Why Sprouts Are the Future of Phytonutrient Health | Doug Evans | Ep. 63

Introduction to Doug Evans and Sprouts 0:00

People ask me, like, where do you get your protein from? It's like where does a grass-fed cow get its protein? The same place you do, right? Yeah, I'm getting it from the plants. Captain Hook, the pirate, was sprouting on his pirate ships because his pirates were getting scurvy. When they're crossing the ocean, they didn't have anything with vitamin C, so they were able to sprout. Today's guest is Doug Evans, a former Army veteran, bestselling author, and co-founder of The Sprouting Company. He's pioneering sustainable food and empowering everyone to grow their own.

Get ready to be inspired by his remarkable journey. They're different slices of the molecules that can have a different biological effect on the body. You could replace rice with sprouts. How do you do that? Well, most people look at sprouts and say, oh, that's garbage. And they don't even eat it. They'll just put it off to the side. So why sprouts? Welcome to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahata. And as you guys know, we're bringing health and wellness experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, and beauty.

Today, was spent a lot of his life jumping out of airplanes defending this country. But now he's defending everybody from bad health. And he has a history behind him. A great history. He's done some magical things. We're going to be talking about some of the things that I love personally, poly nutrients, sorry, phytonutrients. We're going to talk about all of benefits of some things he's doing with sprouts. Today we have Doug Evans. How are you, Mr. Evans? Sam, I'm the best ever. Glad to be here.

Yeah, man. So, hey, Defending our country, man. Number one, kudos to that. I got much respect. Obviously, years of being a first responder, but now you're doing a whole different other thing of saving people from this bad health that we get exposed to. Yeah. For me, I didn't really choose to do this. This is coming through me. Right. Like I have to because we all know people that have been kind of minimized and pushed off into the corner because of other shiny objects and sprouts deserve this attention and they deserve his voice.

And I looked around and we know Brian Clement and David Avocado Wolf and Gabriel Cousins and Ann Wigmore and Sam Meyerwitz, the sprout man. So there's a lot of people. who were tuned in early on the OGs on Sprout. But for some reason, they didn't cross over. They never left the hippie dippy community and they were all small scale. And for me, The way that the sprouts resonated for me was something that I felt like, oh, I have the juice. I can carry this ball over the finish line and we'll get how I got here.

But that's my mission. Sprouts are the most nutrient dense food on the planet. You can grow them without soil sunshine or fertilizer in days for under a dollar serving. Oh, man. So I'm going to have a lot of questions about that because, you know, I eat sprouts. But I don't grow sprouts and today I'm going to learn about growing sprouts. You are. And you mentioned Brian Clements, which he actually has a chapter in my book, talking about everything that he does at Hippocrates. So Doug, let's go way back to when you were in the military, you're part of Airborne 101? 82nd Airboard.

Awesome. So, so I'll go back even further. Let's go. Like I grew up and I had a traumatic childhood. My father was untreated, um, world war two combat veteran, which we didn't have the terms PTSD there, but he was, you know, we use shell shock and he the sweetest man in the world. until he wasn't, and anything could trigger him. And once he got triggered, it would take six hours, eight hours for him to kind of calm down. Then when he would come back into his normal being, he wouldn't have any recollection of these insane outbursts.

Military Background and Family Health Struggles 5:00

You see people when they have that. What Oprah said was, not what's wrong with you, But what happened to you? And we didn't discover that he had this trauma until years after he passed. We just thought like he was crazy. Right. But it turns out the trauma of being in combat, it was was never he never recovered and he. Was never treated. Is that what motivated you to go into the military? No, what motivated me was I was in New York City just like as a teenager, you know, sleeping on the subway trains, being a delinquent, juvenile delinquent and just getting into trouble.

And all of my friends were degenerates. So I didn't have one honest friend. What part of New your city? New york, Manhattan. I went to school in Harlem. OK. You know it was tough, right? Being in that environment. Of course. When I turned 17, I looked around and I go, If I don't change, I'm gonna end up like these guys in jail, dead, on drugs, right? Or just living, doing some shit job. And I wasn't down for that. So I had watched a lot of TV as a kid. I saw all those army commercials, be all you can be.

and I went to the recruiter, and raised my hand. What is the roughest, toughest thing you have? And they said 82nd Airborne. And so I went to my I was 17 years old. So I needed to get my parental waiver going back to. My parents, they just signed off, didn't even look at it. and then two weeks later, shaved my head gone and I. Was in the 82 and. I wasn't boot camp, so. Did infantry training, airborne training. Combat engineer training special forces, explosive demolition training training and when I got out of the army, I had discipline.

I could do anything. How many years did you spend? That's a long story. Had signed up for three years. Did less. Was on my way to becoming an officer. That didn't happen. Then I took my honorable discharge and I got out early. Long story, we can go there on a deeper, deeper path. Absolutely. When I get out of the Army, I had this discipline and I wanted to work. So I became a workaholic. And I've been a Workaholic until I have my baby. Right now I'm a two and a half year old daughter and that was the awakening for me of the most healing thing in the world was a love of a child.

just changed everything. So I'm still very driven, I still working, but now I am even more driven out of inspiration than out frustration or fear. Absolutely, absolutely. I get out the army and I just start working. Supermarkets, bars, night clubs, like anything I could do to make a living. And if after 40 hours they didn't want to give me overtime, then I would get another job. like I would if I was an uber driver back they had that at the time I Would be driving like 18 hour days like i just would have been driving because I just wanted to work I wanted To make money because we didn't have any money growing up So I thought money would give me the stability so that you know if i did have a family and I could eat and I would be more secure.

Absolutely. And so I had a lot of wounds with money, and by saving money and working, like I don't think I spent one penny of the money that I made in the military, other than, you know, traveling home once or twice a year. I ate in The Mass Hall, I didn't go to the the strip bars and i didn' drink and didn''t do anything stupid. Like I was just saving the I never knew where money was gonna come from. So I just socked that away. And then in 1999, I get this call from my mother that says, my aunt is in the hospital.

We needed to go right away, she was going to have surgery. I've never known anyone who had surgery before. My aunt was in a wheelchair. Her feet were swollen like elephant trunks. What happened to her? She was overweight, diabetic, and they were going to double amputate her feet because of the diabetes. Her feet didn't even look human. And she lost the nerve endings. They had to do a double amputee. Oh, they actually did that? They did the amutation. I was just in my own world, but I had this pause out of respect to my mother.

We went. That was the first time I ever heard the term diabetes, And then she died from complications from diabetes. I still didn't know what diabetes was. All I knew was it caused a lot of pain. It caused amputation and then it cause death. But I didn' t know the root cause of it. And my mother went to a hospital right here in Aventura. Right. And she went into the hospital. We thought she had an ulcer and turned out with stomach cancer. Three months from the time she. Went to the. Hospital, she died and then before I could even finish the grieving.

of my mother. My father, you know, was he was destroyed after my Mother because she took care of everything. So his life was just kind of wild, but he ended up going into the hospital. He had an epidural and then he went home and he had a heart attack. And when EMS came, he woke him up. And so he was belligerent with them and so, he fighting and when they got to the hospital, they didn't check him for the heart attack and he ended up, you know, just dying on the. No, this is your father who had the PTSD.

Yeah. So they were gone. And then my brother. He was overweight, diabetic, and he had the first stroke. So he's had three strokes and two heart attacks. All this is happening in a very short period of time. Yeah. I mean, people that are very close to you, you're seeing them suffer from all kinds of health conditions. Diabetes, PTSD, everything else, stomach cancer. And I thought I felt we were genetically cursed. Like I just thought like my days were numbered. I might as well start spending my money, you know, get a boat, go around like and start to live large.

And then one night I was out in New York City in the middle of the night and I met a woman who looked me in eyes and she said, You're not genetically curse. You are living a diabetic heart disease laden a cancer-forming, carcinogenic lifestyle. You are causing this. It's not your genes. I didn't even know what a gene was, but I thought it was genetically cursed. And she planted the seed. Who is this lady? Her name was Denise Mari and we started a business called Organic Avenue together and she took me on this journey from eating cooked food, processed food refined food meat, dairy, animal products to eating fresh, ripe, raw fruits, vegetable, seeds, nuts, seaweed and sprouts.

This lady randomly met you and Yeah. I mean, we just, had this connection. What year was this? This was 1999, right? 26 years ago. So when we had, this moment, like, and then she took me, We went on one of our first, gatherings, the big apple vegetarian society and someone was talking about the vegan diet, someone's talking, about vegetarian diet. Someone was, talking. About the equivalent of paleo then someone who was a forager like they were just foraging and that's when I like I was fascinated Like to me, I had eaten meat, chicken, fish, pizza, bread, pasta every day for those first 33 years of my life.

And then in this two week window, i gave up eating all processed food and I started eating fresh raw food. How did you feel at that point when you actually stopped eating? All that processed? I mean, it literally it's like if I take off my glasses, everything is fuzzy. And when I put my glasses on, everything is clear. When I started eating that way, all of a sudden I had clarity and I felt energy and felt alive. And then I couldn't go to work anymore. because I found like the normal work that I was doing was empty and meaningless.

Wow. And I felt like, oh, I got to share this message to the world. Like I thought juice was like Tropicana. and then I started to drink cold pressed organic green juice and shots of wheatgrass. Oh, and like I just felt so like. I literally you know, a lot of people cannot maintain a raw, high, raw vegan diet because they have so much energy, they don't know what to do with themselves, so they're eating processed food, cooked food to bring them down. But if you have something that you want to achieve, you eat that food and it is literally like nitric oxide.

It's like... You know, so you just you. And it produces more nitric oxide in your body, eating that type of healthy food. But, you know. Going back to 1999, I mean, this is I remember that it's like everyone's ready to bring in the new millennium. Right. Yeah. Back then, people really weren't talking about eating healthy the way we talk about now today. So that must have been. When people actually started hearing you talk about what you're doing and the way you are eating, how would they react? Well, I made the mistake in the early days, which is different.

then now I would try to help people, right?

Discovering Raw Food and Organic Avenue 15:00

I will try do interventions. Like I save them, save him. I pull their chips out of their hand. The same way my mother used to smoke cigarettes, I take her cigarettes and just stop them. You know, and so I do that. And you just alienate people. So now, you know my evolution of my thought process is knowing that everyone is on their own path. and that you don't know what's going to trigger someone to open up their consciousness. And so for me, we started to make what we loved available. So we love the unsweetened cold pressed green juice.

We loved salad that had fresh raw vegetables in it. we like making desserts with fresh cacao nibs and fresh coconut that we chopped the coconut and scoop out. Man, you're making me salivate right now. That's some good stuff there. Yeah, so that's what we like. So we made that available and we started this business, Organic Avenue, and it took off. It wasn't crazy like Starbucks, but it was doing really well. And then we ran that for 10 years. And then just fast forward. So I love juice. I loved raw food.

That was my life. My business and vocation. And in 2017, like I hit a wall, right? We all have in the hero's journey, you're going to hit. What do you mean by that? I had invented a juicer, had 30 patterns on a Juicer that didn't require any cleaning. Oh, wow. It was connected to the internet. This is 2013, right? So 12 years ago, now everything is connected. Right. And it didn't need any cleaning because I remember the first juicer my parents bought back in the day. The hardest part about the juicers was the cleaning part, taking the thing apart in like 20 different parts and then cleaning it.

Then it got to a point where it's just like no one wanted to juice because of the clean. Yeah, that was my my like big idea was people at a home jucer were using it once or twice a month. People who had an espresso machine were using it once or twice a day. So I wanted to create that experience. And in order to created magic, you have to do a lot of things behind the scene. Right. We had to develop packaging, we developed recipes, We did food science. we had developed a four and a half acre campus in Los Angeles.

to process tens of thousands of pounds of fresh produce, because for me, I am a fresh guy. I want fresh. You go into Whole Foods, they sell 25,000 items. 98% of those items are not fresh, They're dead. They are dead, in a bag, a box, or in can, bottle, additives, preservatives, and I wanted fresh And so to do fresh, like all juice that's in a bottle is pasteurized, right? Either with heat or with cold, and so it's fake. And I wanted fresh. So my idea was you take fresh produce, you dice it, slice it chop it shred it.

You put it into a cheesecloth bag and then you keep it cold. Then you put into the press and the Press would press it and conveniently and miraculously extract the juice, the water molecules from the cytoplasm of the produce. And it was convenient, so convenient that in Whole Foods and the biggest Whole Food in Los Angeles, they had one juice bar operator running five machines simultaneously, because all he had to do was put the pouch in and things were operating. That's pretty cool. The world didn't understand it.

Like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch. They're like, why would anyone fund $100 million plus to do a juicer? And they didn' think like oh, when Starbucks or Coca-Cola opens up a Minute Maid plant, they're spending $200 million to to crap. But for a little outsider to the industry, like a guy who ran a lemonade stand to go to Silicon Valley, they were just looking for anything they could to demonize. And we didn't have the terms fake news then. No one defended it.

The investors who were so concerned, why are they driving a Lambo? Because they want to look good. So as soon as there's any egg on the face, like they just ran. So all of a sudden, a little bad press and some egg, they decide to wrap up this whole thing, throw it in the compost, take back what capital was there. And so I'm like, OK, I did a great job. I love the machine. Because when you go from running a half a billion dollar company to then zero, like you find out who your real friends are. Right.

And you and a lot of things. I remember going to a party in Los Angeles, big Hollywood Academy Award winning party, because this guy was still my boy. Like we were still friends, but everybody but him. I might as well have been the invisible man. Like I'm walking through the party, I couldn't even get a waitress to talk to me at the part. And I don't need this. So I went to the desert and I discovered, and always loved hot springs. I've been to hot spring in Japan, in Jamaica, all through country.

Um, so I'd discovered hot Springs near Joshua Tree in Southern California called Wonder Valley Hot Springs. Bought the land, put up my Burning Man tent, my yurt, I'm soaking under the hot springs and life is beautiful. Like I could hear my thoughts. I was processing what was going on, what I want to do with my life. And the only problem that I had, Sam, was I have nothing to eat. There was no. Well, let me answer this. You go to the desert and a guy like you, you know, who's eating everything fresh.

Right. But from what I gathered, not much grows in the dessert. That's right. So what were you doing at that point? I mean, I had filled up my cooler from the Santa Monica Farmers Market and Air One. And I'm thinking like, oh, i'll go here and I'll figure it out. So I go there and what I might, you know, it's the purpose of planning and it is also the purposes of spontaneity. Had I planned, and you're talking to a guy, I was in the military, we would just go and they would give us meals ready to eat, figure things out, eat leaves so you could forage.

So my goal of going to the desert was I wanted to have hot springs and I wanted to have peace. And I'd been to Burning Man. Burning man's a barren desert. People set up camp and people eat and they have the things. For me, so I thought I'd figured out and then all of a sudden my cooler went from full to zero. And I'm like looking around and I realized not only was I in an environmental desert, I was in a food desert. Wow. There was no food at all for me. I felt like I'll grow my own food. And as you just articulated, it's not easy to grow food in the desert.

And so one night while soaking in a hot spring, looking at a billion stars, I asked the universe, and the Universe is there to provide. Like we know all the answers to all information. All knowledge exists in The Universe and is available to anyone who seeks it with earnest desire. I ask The universe How am I going to do this? Like, where am i going get my food? And like a ton of bricks, the universe said, you know how to sprout. And that was the truth. I didn't know How to Sprout. but I always thought of sprouts like a garnish or a side dish, right?

Or something, if you had cancer, you'd go to Hippocrates. And that was a two corner cases that I knew about sprouts, cancer or garnish. Garnish. Well, would you need to let, let's talk about that because you know, obviously sprouts. That's your thing right now. Right. Sprouts, sprouts sprouts in, in most people. look at sprouts and say, oh, that's garnish. And they don't even eat it. They'll just put it off to the side. So why sprouts? So I knew about sprouts, and I know they grew easily with little amounts of water and fast.

The following day, I started to get some sprouting gear in place. And within a month, I was living exclusively on sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts, broccoli sprouts radish, clover, peas, garbanzo beans, mung beans. And like the mindset shifted for me from being a side dish to being vegetables. So I got this download and the first part was sprouts are vegetables and vegetables are food.

From Juicing to the Sprouting Company 25:00

And no one thought of them as vegetables, they thought them is like a scrap that could just blow away. But I was living in one cubic foot with six jars, I growing thousands of calories a day of sprouts and I hungry and ate the sprouts. And even though you would have a hard time processing this in this moment, all of a sudden I'd eat the sprouts and my hunger would go away. I would become satiated. And by the elimination of processed food, no added oil, not added salt, nor added sweeteners, my food addiction This went away.

Like I could just tune in and then sprouts. have every micronutrient, every phytonutrion, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, amino acid to form complete proteins, soluble and soluable fiber, all in this seemingly microscopic little seed. So I went down the rabbit hole and I'm very proud. Like the sprout book became a national bestseller. It was number 71 out of 4.2 million books on Amazon. The sproutbook. So when I wrote that book pre-chat GPT, pre AI, Like I had to write, I have to research, to go to the library and do microfiche and getting the research.

And the more I learned about sprouts, the excited I became and the I started to appreciate that a seed is a complete living organism in a dormant state. that the whole future of the universe is inside the seed. The seed is alive, but it's dormant. And seeds, some people eat sunflower seeds poppy seeds pumpkin seeds but seeds when they're raw can actually grow and reproduce themselves infinite times. Like if you think about abundance and infinite perspective, that's what seeds are and that what sprouts are.

So not all nuts are seeds. Not all seeds or nuts, but all nots are seed. If you take like an acorn, That's the seed of an oak tree. You can plant one acorns and it will grow into an oak tree and produce 50,000 more acorns. So this is the infinite potential of nature. And when I start to think about the vibrational energy, the life force that was in the seed, like, you're in a medical profession. You know what someone is when they're dead. And you know when someone's alive. The mystery and the miracle of the universe is life, life-force.

So a seed is alive, and when we add water, H2O to a sea, we are triggering a germination process to begin a metamorphosis from seed into vegetables. And when you take a seed, three days later in the sprouting process, you increase the vitamin C by 300%. You quadruple the antioxidant levels. So this is like having a normal, ordinary, everyday seed. So I was asking myself, why doesn't everybody know about sprouts? Well, let me ask you this. Why is it that sprouts have a higher level of nutrients than the actual vegetable when it's full growing?

So just like if you think about the birthing of a child, how does an embryo turn into a baby? It's merostatic stem cells. right, are growing, right? So what is the baby living on? The umbilical cord, it's living blood, so inside of a seed contains an embryo, an endosperm, and it has the trace mineral of the soil of that plant that birthed that seed. So if you think about the cycle of life, starts with the seed, seed germinates, becomes a sprout. You let it grow further, it will become a microgreen.

If you wait three weeks, four weeks six weeks or six months it'll turn into a broccoli plant. Let it go another few weeks and that broccoli will flower. The flower will then fruit. So a vegetable will actually have fruit in it. Those pods and those pods will have more seeds. Okay. That's interesting. Because so, so there is a difference between a sprout and a micro green. Oh yeah. It's just the stage. Right. Just the. Stage of identifying sprouts when you're eating microgreens, which are super nutritious.

And I love micro greens. You're. Eating above the fold, right? So you cut above. The fold and you. Are eating them. because they're grown typically in soil or some sprouting medium, so the roots are taking hold in order for it to grow. The sprout, you eat the root, the shoot, endosperm, testa, everything. And the sprouts are grown, typically, in a glass jar. without soil, sunshine, or fertilizer. And it's happening in days. Just straight up water. It's straight water, okay. So this is a miracle.

The fact that you can take 35 grams of seeds, add water and it will turn into 350 grams in sprouts in five days, wow. Like this a Miracle. But I had asked John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, Like, what do you think of sprouts? He said, I love sprouts, sprouts are great. I go, how come there are no national or international sprouting companies? And he's like, oh, there's no money in sprouts. And I said why? Short shelf life, low margins, refrigerated transportation necessary, plastic packaging.

So sprouts were really relegated to small farmers on a local or regional basis. and they just did their best. But if you think about what's in Whole Foods, things that have a long shelf life, thing that has high margin, so there was never a voice, there never was a business model that was successful around sprouts. So after I wrote the book and the books became a number one bestseller on Amazon and my social media blew up to hundreds of thousands of people, like on TikTok, I have a hundred million views of my content on Tik Tok, talking about sprouting, mostly fully dressed, right?

And so people were asking, how do I get started with sprouting? and I'm looking and it's such a pain. Like you're using a mason jar, you using cheesecloth, they're use panty hose. You're a book stand or an iPod holder to hold it up. So that's the only reason, there were two reasons why I started the sprouting company. Number one is because the equipment was as antiquated as a sledgehammer for anesthesia. It was just old and that the seeds, People could use seeds from anywhere. They could be using seeds that were in the bulk bin of the health food store, they could five years old, and they wouldn't germinate.

So I became obsessive about finding the freshest seeds, that was certified organic, were tested for pathogens, tested high germination rates. What were you finding them, here in US or did you have to travel around the world? In the US. I would get seeds from Europe. Europe has very good seeds. Italy, in particular, has good seed. But in other Asian countries, I'd be very scared because you just don't know. and I tested seeds and the glyphosate levels and various parts. It's a world where there is no branded players.

No, it's the wild wild west. So what I said was, wow, I'm going to put down an anchor. I'm going to establish standards. And I was just invited this past March to give a keynote at the International Sprout Growers Association for Indoor Growing Agriculture in Vegas. That was the keynote opening speaker, and I am not a member of the association, but they wanted me to speak And these people, my advice to them was, hey, all of you that are growing sprouts, you need to eat more of your own sprouts. Like everyone needs to be eating the sprouts and the fact that you can grow the sprout for under a dollar a serving.

You buy the most expensive seeds you could buy, and I think our seeds are probably the more expensive, And you get the expensive equipment you would get, which is still under $100. Right. And you could be it pays itself back in like in no time if you're using it, if your growing the produce. Right, right. So then I started to get these visions that you can replace rice with sprouts. How do you do that? Well, how do we eat rice? With a spoon or a fork. What do pair it with? Other veggies, beans. So sprouted lentils and sprout of alfalfa sprouts and whatever sauce you're going to have, mix it all together and you now have something that is a thousand times more phytonutrient dense than the rice.

You can make wraps with it. You could make sushi with, it you can replace pasta with. It you could juice the sprouts, you. Could add them to smoothies like one cup of sprouted garbanzo beans is 20 grams of protein. And when you mix sprout and garbonzo beans and sprout it alfalfa or sprout broccoli, You get all essential amino acids to form complete protein . So people ask me, where do you get your protein from? It's like, where does a grass fed cow get its protein from? Right. Right? The same place you do.

Yeah, I'm getting it from the plants. And you know, some people will say, oh, well, you don't have four stomachs. I was like. . I don' have for stomach. The cow has four. Stomachs, the cow isn't intelligent enough to know how to chew. because if I chew it well, I can masticate it and extract all of the nutrients from the cellulose and absorb it. And unlike the cow, the insoluble fiber of sprouts feeds the microbiome. So you get a healthy colon and you're getting the phytonutrients. Digestion begins with your eyes.

So I look at the sprouts, that's why I made this. This is my sprout meditation on the cover of the book. I looked at that and I start to salivate. Like I started to saladate, so then when I eat the spouts, I chew them and my goal is to liquefy them. Okay. Right. Which feels like I'm talking to the right guy, right? So you liquefy them and then they digest and smooth. And that's why, look, I want to be 59 years old in a month. Amazing, man. You look good for 59. Yeah, dude, i'm a beast. I did a hundred thousand pushups last year.

Amaze I travel around the world, you know, um, a parent, an entrepreneur, uh, writer, researcher, and, like life is just smooth. I love it. Doug, let me ask you something. You've used the word a few times and for the viewers and listeners, I think it's important for them to understand what phytonutrients is, you know, You said that multiple times. What are phytonutrins? So most people are thinking about nutrients like macro nutrients that oils, fat, carbohydrates, calories, they're thinking about on the macro level, right?

Because when you're eating traditional diet, that's the simple blocks that they break things down. The phytonutrients are the isothiocyanates, the glucosinolates. So if we were to like zoom in on, say, cruciferous vegetables, known for their anti-cancerous properties. What makes them anti cancerous, which gives them, and by the way, last week I stayed with my friend who is a retired firefighter, in Texas, right? Rip Esselstyn, retired firefighter. Every firefight in America has been exposed to benzene and air pollutants that were combusted and inhaled in the lungs.

Tons of toxins, carcinogens, all that stuff. And phytonutrients have the ability to detoxify those air pollutants from the blood that are otherwise permanently lodged in there. So it's a whole level of antioxidants and things that don't exist in the normal diet. Like if I were in government and I was running the USDA or the FDA, I would mandate that the labels wouldn't just have calories and protein and and saturated fat, I would list all of the individual nutrients and the phytonutrients that were inside in the antioxidants because that's the opportunity for people to know

Why Sprouts Are So Nutrient-Dense 40:00

what they are deficient and depleted in. And look, i love what you're doing, right? If someone is just living their normal diet, and they are going to be deficient or depleted in most nutrients, not just B12 and vitamin D, like their entire panels are just going be having huge gaping drops, right? There's two ways to remedy that, offhand, one and two. One, you could look at their blood work and you can create a cocktail that will replenish them. Right. Right? If you are eating the way, and I saw in one of the articles on the wall, if you're eating your grandmother and grandfather was and you eating whole foods and your eating rich foods from nature, wild foods, like I'm doing, I don't supplement.

I don't supplement. You're getting it all from the actual... I get it. I'll get all there. So what's the difference between what we were just talking about, the phytonutrients versus polyphenols? So poly phenols are another way. If you look at the 360 degree of the plant, right, there's different ways and different measures of different acting compounds within them. The polyphenols, bioflavonoids, antioxidants, they're different slices of the molecules that can have a different biological effect on the body.

These things are powerful. Well, that they have healing. Like one of things that when you think about, you know, everyone's talking about cold plunge, right? And they are talking sauna. Right? So both the sauna, heat, and so sauna or a bath, I do it in a hot spring, right? Or a cold plunge actually stresses the body. Right. And creates heat shock proteins and the heat shot proteins actually can kill the autophagy and apatous of weak cells. It killed in that environment and strong cells flourish and body reacts.

When you're eating certain plants that have the quote unquote anti-nutrient effect, they create a hermetic effect in the body. So the anti nutrients which are designed to ward off the plants, predators, right? The ants or the insects or bugs, when they get inside the the body is responding to them. And so what happens is, broccoli sprouts in particular, because of a compound called sulforaphane, actually will raise the heat shock protein in the bottom that can create a very healing effect that could open up the nRF2 pathway.

It's a level where people will find it bad. Like to feel like you're having a heat, they feel you are having fever is actually the body responding. It's a healing mechanism. You get scratched. Why do you get a scratch and why is the bodies scabbing? Why are the white cells forming? What's happening in the healing process? So all of these phytonutrients, polyphenols, antioxidants help the body go to homeostasis and get healthy. And vitamin C, very important with the absence of vitamin c, which is why they're fortifying so many things, is because people aren't getting it in their diet.

Captain Hook, the pirate, was sprouting on his pirate ships because his pirates were getting scurvy. When they are crossing the ocean, they didn't have anything with vitamin C, so they were able to sprout. And the seeds, once they go through the metamorphosis, they're getting the vitamin C there. You're the insoluble fiber. So you could get a good amount of vitamin c through sprouts. Well, exponentially. I feel like on the next podcast we do, we should have a fact checker right there zooming in on it.

But the levels of what's in the sprouts are bar none and they never had a voice before. But now, like we are creating a sprout revolution. I like that. Like a spout revolution, I was just in Japan and there's a billion dollar company in japan that sells broccoli sprouts to 20,000 retail stores. Oh wow. So let me ask you about this broccoli sprout. Would you say that's the most powerful sprout that is out there nutrients wise? There are different sprouts that have different nutrients. So broccoli sprouts have glucoraphanin that forms sulforaphane.

Radish sprouts, have a different glucosinolate that form sulferaphene. And so as you go through them, these antioxidants, this compounds are there. Turns out one researcher, Dr. Jed Fahey, 25 years ago, went down the rabbit hole on broccoli sprouts. And as a result, there's more than 2000 peer-reviewed published papers. on how broccoli sprouts can kill cancer cells, prevent and reverse and treat various forms of cancer, how they can detoxify benzene and air pollutants, help regulate insulin levels and diabetics, reduce oxidative stress and scavenge free radicals.

So there's a whole body of work But because it's a natural item that is practically free, there's no money behind it. There's not money. So the way that this information is coming out, like, fortunately, social media is a great source. People can listen to podcasts. people can view content. We have live webinars. we're sharing information. that that people are now knowing and that's why I think the revolution is happening because people Are sick and tired of being sick And not everyone has the luxury of Being able to go to whole foods and filling up their cart and spending The money there's not nearly enough pasture for even Twice as many people to have pasture raised beef, right?

And in order to get more pasture, what are they going to do? They're going have to cut down the trees. Right. I mean, that's the number one thing that is happening in the Amazon today is deforestation so they could plant corn and soy for beef production. You know what? That's a bit scary to hear that. So Doug, in your professional opinion, would you say the broccoli sprouts probably have the highest healing properties? I think they have OK, right. They have the most research. I do a blend of sprouts like I'm eating a variety of spouts because I think part of the other healing in all depends like on what you want to do.

We know that in order to have healthy microbiome, you need diversity. So you should be having at least 30 different types of fruits or vegetables. Meat doesn't contain any fiber. Right. So if you want fiber to feed the microbiome, it's got to come from plants. You want to have at least 30 different items. 30 Different items every week? Every week. Like whether it is potatoes or mushrooms or sprouts or different types of fruits or types lettuce and salad greens, you wanna have diversity of the micro biome so that you can have a healthy colon.

Interesting. Right. So we're just scratching the surface. on microbiome health, gut health. And I would much rather, you know, have my probiotics coming from fermented food, right? Then from just taking a powder. They're like sauerkraut or like, yeah, sa- sau-sauerkraut, or kimchi or pickles. There's a lot of fake pickles out there. Like I hate to, I had to be the guy that's calling out the fake Pickles. A lot the pickles, they're just acidifying using vinegar. They're not actually fermenting. Wow.

So they look like a pickle. They taste like. A pickle, but it's not a pig. Well, and it it. It's. Not a. Pickle that I would eat. Right. Like I want ferments, so I won't fresh. I. Want microbiologically living foods. All right. OK, So with the sprouts. Are you still getting the nutrients if you cook the spouts? You still get the minerals. you still get the fibers, but the nutrients, like vitamin C, is very volatile to the heat, so the vitamin seed goes away. So the best way is raw. Yeah, I like raw, and to answer your question further, on every seed, we'll talk about broccoli for a second, every broccoli seed has a finite amount of glucoraphanin in it, as the plant grows, it's being diluted and dilute and I looted, which is why like one handful of broccoli sprouts can have the same phytonutrient content of the whole head of Broccoli.

The whole had a broccoli has more fiber in it may have more vitamin C in But the phytonutrients are actually being diluted as the plant is growing. Right. So that's why when you get them as a sprout, they're much more powerful. Much more. You know, so I buy sprouts. And the hard part for me, especially if I'm on the go, is that they go bad so quickly. Yeah, you should eat them. When you buy them, eat it. Eat them right away. But you shouldn't be growing them And you have an opportunity in a platform to educate, to inspire.

You could be taking your platform, and it could Sprout Central. Everyone who comes through your door should walk out with a sprouting kit. Let's talk about that. When you say grow them, Put me through the process. How do I grow it? If I'm a person who lives in the desert, or if I live in a high rise or something, can I growth sprouts? Everyone can grow sprouts. I am talking to someone at NASA about sending sprouts to the International Space Station. Really? They can growth anywhere. So even if you don't have sunlight and stuff, you can still grow sprout.

They don' want sunlight. Sunlight will dry them out. Because if think about biological, how nature created sprouts, is that they want the animal to eat the fruit, swallow the seeds, and then go far away. And as it's going through the digestive track, like most animals aren't chewing, so it goes through their digestive tract. When they poop it out, They have reduced the enzyme inhibitors. They've reduced to phytic acid. they've reduce the lectins and they made the seed ready to germinate. So then it's on soft ground and then will grow.

And what we've been able to decipher and to mimic is the process of nature where you take the seeds. You take a few tablespoons of seeds, you put them in a jar. You add water. You let it sit. About how much water do you typically add? Just enough to fully submerge the seed. Fully submerges seed and you let them soak overnight. Then the next morning you strain out the extra water and then you leave the jar at an angle so that the water is straining out. And then 12 hours later, before you go to bed, add more water, rinse them, flood them with water.

Strain them again. You do that twice a day for three days, four days five days. And the seeds there's on my, on I should pin it up to my profile, but I go through the process with a time-lapse. So in 35 seconds, you could see six days of growing. Is that what it takes about six to grow sprouts? Well, some sprouts like garbanzo beans, green peas, mung beans lentils, they're three days. Three days and they are ready to eat. And a lot of these sprouts, do they have flavor? I mean, it's like if you're addicted to pornography and you meet a normal girl, is she going to excite you?

Right? So if your used to flooding your case buds with crazy, highly processed, engineered food, that you won't even taste the sprouts at all. You know, I've had like microgreens and there's certain micro greens that have a lot of flavor. Oh, yeah. Well, those are the antioxidants like the radish. Right. They'll have this bitterness. Those cilantro flavors and stuff like that. Yeah. So if your palate is sophisticated, which is one of the reasons why chefs love sprouts and micro green, because they can add a natural fresh punch to it.

But if you're used to eating processed food, like the sprouts are gonna be bland, you won't even taste them. Like, but if, if look at a sandwich and you were to replace iceberg lettuce, with sprouts, You'll have more flavor than the iceberg, lettuce. The big shift was instead of adding them to a sandwhich, or adding them to a salad, just imagine making a whole salad out of the sprouts. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. You have multiple different sprouts, make a solid out. Make a sound. And you could grow them.

We should talk about this because I really believe like I've you know, the people at Parsley Health. OK, I don't know them personally. Parsely Health, but you they've got 80 clinicians across the country practicing functional medicine.

How to Grow Sprouts at Home 55:00

Right. And I had a Zoom with all 80 of their practitioners, doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, health coaches. They were over the moon with sprouts, like over-the-moon, because people want to be healthy. And people believe food is medicine. A lot of people just have no path. There's nothing, there's no fiber connecting people's wants and the reality. Sprouts can be that bridge to connect the two different parts, the desire to healthy and means to being healthy When it comes to sprouts, how many types of sprouts do you typically grow?

I'm doing about 11, 11 different. How many are there that are like, I mean, every seed, there's more than infinite, like infinite. You know, when I grew up, um, they're used to be red, delicious apples. Like that's what I Now you go into the market, they've got 12 different apples, right? The cell variety, I've had at least a dozen different types of broccoli seeds, but today it's just very generic. People are thinking generic, um, i'm looking at the future and i'M looking a nuance. So every seed can germinate and sprout, this period end of story.

What happens is, You know, it takes work. Right. And, you know. I was speaking to an addiction specialist, um, last week. You. Know what she said? The number one addiction in the world is. Food or sugar. No, no comfort. Comfort. Okay. People are addicted to be to comfort it's why people will order Domino's pizza because they don't want to even take the time to go to the freezer and throw it in. The microwave, right. For the same junk. Yeah, right. So people are addicted to comfort and food makes them comfortable.

Drugs make them. Comfortable sleeping in makes him comfortable just sitting on the couch, watching TV, numbing them, but people. Are addicted. To comfort. And if someone's willing to do a little work, they need to have some sort of motivation. Something that they want, something that their willing, to get up. Like it was a pain in the ass for me to come to Miami. I had to in my car, I to drive to Los Angeles. Right. It's a three and a half hour drive to park the car. I had to walk from the airport to be the air port an hour early.

But if I was late, if night traffic, so I got to give myself an extra hour buffer, then I fly into Miami, arrive 10 o'clock at night like. Like, why am I doing that? Right? You're not paying me, right? Full disclosure, you're paying. Me like I'm here because I want to share this message with the world because that's my motivation. Right. And a lot of people don't, they're just living in the moment. Yeah. They're self-medicating themselves with food or with drugs or alcohol, with cigarettes. You know, their just self medicating.

So, you know, this sprout consciousness changes everything for everyone, because if you can add sprouts to anything that you're eating, like you could see, I put this up on TikTok a few months ago. I went to the farmer's market and I was walking around putting sprouts on people's tamales, on their pizza, everything else. They were loving it. They didn't mind it, right? But they loved the concept that I was increasing the quality of the nutrients by a thousand percent. Amazing. So, you know, I'm really big into sprouted bread.

Ezekiel bread, which comes straight from the Bible. Interesting, the whole recipe is in the bible. Yes. So, so what are the benefits of eating something like sprouted bread versus your traditional type of bread? Well, traditional bread, they're separating the wheat from the chaff and they are hulling it. You're getting things that most like the bread is just the sugar, right? They're taking away the gluten and the protein from bread. When you're doing sprout bread in a very biblical sense, the Essenes were raw, raw vegan.

the Essenes. So the Ezekiel is a scene bread. You're by soaking it and sprouting it, you're making it more bioavailable to absorb the nutrients that are in the bread that bread is going to be a great source of protein and be great. Source of fiber. It is minimally processed and super nutrient dense. Right. Versus, wonder bread, it's a wonder anyone buys that shit. Exactly. I agree with you on that. So OK, I want to go ahead and start sprouting at home. Yeah. By some Mason George. No, no. What do I buy?

The Sprouting Company dot com. Like, like the, the Mason jars were a great stop gap, but now there's like precision, advanced, simple sprouting. And I can have it all like centralized in one space. Yeah. Go, go check out my, my Instagram, Doug Evans. You'll see my sprout farm with six. I want to do this. Of course you do. So, and I'm going to get the content behind it. So all of the listeners and viewers can actually see what I want to do with your help. Right. Cause I wanna do it the right way.

And then we, I could basically have 11 different types of sprouts and strut it all out at the same time. You can have your sprout garden. I lived exclusively on sprouts for 30 days. Wow. What happened to me? I became more productive. Like I slept better, I had more energy. I didn't lose weight, but I gained muscle. It was just an incredible experience. And I'm not proposing other people do that unless they really wanna get super healthy or part. They need help. When we talk about sprouts for weight management, Sprouts are super high fiber, low calorie, and low fat.

So the fact that you can eat a pound of alfalfa sprouts and it's 100 calories, what would happen? If you say to someone, eat this, And they'll eat a few and they go, I'm not hungry anymore. You're right. And you're not. Hungry because you are carrying so much extra food stored on your body. Your body has all the nutrients it needs there too. Yeah. So you could burn your fat. Like if you were to eat sprouts, the body will actually go into ketosis. Wow. And it's easier to do eat a lot of sprouts than is to sell someone.

Oh, just drink water. Do a water fast. Right. Because they're going to get a feeling of satiation. They're gonna get GLP one secretion from the eating the sprouts. So you naturally you fill up on sprouts and you'll secrete GLPI one. You'll feel satiated. If someone doesn't want to eat them, it is one of two things. they don't want to eat them. They don t really want get healthy. Or they're not hungry at that moment. But if someone is hungry and you offer them sprouts, even if you were to take you know, like an animal, you offer them crack cocaine, versus you have them water with crack in it or regular water, they're going to go for the amphetamine.

Like the brains are wired in this way. And the cooked food, the processed food the refined food. The sugar, that the high proteins trigger the dopamine resents in the reptilian brain because most people are still living in scarcity, they're living trauma, and they don't know where their next meal is coming from. So if they are getting food, the brain is saying, hey, you got food here, this is a food source, feel good, eat more, are you only plant-based? Okay. Do you cook your food at all? I'm probably like 99% raw.

Wow. Like I'll eat a steamed artichoke or I'd eat, you know, steamed asparagus, but I like my food. And you're mixing it with the sprouts. Yeah. Well, I usually will eat and I, um, doing a video tomorrow, which I couldn't talk about, like what, what do I eat in the day? Okay, But it's very clear. I love my fruit and I loved my sprouts, especially like in Miami. If I was Miami, if I wasn't Miami I would like eat only fruit. Like I was a lot of good food. Oh yeah. Yeah. Year round you can get great fruit here.

I'd be total, a total fruit. And then I would, you know, I wouldn't supplement with probably be 12. You know here's the thing like omega threes people like, Oh, where are you getting your omega three's from? I go, Where do you get your Omega-3 from Oh salmon. Where Do you think the salmon's getting the Omega three from not from eating other salmon, right? They're getting it from microalgae. So you can get the algae directly without the saturated and unsaturated fat and you're getting what the body needs.

So it's like, I mean, haven't had any like fish or anything. Do you eat flex seeds and chia seeds also? Yes. Sprouted sprouted chia and sprout it. Flax are great source of a L.A. Omega threes. And my body is hyper efficient in the conversion of A.L. A and E.P. and D.H. a and I'm eating wakame and nori seaweed.

Sprouts, Health, and the MAHA Movement 1:05:00

Oh, wow. My dad loves seaweed, he's been a vegetarian for many, many years. I mean, all my life. Wow. It's always been like that. All right. So going back to. your indoor garden of sprouts. Correct me if I'm wrong. Do you basically plant these sprouts every single day so you have sprouts coming out every day? I stagger different jars at different stages. I guess I would have to learn that. If I do all of them one day, 11 of then, I'll probably eat them all. You'll get your groove. I mean, you'll the groove and we can map that out.

It's a great topic for me and I should do a detailed piece on that of how to stagger your sprouts. So you always have something. But, you know, we created a free app, whether you use a mason jar, use the sprouting company, You can download our app and use it for whatever, but it will help tell you what stage, when to harvest, and you can keep track of your various jars and give you push notifications. Oh, that's pretty cool. Thanks. I like that. Amazing. So Doug, there's a big movement going on right now called Make America Healthy Again, the MAHA movement with RFK Jr.

behind it, leading the way. What are your thoughts about it? You know, I love the concept of Make American Healthy again. I think that the direction is going good. You know, just just cut to the chase. Well, there's definitely no chemicals and toxins in the sprouts, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the the spouts literally are the answer. Like what would make sprouts so magical is they qualify for everything. They help with autoimmune. And they help. With vision, they helped with inflammation. I know athletes that used to take five days to recover after a professional sporting event, and now they're recovering three days.

Wow. like the anti-inflammatory components of the sprouts are just so profound. So, you know, my friend Red Fu, right, at age 49, decided to become a professional tennis player at 49 years old. And he's just, just crushing it. Amazing, amazing. Doug, as we wrap up here, You know, if someone's out there listening to this podcast and they really resonate with your message and I really want to take their health to the next level with potentially sprouting. Yeah. What is that one thing you can leave them off with?

I mean, look at what you're eating and say, where did this come from? And is this the most nutrient dense, water based food that I could have? Because everything you eat has to come out somehow. And the sprouts, because of the living, enzymatically, water-based things, are going to go through you. They're just going through. The number one over-the-counter drugs, Tums, Roll-Aid, Pepto-Bismol, is because people are eating acid-forming food. Right? You know, sprouts will go in and out of the body in 12 to 24 hours.

You eat a piece of meat, it could take 24 to 72 hours and you see all these big masculine men that are constipated. right? And, and have hemorrhoids and you know, they don't talk about it, but they've got bleeding hemorhoid in their ass, right. And colon cancer and prostate cancer, an erectile dysfunction, like why give up your manhood? So the only reason why there's so much bravado around meat, is because of marketing, right? This protein propaganda is driven by the National Cattlemen's Association and by industry and saying you need meat, you're masculine, and you've got to be this.

And it's just crazy. It's crazy, like you have your partner, your wife, You're masculine because you can be present for her. You can take care of her, you work with her you, can have a business. It's not you're not out there like a caveman flipping cars right up there banging your chest. But the media, you know, has like just insane, which is why, like, I don't even want to go down these rabbit holes. You know I was in the military, right? I loved weapons. I felt such a sense of power. That's why these kids, the greatest cause of death for a teenager is gun violence, because you give someone a gun, They instantly feel powerful.

It's like a drug. Then you have a gun. All you need to do is pull the trigger and you shoot someone. And you look at who the open shooters are in the school kit, right? These are kids that are weak, that our abuse, are traumatized. You give them the gun, they have power. and then they use that. So it's like this biochemistry and most of these kids are on SSRIs and they're on all these chemical imbalances. And I can tell you that they are not eating sprouts. Right. So, you know, if you're a parent out there or you want to be healthy, like my narrative is not very popular for most people.

Right? Just not. But I'm going to tell, my truth and invite people to don't flip to go all or nothing. Just start incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your life. Eat sprouts. Even, Paul Saladino, carnivore MD. Start eating fruit. Right? Because he was having problems just being the carnivore. He changed his Instagram handle. Right. Can babies eat sprouts? Yes. You can make baby food out of it? 100%. Nice. 100% My wife ate sprouts through her entire pregnancy. Our first solid food for the kid was sprouts.

Amazing. So, Doug, if people want to find you, how can they find? You Doug Evans on all social platforms and, you know, the sprout book, wherever books are sold and the sprouting company. If you want. Go deep and learn about sprouts and sprouting. And you guys have the kids, right? Yeah, we sell the kits. We sell any kind of promo code you. Want to leave the viewers and listeners with any, kind. Of anything, anything special for them? Why don't we do a code, Sam? Okay. We'll do a code Sam. It will make you an affiliate.

And you know, so if they use Sam, they'll get 10% off. Amazing. So we'll, we will get that set up. All right. Cool guys. You guys hear that? So you guys will the 10 percent off and we have all the links listed below so people can check it out. Doug, man, this was a pleasure. I've never done a podcast on sprouts and I know that there's a tons of benefits, especially annoying Brian Clements for so many years and him talking about it. So this is something that's going to be very helpful. And I think the listeners and viewers are going love it so pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Yeah. Let's keep on getting the sprouts out there, brother. All right. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Sam. Guys, you guys learned something new, it's not just garnish, this is sprouts. It has all of those different nutrients that your body needs for it to be able to heal itself, for you to able be energetic in feeding your mitochondria what it needs to produce energy, right? So make sure you check out Doug Evans. You see all the links down below. Make sure that you go ahead and share this, do all that fun stuff, liking, subscribing, all all good stuff and we'll see you for the next one.