In season 2 we are bringing you intermissions: short interviews with local professionals and those that help make this podcast happen. We hope you enjoy!
In this intermission, I interview Diane Cox and Nate Poeppel about one of things they have in common: a vegan diet. Join us as we discuss how they chose this diet, why they stick with it, and strategies they employ living in the Midwest.
In season 2 we are bringing you intermissions: short interviews with local professionals and those that help make this podcast happen. We hope you enjoy!
In this intermission, I interview Diane Cox and Nate Poeppel about one of things they have in common: a vegan diet. Join us as we discuss how they chose this diet, why they stick with it, and strategies they employ living in the Midwest.
All right, for this episode of Inside Out quality, we're doing an intermission. And I have Diane Cox with us again. And Nate peple, our audio mixer who you often don't hear, but he's behind the scenes making this all work. And this episode is all about being vegan in the Midwest. And the reason that's what we're doing is because both date and Diane have chosen a vegan diet are rare. Very rare. Yes, but it's very intriguing. I want to know more. I'm sure our listeners want to know more. So you first start off with you, Dan. Oh, sure. How did you end up choosing a vegan diet?
Diane Cox:Well, it actually started with my husband, he decided to go vegan for just a week, he watched a documentary, I think it was called Forks Over Knives. And he had a family history of heart issues. And so at the age of 62, both his grandfather and his father had had heart attacks. And he thought he was going to stop it in the in the tracks. And so he decided to just try it out for a weekend, see how it went. And in that week, he had so much energy, felt great, lost a bunch of weight. And then he was all excited and tried to get me to become vegan while I was pregnant at the time. And so I waited quite a bit of time after that before I decided to switch over. But I switched over some time later, just because it was easier to coordinate meals and eat together as a family. So that's my story.
Aaron Harmon:And Nate, how about you?
Nate Poeppel:I went vegan four years ago. Yeah, I think I had a bad diet at the time. I was like a tour manager living in buses basically, had a bad diet. I even had a smoking habit which I quit. At the same time that I went plant based vegan. Well, yeah, it was cool. And I had like, instantly, way better health. I think a lot of it was I didn't realize how bad dairy was affecting me. So instantly, I felt so much better than I ever had in my life. And since then, it's different. It's a little difficult. But I started then it felt really good right away kind of did for health reasons. Originally, I think then the environment reasons popped up. And then without even being conscious of it, I was just growing more of like the animal rights side of things, growing compassion for that without even trying to like it just came. So I'm in it for like everything now. And it just, yeah, it's it's been a really like big part of my life.
Aaron Harmon:Now, I'm sure when you are going out to eat with somebody and they say, Hey, would you like to eat you ever run into like awkward times where you get there and the menu has no options for you? Like, how do you navigate through that
Diane Cox:that's happened a couple times, most often you can find something or at least have something modified to become vegan. So it doesn't happen too terribly often. But it has happened a couple times. And in those cases, I think I'm a little bit less stringent than some vegans in that, you know, if there is something that comes with chicken, and it only comes with chicken, there's no substitute, I'll eat around it. I'm not gonna, you know, freak out about it touching my lettuce or something like that. So it's been okay for me to do things like that. And if all else fails, usually french fries are safe. I don't ask questions. If they're not. If they're not cooked in vegetable oil, I just kind of assume they are. So that's kind of how I deal with that.
Nate Poeppel:Yeah, I get that side too. Like the cross contamination thing. If I'm really, really hungry, I'll be okay with that. My side is, I don't know, I usually don't end up at restaurants that don't have an option. I'd say most people would consider me kind of anti socialist. Like, yeah, it's it's like, people know, like, my friends are pretty much the only people I actually go out to lunch with, they understand like Kool Aid has like six or seven places that he goes to. So we just go to those. And I don't expect like my friends To eat, what I eat. It's kind of cool when they do. I think that when I am in that position where I have to like try to make a menu work. I don't love that I don't love like ordering three different sides to try to make a meal. I'd rather just either make food for myself or go to a place that has an option. Sioux Falls has been good for it. A lot of other places in the country have been good for it. Like smaller towns in the Midwest, not so fun. Yeah. I'll be honest about that.
Aaron Harmon:So in Sioux Falls, there seems to be a handful of restaurants. Like what are your favorites?
Nate Poeppel:I have so many go for it. Yeah. sinas which is a training restaurant at Nathan railroad. I love that place so much. Shahi Palace, that's Indian food. Loms. That's Vietnamese. Just tried bread and circus the other day. That's really good too. There are tons of options honestly, like daily food and drink. I don't go there very often, but it's an option. What else? I mean they're like fast food options that I can hit sometimes to
Diane Cox:name the ones I know of, honestly. So my husband raves about Sanaas and I've been there a few times myself. It's just not close to where I am. So I don't go there very often, but I love that daily clean food and drink is delicious. I, so my husband and I happen to be members of the country club. And so that helps because they have their own dedicated vegan meal, or menu I should say. And so that's been really nice to order off of
Nate Poeppel:accommodating and even places like crave I think crave is one of my favorite places for to go if I'm eating with people who don't really get away from like an American diet, like people who really like a burger, you know, obviously, like Vietnamese food and Mediterranean food, you're like, not going to get that there. So that's a really good place to go where I can get sushi or I can get like a vegan burger there. And there's, they're like two full pages that are vegan at crave. Yeah,
Diane Cox:it's almost overwhelming how many choices they have their crave. Yeah, I agree with that. And I also think, just in general, any non American based restaurant seems to have something that is vegan. You know, if you were ordering Mexican, you can always get a burrito without the sour cream or something like true, it's pretty easy.
Nate Poeppel:It gets hard sometimes, though, like sometimes you don't realize that refried beans have like lard in them or something like that. Or rice has chicken stock in it. Or bread has egg or dairy. So yeah, so yeah, those are the things you can learn over time. And you ask about and I get pretty frustrated. If I talk to someone at a restaurant and ask Hey, is that vegan? Or like I don't I don't say vegan. Typically I ask is like, I know there's not meat in it. I ask is there egg or dairy in it? And sometimes people don't even understand like, what's in their food that they're serving? Sure. So that's usually I don't eat at places like that. Because it is like, more frustrating than it's worth for me. I'm eating at a place because I want it to be convenient. And it's annoying when someone doesn't even know that they're serving you. So it's like, Okay, I'm going to go somewhere else that like actually knows what they're feeding me.
Aaron Harmon:So one time I was telling Diane about trying some vegan patties. I can't which one it was. But you said oh, that's a transition food.
Diane Cox:Yes. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah,
Aaron Harmon:yeah. So for somebody who's like, Hey, I'm curious what this diets like, I want to try it out. Like, do you have any tips to help people try and make that transition? Since you both have gone through that?
Diane Cox:Yeah, so when we, when we first kind of switched over, we did a lot of the substitute meats, and you know, they have everything now ground beef, ground beef, chicken strips, whatever you want. And so we did a lot of that just to kind of have some filler in our meals. But now over time, we, we rarely will use our substitute meat products, we do use vegan cheese still, just because that gives some flavor that I think is lacking some time in our meals that we cook at home. But yeah, well, like I said that that is kind of a transition food. That's what we did at first to kind of give ourselves that filler feeling the the substitute of that, you know, really full, I've had a slab of meat on my plate feeling. And then we just kind of gradually went into a lot more vegetables where that was kind of like three fourths of our plates.
Nate Poeppel:Yeah, and I think another reasoning for that is like, the more you do it, the more plants you eat, the more like fresh you eat. The more almost like sensitive, you become an understanding of like how food interacts with your body. So like, yeah, so if someone starting, do whatever do whatever is like plant based, because there are tons of reasons to be plant based. But over time, I think you'll develop what feels good for you like what feels fresh. For me. Sometimes if I'm low on energy, don't grab a Red Bull. I don't I personally don't drink caffeine. I go to like a juice shop. And I get like real juice. And that's important. I would say people who are starting though, just figure out what you already like that can be vegan, right? Like I said, I started being vegan in a tour bus basically. So I really had to I didn't have like an oven. You know, we had a microwave and a fridge and things like that. So I can make gourmet cereal. Super funny, but like, if you like that, yeah, like that's fun, grab like cereal that tastes good to you. Kind of the adult cereals, but I had to remember, but you know, it had toppings and bananas and berries and all of that stuff and whatever. If that's like something that you like, and you know it's vegan, make that your breakfast and then develop from there. But don't like get down on yourself. Don't overcomplicate it, don't look at people on YouTube and go oh, I need to cook like a chef to be vegan. Yeah, it's so much more simple than that. Honestly, you get to figure out little hacks to get to figure out Taco Bell or Pita Pit or something like that. Because if you're starving, you need an option. That's convenient, too. And there's no shame in that. I mean, it's food.
Aaron Harmon:And those restaurants are starting to expand their menus and pick up a lot more options for people that are
Nate Poeppel:totally from what I've seen get easier all the time.
Diane Cox:Yeah, I think there are so many people with food sensitivities that they're kind of catering to lately and that just kind of helps those of us that maybe aren't sensitive to foods but we choose the big Can I it? Yeah,
Aaron Harmon:definitely. So we were, we're doing a big round of recording tonight. And we've gotten some interns. We're gonna have on this show for some of the intermissions. We're all outside talking about some of the things we're recording. And we got into this discussion about ice cream. One of my biggest hesitations to making a change like that my diet is I love ice cream, but you're talking about some options that are pretty good.
Diane Cox:She other some really good ones out there. I just had one cookies and cream flavor. I got it at HyVee grocery store. It was the best ice cream I've had. I mean, and I think over time, my tastes have changed. So I couldn't tell you that it tastes exactly like you know, whenever you would get a Dairy Queen or whatever, but it was delicious. And so and you kind of have to ease into that kind of stuff and try different brands, try different non dairy bases for the milks and see what happens. I think you'll find something.
Nate Poeppel:Speaking of Dairy Queen Dairy Queen actually has a dairy free daily bar do I did not? Yeah. So I'm curious about like, if vegan ice cream can taste good. Go order that because it tastes really good. Really close to Yeah, and it's like a little bit. A little bit of coconut. Yeah, if you're into that. And obviously very easy to go get like there's a drive thru for Dairy Queen, almost everywhere. Even in like small towns. They have Dairy Queens, it seems that's true. Yeah, I think that's like your grocery store or Dairy Queen, the dairy free daily bar, like it'd be a good place to try it.
Aaron Harmon:Well, thank you for letting us dive into your diet and share with listeners. Yeah, I think it's such a neat thing, though. And I think it's a good way to give listeners a view into our lives and some of the challenges we face as individuals and so I appreciate that. Thank you. Stay tuned for future intermissions.