizzly bear, knowing that if you slow down, you’ll be ripped to shreds. Think about how much adrenaline would be coursing through your veins. Now, think about standing in a cage, looking up and catching a glimpse of a huge blade starting to fall, before even getting a chance to blink for the last time. Think about the outrageous cocktail of cortisol and other stress hormones that’d be racing through your system in that moment.

Now, I want you to think about the last hamburger you had. Maybe you did yoga that morning. You used your favorite meditation app to practice mindfulness for three minutes before jumping in the shower.  You were sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day using your refillable BPA-free bottle. You satisfyingly checked off all your tasks from your daily planner. You came home from class to spill onto the couch and watch a movie with your friends. When you all decided to grab dinner, you ordered a burger because it was time to “treat yourself.” You felt better about it because the menu said it was “grass-fed.”

At the end of your long day of zen, mindfulness, organization and relaxation, consider the type of energy that burger carries with it. Maybe it ate some grass during its brief eighteen months of life, but in the moments before that calf’s life ended, its veins, just like your own, were pumped full of highly toxic levels of cortisol, adrenaline and other steroids. Unfortunately for you, those super concentrated stress hormones didn’t magically evaporate out of that ground beef while it sat frozen and wrapped in plastic on a truck somewhere between the slaughterhouse and your plate.

You are so careful to consider the type of energy you absorb through the music you listen to, the friends you surround yourself with and the activities you do each day. It’s amazing. We know exactly which Spotify playlist to listen to when we want to feel nostalgic. We know who to hang out with when we need cheering up. We know which coffee shops to go to when we want to focus and study. We know what booze to drink and roughly how much of it when we want to have fun. I encourage you to extend that same level of thoughtfulness to the energies of foods you let into your body. When you look at a piece of meat, I want you to see the fear, stress and anxiety the animal experienced moments before its death. Whether or not you can see it, that fear, stress and anxiety becomes apart of your body just as once those carcinogens, bacteria and cholesterol settle into your own tissues after digestion.

Keep in mind: vegetables don’t have cortisol. They do have chlorophyll, however, which helps fight cancer, detoxifies our livers, heals our skin, treats arthritis, eases digestion and accelerates the healing of wounds. The choice is yours.