I met my boyfriend at a mutual friend’s birthday party. He walked into the bar, gave my friend a copy of Lean In as a birthday present, and told her he "really enjoyed reading it." So basically, I knew immediately that he was perfect for me.On one of our first dates, he took me to my favorite vegan restaurant, clearly a tip-off from our friend. I had been vegan since shortly after college, inspired by books like The Kind Diet and documentaries like Food, Inc. — but also motivated by the search for better skin and an overall sense of well-being. Though Dave was a great sport on our vegan date, it was obvious he had no idea what he was eating ("What’s seitan?" he asked, pronouncing it like "Satan") or what being vegan actually meant. But unlike other dates, Dave didn’t make me defend my diet choices — or point to his incisors and growl, "What do you think these are for?"Instead, he made me feel at ease, even though he was out of his comfort zone. So I had no problem opening up to him as we continued dating. We talked politics, families, feminism, and how we both wanted to leave our jobs in advertising. We tinkered awkwardly on our guitars together and spent one entire date watching ‘90’s music videos.Still, despite our compatibility, I knew it was going to be hard to find common ground on the food issue. Bless him, but my new boyfriend was a bacon-loving, label-ignoring carnivore from the south who thought the term " all natural " meant something and that "organic" was just code for "more expensive."As our relationship progressed, it became more tempting to share with him everything I knew about food and the food industry. Didn’t he know that high fructose corn syrup may be worse for your health than refined sugar ? Or that many adults can’t digest milk after infancy ? What about how cows are the leading source of methane gas in our atmosphere ? How could I not tell him these things? But since I was worried about sounding like a vegan vigilante, and because this was one of the only subjects we had wildly different opinions on, I kept my critiques of his fridge to myself.