When 12-year-old Sami Grover told his grandmother he was adapting a vegetarian lifestyle, she cried.

Grover, now an environmentalist and the author of the forthcoming book We're All Climate Hypocrites Now, says his Finnish grandmother was distraught at the idea of not being able to prepare his favorite stews any longer.

“I think for a lot of us, cooking is a way of showing love,” says Grover, who as an adult still eats a heavily plant-based diet but is less all-or-nothing than he was as a kid. “It’s also a way of connecting to traditions and heritage.”

That fear of losing a familial connection at the dinner table is just one of the reasons that carnivorous parents may freak out when