Why Sprouts Contain 100x More Nutrients Than the Vegetables You Are Already Eating

What's the most surprising health benefit of sprouts that nobody talks about?

Sprouts are the number one food in my insight for fat loss because sprouts are high fiber, high nutrient, high phytonutrient, low fat, low calorie. So if you're consuming copious amounts of sprouts, you're getting the soluble and insoluble fiber, you're feeling full, and the body is producing GLP-1. So you naturally will feel satiated in a healthy way. And as opposed to a shot, which will brick your stomach for a week, right here, you're getting a dose of GLP-1 to hold you over till your next meal.

How lucky am I? I get to have tea with my friends finally in person. Doug Evans, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Oh, wow, Mona, I've been waiting for this for a really long time.

Me too. All right, everyone, we're talking about the most nutritious food on the planet, and it's about time. You know, this podcast ultimately was really about merging ancient wisdom with modern-day medicine, and I haven't spent enough time talking about what comes from nature to help us heal and thrive. And I think the timing is perfect to have you on.

Yeah, there's no better time than the present. You've got it.

So to anchor us in, I'd love to know, Doug, I really feel like when we know how to become rooted in ourselves, we turn on our capacity to heal, to feel good, to feel happy, to live a more joyful life. So give me 2 or 3 things in your practice daily that help you feel more rooted in who you are.

So one is I practice a success practice every day.

Tell me more about this.

So I used to beat myself up, right? The voice in my head would tell me, like, how I was never good enough, you know, from my parents through the drill sergeants in the military to everything. And so now what I realize is, like, I make mistakes and, like, I learn from them. So an identified mistake is a success. So when I go to sleep at night, everything good or bad turns into a success. So I like fall asleep counting this innumerable list of all the successes in my day.

Beautiful.

So one could be simple, like I fed my daughter breakfast, right? I was on time for all my meetings, right? Followed up the most important things that were on my list, right? I told my wife I loved her 3 times during the day, just like the little things. So, and I can just go on and on. I brushed my teeth, I flossed, right? I put on my blue-blocking glasses at sunset, right? All the little things. I meditated, I did my 300 pushups. So I'm just making a list and I will fall asleep. You know, feeling like I had a very successful day. Now, yesterday I missed a meeting, right? Someone moved a meeting. They didn't change it on the calendar. They said, call me at 5, 6:00 PM MST. I didn't put on my calendar. And, you know, we had dinner guests who were late and blah, blah, blah. And I just forgot. And rather than beat myself up, I said, oh, if they change things, I need to update my calendar. Not rely on them, and then be proactive.

Oh, it's such a good point. I love the concept of identifying mistakes because the way that that feels was, oof, no, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna think about any of the bad stuff. But I think that there's so much beauty in that. That's where we grow. And I love the fact that you called out an evening practice and not a morning practice. We're so focused on these rituals. But the point of asking that question, one, is to hear that everyone has a different protocol. We all have different things that work for us, for our highest, highest good. But also the fact that these modalities are free, and we need to recognize that we have this internal system within us that's always guiding us, but we have to tune in and listen. So that's a beautiful practice.

Yeah. Another one, simple, is before we— we eat as a family, and before we eat, you know, we have a practice of grace and presence. Before we eat. And if I didn't do that, like, even though, like, I eat a lot of plants and I eat a lot of sprouts, I could overeat, right? So in that, in that practice, in that moment of we're sitting down, the shift, I will establish, like, what my intention is of that meal. And if, if I say, oh, I'm looking at things, you know, I haven't started to eat, so the fire hasn't been ignited, I can plan what I want to eat and then I won't overeat. Otherwise, I might just, you know, continue to eat.

Yeah, I love that you said that. In a world where we're so focused on macros, just be conscious when you eat, be present. Notice your hunger cues, notice when you feel full, notice how the food's making you feel. It's a simple practice, but powerful.

Yeah, well, I know, like, I eat fast even though I want to chew. And so it takes a while for the food to register in my brain. So knowing that, like, but I, it just helps me, you know, be more balanced in my eating.

On the flip side, if you have a day with the missed meetings where things might go a little bit more sideways and you feel uprooted, do you notice what happens to your physiology when you get uprooted?

Well, I've trained myself to live in this best day ever consciousness. So there's like, it's a trigger if anyone says, how are you doing? I'm the best ever. So even if I miss those meetings, other things, every new interaction is an opportunity for me to level set into the consciousness that I want to be. So I'm choosing. Like, either I'm going to be a player or I'm going to be a victim, right? And the player is like, hey, I'm master of my emotions. So still very heartfelt and open, but I'm choosing to see what is the potential, what's the meaning, and being responsible for everything that has happened in my life and that is happening. So as long as I know that I'm responsible and I can change things, You know, then it's, you know, it's a success and it's my practice.

Best day ever consciousness feels like a set of values and it's something that radiates off of you. And I just wanted to say that to you. Even getting an email from you, you know, reminding me to have the best day ever is something that's very powerful. So it shows that you own that.

Yeah, well, I want to share that too.

It's working. All right, I want to dive into some rapid-fire questions. Whatever comes to mind, just spit it out. What's the biggest myth about sprouts that keeps people from trying them?

I think that they think that they're a garnish or a side dish, right? Or they think that there's food safety issues, which are, you know, kind of scar tissue from the '60s when they were cross-contaminating sprouts in buckets with chicken and like just no consciousness of how to deal with the sprouts. But I actually, and I know it's a rapid fire, but I did a white paper. I wrote a white paper with Dr. Jed Fahey from Johns Hopkins where we studied 25 years of foodborne illness, hospitalizations, outbreaks, and deaths. And turns out homegrown sprouts are probably the safest thing that someone could grow.

Crazy. We're always stuck on the one story without even knowing the facts.

Well, what happens is there was no money behind sprouts, so no one defended it. So, you know, there's outbreaks with lettuce and chicken and eggs, you know, and carrots every day, But those have, you know, big industry behind them and they're common, so they don't talk about it. But sprouts are not common, so anything happens to it, they're easy to demonize.

If you could eat only one type of sprout for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

Well, that's such a tough question.

I knew it would be for you.

Such a tough question. So I would say if we wanna be evidence-based, it would be broccoli sprouts. But if you're eating sprout seeds from The Sprouting Company, I would do this high glucoraphanin salad mix because that way you're getting a blend of the broccoli and the mung beans and the lentils and radish.

Variety, diversity. Yeah, all right. Fill in the blank. Sprouts have times more nutrients than fully grown vegetables.

Easily up to 100 times more nutrient dense than mature vegetables.

Hot take, are store-bought sprouts worth buying or should everyone just grow their own?

I think it's a yes and a yes. So I think that, you know, when I travel, like I go to, I'm going to New York and I will bring sprouts with me on the plane, but I'm not gonna bring sprouts for the next couple days. So I'll have Instacart sprouts delivered to the hotel. I'll have the hotel, empty out the minibar. So the only thing in the room will be, you know, sprouts in the minibar fridge with, you know, an avocado and some spring water and a glass bottle.

That is so cool. I'm so excited to talk about this. All right, a couple more. What's, what's one body signal that screams that you need more sulforaphane in your life?

I mean, inflammation. Right, inflammation. So, um, whether that is showing up in terms of poor recovery, or it could be oxidative stress, or, you know, just any sort of innumerable heart issues can be tied to it. So even if someone is like brain fog or tired in the middle of the day, these are all signs of inflammation.

Overrated or underrated, broccoli sprouts for detoxification?

I think they are underrated, right? Because sulforaphane opens up the Nrf2 pathway, which is the key to the master detox engine of glutathione. And, you know, it's available. I believe sulforaphane within the next 5 years will be bigger than creatine. and we'll be approaching omega-3.

Yeah, the studies are fascinating. It's funny, we just had Dr. Nayan Patel on too, where we're talking about oxidative stress. This is the perfect segue to this episode. What's the most surprising health benefit of sprouts that nobody talks about?

Weight management.

Really?

Yeah, so sprouts are the number one food in my, You know, my insight for fat loss, because sprouts are high fiber, high nutrient, high phytonutrient, low fat, low calorie. So if you're consuming copious amounts of sprouts, you're getting the soluble and insoluble fiber, you're feeling full, and the body is producing GLP-1, right? So you, you naturally will feel satiated. In a healthy way. And as an— as opposed to a shot, you know, which will, you know, brick your stomach for a week, right? Here you're getting a dose of GLP-1 to hold you over till your next meal. So it's a very healthy, natural way. But people aren't thinking about sprouts for weight loss.

No, it just makes sense. And in a world right now where, you know, we have so many companies, lab testing companies that are popping up left, right, and center, but nobody's testing micronutrients to understand the actual function of the body and what the body's missing. We see imbalances everywhere, but we're not looking at the building blocks of what the body actually needs. And from my experience for the past 15 years, a lot of people are walking around nutrient deficient.

Yes.

We're eating a lot of fake food, we're eating a lot of ultra-processed food, and we're giving no attention to real food, not to mention our soil system and stuff like that. So let's open with this shocking truth. So despite spending $702 billion a year on groceries in the US, 93% of Americans don't get enough vegetables.

Yeah.

And even those who do might be getting far less nutrition than they think because our food today contains less protein, less nutrient density, less iron, less calcium than it did in the 1950s because of soil depletion. So Let's start with these people, and this is probably a big part of our audience listening. We think that we're eating healthy with the salads and the smoothies and stuff like that, but we're still waking up with those symptoms that you mentioned— feeling fatigued or inflamed or a lack of focus or mental clarity, weight gain, inability to lose weight. So what do you think is missing from a diet where we're just focusing on veggies?

Yeah, I mean, I think the fact is If you go into the grocery store, whether it's Whole Foods or Walmart or Albertsons, their shelves are packed with tens of thousands of items that are in bags and boxes that are cooked, pasteurized, denatured, highly processed carbohydrates, fillers. So it's, it's not really food, right? But it tastes really good. So food engineering, like, to fool, you know, the average human, it's easy, right? And to hijack their brain with fat, sugar, and salt to make things more addictive. And it's right in front. So what happens is vegetables, you know, as great as they are, they're kind of overlooked. And most of the country doesn't have easy access to vegetables. So the average lettuce is traveling 2,000 miles across the country, right, in a refrigerated truck, taking days or weeks. And so it doesn't even, you know, it doesn't even taste good. So, you know, we're in this society where everyone is distracted and food is easy to self-medicate the distraction. So, you know, vegetables do not have the visceral feeling that when someone bites into a piece of meat, like they know that they're eating, right? Their dopamine just right in their brain. And this is a much more, this veg, eating vegetables is kind of a slower intake.

Yeah, that's a good point. Can you talk to us about, so you mentioned food deserts and availability, even if you are living on the East Coast, you and I are both from the East Coast originally. Where there's lack of access or food goes through transportation for so many days or weeks before it finally gets to the supermarket. And, you know, it could show up. A lot of people are understanding despite having a pretty clean diet, not feeling great. So for people who don't have access, and maybe you can share a bit about your story and the food desert that you were part of that made you look for sprouts.

Yeah. I started to sprout 30 years ago at this point, and to me it was a garnish, it was a superfood, and I was attracted to it, but it was not a meaningful part of my diet. But when I moved to Wonder Valley Hot Springs near Joshua Tree, it was the middle of nowhere, right? So hours away from LA, San Diego, Phoenix, or Vegas. And I wanted to eat clean. I wasn't gonna compromise my standards of what I wanted to eat. And growing things, growing edible food is hard. It's almost impossible to do year round. And in the desert, like, it's just not, it's a non-starter. And on deep, deep reflection, I was like, oh, I could sprout. You know, I started to sprout. And what happened is my laziness and apathy of not wanting to get into the car and drive 90 minutes to a Whole Foods, you know, I decided, oh, I'll just eat the whole jar. And within a month, I had 6 jars in 1 square foot, eating, growing 6 jars of sprouts. and I was getting thousands of calories a day. So I was getting all of my micronutrients, all of my macronutrients, all of my phytonutrients, all antioxidants, soluble, insoluble fiber. And I was feeling full and I'm scratching my head thinking like, oh, there's something wrong. Like, this is too good to be true. Like, why didn't anyone tell me, yo, you can just live on sprouts. And so I like started to make some calls and I called up Dr. Oz, I called up Mark Hyman, I called up Dean Ornish, I called up Joel Fuhrman, I called up Joel Kahn, called up Josh Axe. And every single one of these doctors, whether they were keto, functional medicine, plant-based, they all loved sprouts. And I'm like, why aren't you telling everybody about this? And I realized everyone has their own focus, their own shtick, right? And that's it.

Yeah, I think it's powerful. And I remember in the '80s, there was always, you know, at that little grassroots health food store, there would be sprouts in the back corner. And it was like, they just, they knew the power of it. And I think that something happened. We kind of transitioned, although we talk about it all the time, food is medicine. We're now associating supplementation first as medicine for the body to supplement the impact of a poor diet. Instead of really looking at these powerhouses that actually exist. You saw and felt it within your physiology, which is really key. So for our listeners who might be suffering from inflammation, how are sprouts nutrient powerhouses? How did they energize you? How did they make you feel so much better?

Yeah, well, if we think about it. Sprouts are the original ancestral food, right?

Good point.

Seeds have been around since the beginning of time.

Yeah.

And in certain parts of the world, they've been sprouting since the beginning of time, right? Since they were theoretically walking around on all four, right? People were eating sprouts. And in those countries, they're still sprouting, right? In Korea, Japan, China, India, they're still sprouting. In America or in Europe, the developed world, like, it's a convenience culture. Bread, pizza, pasta, lamb meat. And so sprouts, like, just don't exist. And because when you grow sprouts like these, you can occasionally find them in the supermarket, but they have a short shelf life. So as a result, There's no big sprout company. No one is delivering sprouts to every grocery store in America, and there's no branded names. So people are gravitating to what's convenient. I remember Dean Ornish told me that he had, um, was working with McDonald's on putting a salad on the menu when Don Thompson was CEO, and the salad was like $6. A burger was 99 cents. The salad had 120 calories. The burger had 900 calories. What do you think someone's gonna do? Spend $6 on a salad or 99 cents? And the value wasn't there. So for me, living in an environmental desert like Joshua Tree, but also it being a food desert, made the solution, you know, sprouting, And then I just started to sprout. And then my eyes became open to, wow, sprouts are food. They are real food. They're vegetables. And like, I always had an aversion to multivitamins and protein powders and all this level of supplementation. And then I realized like, wow, I didn't need any of those. Like I could actually get my nutrients from food and every Doctor and every nutritionist that I spoke to agreed with me, but they said, oh, people aren't doing it because if you're eating bread or if you're eating a burger, you're not getting any phytonutrients, you're not getting any vitamin C. And the power of a sprout, like when you sprout a lentil, like lentils are already healthy, right? But when you sprout a lentil, you increase the vitamin C by 300%, you quadruple the antioxidants. So now Like, why wouldn't everyone be just eating sprouted lentils, right? So I think a lot of it is the limitation of imagination and the focus. Like, if someone is earnest, like I had a meeting with Gary Vee and Mike Posner, my partner, and I, we went to go meet with Gary and we start to talk about sprouts and he goes, stop. He goes, me and my fiancée, we know all about sprouts. We just spent $1,000 a day at Hippocrates wellness in West Palm Beach, and we ate a lot of sprouts.

Fascinating.

Right? So, so the fact, like, some people know, but you know, there's a bridge and we need to help cross the bridge and make the connection. And that's what I wanna do with, with The Sprouting Company, which is like, I believe that billionaires and beggars could be eating the same nutrition.

Yeah, these stories around food that I think are propagated by media, it has to stop. When we look at our ancestors that didn't suffer from all of the diseases that we're listing today, there's truth and wisdom to that. We live in a world though where, you know, we talk about sprouting and sprouting seeds, the nutrient density goes up, but I think people are now brainwashed to think that we don't have time. Who's got the time to be able to do stuff like that? How can I prepare that? We need things that are fast and quick and easy. But if we really pull back the lens and say, what if a lot of your symptoms would go away if you actually understood that everything you put into your mouth was actually a piece of information for every single cell in your body? Would you try it on? Would you do it? So I'm smiling for two reasons. One, A flashback, Mike Posner, I didn't know he was your business partner.

Yes.

Do you know that I did his makeup when I was the in-house makeup artist for Sony Music in my 20s?

I did not.

And now he's marrying Allie, who's a dear friend.

Absolutely.

So it's come full circle into my new world. The second part of that is the awareness from whenever I send my clients to places like the Hippocrates Institute, and these are often people who are given a cancer diagnosis. Or, you know, they have a lot of inflammatory markers. These people will go and live at Hippocrates and their inflammatory markers literally diminish.

Right.

And sprouting is one of the biggest portions of food therapy that exists there. And then I think about my healing journey, and this is something that I haven't shared, but I always share that when I went back to live at the ashram, the Shivananda Ashram where I grew, where I grew up living, I lost 45 pounds from these beta blockers that I was on. But when I was there, there was a woman doing a course on sprouting. And so we had sprouts in our food every single day at the ashram when I was there. And food— when I describe that time, I talk about the aliveness of food, like it's living food. And that was a big part of my healing journey that was like coexisting with food medicine at that time. So I say that really to echo in whatever you're hearing from social media around the perfect diet right now, pull back the layer and just understand the nutrient density of food. And if you could give that back to your body, how your body could heal. Yeah.

Well, look, I think for me, it's just so simple. And, you know, I mean, the reason why, like, at this point, you know, in my journey of sprouting right now, 7 years, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are raising their hand and they're sprouting. Because it resonates. It's like simple, you know, a lot of these powders, I can't tell the difference between these white powders, whether it's, whether it's cocaine or it's creatine. Like, I don't know whether it's tocopherols. Like, I don't know what that stuff is. This is like, oh, I see, it's a seed that germinated, that sprouts. And the, the magic that this is growing on your countertop, and I saw your sprouting kit on your kitchen countertop without soil without sunshine, without fertilizer, in days, for under a dollar a serving. It removes any of the obstacles that people have about, oh, to eat organic is expensive, and, you know, I can't get vegetables. So if people want, you know, a lot of people are like stuck. They're stuck in their misery. They're telling themselves stories. But, you know, for me, I just wanna make it easy for people. And it's aligned. Now, you know, my diet today is 50% sprouts.

Incredible.

50% sprouts. And I'm gonna be 60 this year.

Incredible.

And I'm in the best physical, mental, spiritual shape of my life. And, you know, I feel like, wow, I wish I would've gotten into this earlier.

Right.

Like, why didn't someone tell me about sprouts? And people tried. Anne Wigmore, Victoria Skavinskas, Gabriel Cousins, you know, Steve Meyerowitz. There was all these like people that were into sprouts, but they were like hippie dippy trippy fringe, on the fringe. They never crossed over to mainstream. And that's where for me, I was like, the sprouts were so effective in helping me, you know, like I had depression. You know, when I just started, like I was in a depressed state, I was living in a tent, and the sprouts really, really healed me. And, you know, if you think about like one seed, like one broccoli seed, if you plant it, it will sprout. If you sprout it, it'll turn to a sprout, it'll turn to a microgreen, it will grow into a 3 to 5-pound piece of broccoli. If you let it continue to grow, it will flower, and then it will fruit and have pods on it. And one seed turns into hundreds, if not thousands of seeds in a year. So this is, you know, when we talk about abundance consciousness, there's nothing more abundant than sprouts. And somehow, right, there's enough food, enough plants to feed 80 billion farm animals every year, right? 80 billion farm animals. And we still have, you know, over 1.5 billion people living in food scarcity.

How do we make this go viral? Like, a lot of us have had introductions to sprouts. Maybe it's what you said, like, we've all been conditioned to thinking of them as a garnish, right? Instead of the impact of eating them as a real food. And, you know, it was such a blessing to be able to get my sprouting kit from you, from The Sprouting Company. And I'll share a secret if you're a parent and you're having a hard time getting your kids to eat fruits and veggies. Get a sprouting kit for your kitchen. Let them watch the seeds sprout. Let them listen to them grow because they make little pops and stuff like that here and there, which is really cool. And then they'll be more enrolled to try them and experiment with them and eat with them. It's becoming part of their blueprint.

Yeah. Well, I created a free recipe book, an ebook with 100 sprout recipes that are just all beautiful, all wild. I enrolled two chefs, Mario and Francesca, and they created the book and beautiful photography. We made it, you know, we listed for $24.99. And if anyone is in need, you can buy it. Like we could use the money, but if not, like send an email, DM, we'll send you the book for free. And that's normalizing sprouts as food, 'cause it's beautiful, 'cause we, you know, digestion begins with the eyes. And, you know, Allie, you know, loves sprouts. Like, they just got back from OHI, and, you know, they're sprouting every day. They have 7 jars. And, you know, it's just becoming more of a normal thing. You know, I went on Shark Tank. I don't know if you saw that.

And you told me about it.

And I made 4 recipes for the sharks to eat. I made a smoothie, I made a dessert, I made an entree, I made a salad. And they ate literally every drop, every ounce of food that I prepared for them. And so it just takes, and you know, on first week in March, ABC, the ABC Kitchen, ABC Cucina, is gonna be adding sprouts to their menu. They'll be growing sprouts in the restaurant and serving sprouts on the dishes.

Incredible. Congratulations.

You know, I didn't grow up, like people think, oh, you know, Doug, you had hippie parents.

I was gonna say, yeah.

You know, your parents like probably put sprouts in your lunchbox. No, I grew up on McDonald's. Right, and junk food. But the chef, the executive chef, Neil Harden, John George's food director, you know, he grew up as a hippie eating sprouts. So he was already like tuned in, right? And they know fresh. So that's, I mean, that's the thing that sprouts are fresher, they're more nutritious, they're crunchier. I was on the phone last Monday with a farmer He has a normal farm and he grows microgreens and he has my sprouting kit. And I was like, just walk me through a day what you eat. And he had sprouts on 2 of his 3 meals. And I was like, but you have all this, you have the dream, you have an organic farm. He's like, well, the microgreens don't have the crunch that the sprouts have. And I just like the sprouts better. I was like, wow. So, like, people who are in the know, know.

I love that you mentioned the cookbook, and I wanna make sure I get that out to my community as well. Just resources that anybody should have when they're on a healing journey as a foundation. So thank you for that.

Yeah, I'll send you a link. They could click on it and download the book.

Yeah, and I love that you call that out also, 'cause I can imagine for listeners saying, well, how does he eat sprouts and not get bored? Like, what's happening? But there's variety. That you talk about these.

Well, some people add sprouts to a soup, right? I add soup as a dressing to my sprouts, right? So you can have any sauce, any, any sauce, any like dressing, like just simple things. Like you can do really like clean dressing. You can blend a cucumber and tomato and make something just really, especially you have a nice heirloom tomato that are now making a comeback. And you pour that over the sprouts and you add avocado, you add tahini, you can add some Maldon salt, and all of a sudden you have something that's just flavorful. And like this morning, when we're done, I'll show you a video. I took 3 cups of broccoli sprouts and I put them in water in the blender and I drank broccoli sprout water.

Beautiful. And I love that.

And The blending opens up the cellular walls. You get the glucoraphanin and the myrosinase forming fast-acting sulforaphane. And literally, I'll show you, I literally dropped to the ground and did 100 pushups. Like, my energy was off the hook from the broccoli sprout water.

And so was it completely pulverized or were you chewing as well?

It was completely pulverized. Like, I literally turned it to water. And these were like, if you see these sprouts are now 4 days old, so they're still growing. The 3-day-old ones, you actually pulverize the seed coat as well, and that becomes an insoluble fiber that helps feed the microbiome. So it's just totally like bioavailable, active, and no one even talks about living food, right? Living food.

Living food. I swear, this is the foundation to healing is more living food. At the ashram, it's we call it the prana in food. It's life force, living energy. And it was interesting growing up, my dad, he's Indian, so he was mostly a vegetarian, but that's how he helped me understand animal protein and packaged food, 'cause he just would talk about the dead energy of that type of food that you would be intaking versus the aliveness of food that you would be intaking. And it just kind of makes sense and you feel a difference. So you drop in to do pushups, I know that feeling when you get energy from food. But I think today in our modern world, people are so disconnected with food food and how it makes them feel. More often than not, I meet people where they think that bloating is normal, irritability is normal, constipation, gas, irregular bowel movements— these are all normal. Headaches in the afternoon is normal, right? Without thinking about the impact of shifting their diet to support those symptoms.

Well, I think listening to your Rooted in Wellness podcast, people will know. And like, I know that the impact that food has on me. And I also used to be much more militant, and now I'm just like living, you know, as Mike does, in joy, faith, and love, and just being myself. And whatever people are eating, like, I'm not judging anymore. What I'm doing is saying, hey, do you want to increase the nutrition of that burger by 1,000% by adding a handful of sprouts? And people are open to doing that. And, you know, it's hard for me. I'll say, like, just being in the environments around people that are sick or that, you know, have all these challenges. And instead, like, I'm like, oh, I can really make a difference. And, you know, I feel like I've helped a lot of people. I had a sprout challenge with thousands of people in January who committed to sprouting every day. So if you go to any post on my Instagram and you comment challenge, you can join my free group. And the challenge is, you know, do 30 days of sprouts, right? Even if it's one sprout, you know, or a whole thing. And like the recipes and the innovation and what people are doing and they're learning. And so like the idea that we're bringing people together through sprouting really It's powerful. Yeah.

So powerful. You change the way someone feels and they notice it, you'll get them for life. All right, so for people listening, let's just go into the science a little bit. You mentioned the Johns Hopkins study.

Yeah.

And the nutrient density. Can you talk about that study?

Sure. Well, the first, the study that I did was a food safety one because I was concerned that I had heard rumors and I want to be evidence-based. We, we did the research. We had a data scientist. We looked at everything. The data was all over, but the, the highest number of instances of foodborne illness are associated, you know, with meat, with fish, with chicken. And the standards, like, of the USDA used to have standards of tolerances of how much salmonella could be on chicken before it could leave the factory. And now They basically have acquiesced and they said, we cannot control the, the level of salmonella on it. So make sure you cook it well and do not wash your chicken because by washing it, you're going to spread the, the, the potential foodborne pathogens across the whole, you know, kitchen. So, you know, when, when I saw that, it was just like, oh, wow. The safest thing you could do is if you get seeds and you surface sanitize the seeds, you know, whether using peroxide or vinegar, you know, or warm water, right? Then you could reduce the pathogens by, potential pathogens or microbial activity by 2 million to 1, right? So standard practice. And then if you're sprouting in a glass jar that was, and with a stainless steel filter, that was sanitized with, you know, warm water and soap in your dishwasher, and you're using filtered and pure water, that's a really clean, safe setup to sprout.

Beautiful, yeah. And thanks for calling that out. So in case you're listening to this and not watching, so Doug developed an incredible way to grow your sprouts instead of just getting a mason jar, which I think a lot of people might come up against a lot of obstacles, but the way that you've developed this is actually, it makes things a lot easier. I will say that.

It was intentional.

Right.

Right. It was really intentional. I didn't, like, for me, I didn't want another project.

Yeah. Right.

I didn't wanna start developing hardware and in working with glass and stainless steel and, you know, various materials. But what happened is the mason jar was designed for canning. It really wasn't designed for sprouting.

Yeah.

So the shape, you know, had a bell in it. So if you put it at the angle, it would collect water. And the filter, I was using cheesecloth, I was using these plastic tops that I was getting from the internet. And I realized like, well, I have a vision of what would be the best way to do this. And I want a larger jar. I mean, your hands are a little smaller than mine, but you can grab and hold the jar. And so I wanted to make it easy to grip because my wife has small hands.

My son can pick this up. So he can do it as well. He's 11.

He's 11. So yeah, so I wanted to do that. I wanted to have the filter to be stainless steel formed because when you have the woven mesh, it can collect bacteria, biofilm, exudate. And then I wanted the right angle, the right drainage. And like, I was using iPad stands and dish racks. Like, you can see my early Instagram. Right before I had this. Like, I was just doing whatever I could. And then I was like, oh, I'm willing to invest my time and money and design something. And then the seeds were like the wild, wild west. Like, you could get seeds, and I got some seeds, and they just didn't germinate, right? And I got other seeds that said they were broccoli, and when I sent them to the lab, had no glucoraphanin in them. So I sent them to another lab where they sequenced the DNA, And they said, oh, well, these are in the brassica family, but they're not exactly the botanical variety of broccoli. And I was like, oh. So it meant like really like putting the work in to make sure that, you know, like I know where my food is coming from.

Incredible. Yeah, and we think about food scarcity and stuff like that in the future, having sprouts in your house is just, it's It's part of such a bigger picture. We'll get to that. But I want to hold on the science just for a second or another. So people always want science. It's like once it's proven by science, they'll go for it. We're living in an era where we're talking about longevity and we're talking about doing all these biohacks and things to ourselves in order to live a long, well-lived life.

Yeah.

You had mentioned the Nrf2 pathway. Yeah. Which scientists have literally declared as the kind of youthful gene. If we can activate the youthful gene pathway within us through sprouting, that's all I need to know.

Yeah, well, that's why, like, in Japan, broccoli sprouts are a billion-dollar business. They're selling broccoli sprouts in 20,000 retail stores, like our equivalent of 7-Eleven. You can go in and get a little pouch of broccoli sprouts, and they are 20 years ahead of the US in here because, you know, in Japan, like, school lunches have to be really healthy, right? If someone is unhealthy and they have excess fat, like, they have a program to get people to healthy. It's really ingrained into their system, and they're all following the work. And there's probably more than 2,000 peer-reviewed published papers on sulforaphane, which is the reaction of the isothiocyanate, in particular glucoraphanin, that exists in broccoli. And when you mix this compound glucoraphanin with an enzyme myrosinase, it forms sulforaphane. And people have been putting, trying to put sulforaphane stabilized in, in, in a tab, in a tablet or a capsule or a powder. And you know, the best one on the market, you know, I gave them a formula of what I would do is the Complement Sulfura and great product, right? And, and working with Dr. Jed Fahey from Johns Hopkins, who's the most published author on sulforaphane from Johns Hopkins, there's no question by consuming fresh sprouts, you're getting beyond the reaction of the sulforaphane, you're getting the, the antioxidants, you're getting the soluble fiber, your, your body is reacting. And if you take the supplement, it has to wait and hydrolyze in the stomach and the exogenous enzyme has to kick in. So it's different than food. So, you know, will I take that? Yeah. If I'm traveling, if I'm on the go, But like today, I was going to be on the go today, long, long day. So I had my 50 to 75 micromoles of glucoraphanin, sulforaphane in water, drinking water, because I normally don't consume anything in the morning.

Okay.

But that's how I broke my fast with a liter of broccoli water.

And then you're doing your push-ups.

Yeah.

It's pretty powerful stuff. Like, I remember when we started to hear about sulforaphane pop up. The studies aren't, you know, small. The fact that sulforaphane has— it was 100 times, right? 100 times more sulforaphane from sprouts than eating something like broccoli. Yeah, it's huge.

Well, what happens is every seed has a finite amount of glucoraphanin in it, and when it sprouts, you know, the, the benefit, like You could just eat the seeds, and the high glucoraphanin broccoli seeds are about 13% glucoraphanin, but the seeds have a seed coat on them. They have enzyme inhibitors, they have phytic acid, so it's hard to digest. So you may just be swallowing something in and not getting it until it comes out. So on day 3, the metamorphosis has begun and you've now transformed from a seed into a vegetable. And so you get the bioavailable glucoraphanine. And but as the plant gets bigger, it's getting more fiber, it's getting more water, it's getting more other nutrients. But the amount of glucoraphanin was finite. So it's getting diluted at every stage, which is why the seed has the most, broccoli sprouts on day 3 are the most bioavailable, microgreens have more than mature broccoli. But if you get a big head of broccoli, it's healthy.

Of course.

But it's not nearly as concentrated, and that's where the nutrient density came in. And when we talk about these papers, right? In the research and the science, the, the ability to reduce inflammation, reduce oxidative stress, to help regulate insulin levels for diabetics, to detoxify benzene and air pollutants from the lungs, to create heat shock proteins. I mean, the, the, the, the list goes on. And, you know, I don't know, there's not enough time in the day to continue to research the papers. But this wasn't— when I started to sprout, right, I never even contemplated or imagined broccoli, right? Just wasn't a thing. I was eating alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts. And then when I discovered broccoli sprouts, like, that's when I went running to the publisher. It's like, hey, there should be a whole book just on broccoli sprouts.

I agree. I'm smiling. My cheeks are hurting from smiling so much because it's just such a miracle. Like, when you actually start to study the science around food that nature gives us to heal ourselves, I mean, once you— I mean, you and I obviously geek out over this kind of stuff, but like, why would you ever go back? It's all right there for us to have and enjoy it and use as therapy. And I think that today we need to break up with this culture of looking for things in a supplement or thing. You know, always call it the, the red pill or the protocol when it doesn't have to be that way at all.

Yeah, well, I, I mean, I think our genetics, survival, like we're wired to be lazy, right? Preserve energy, right? Where we're attracted to food that is, um, dense in fat and sugar and salt, kind of easy to hijack the brain, right? And then, you know, we have a desire to procreate Right. So in a very primal survival mechanism, that's the average human. So to do anything more, you have to have vision and purpose, right? So if you don't want to eat junk food, like, I very hard line, you know, no junk food, right? No ultra-processed food, period, end of story. You have to have a clear boundary. And if someone doesn't know what they want, they don't take the time to learn, then they could easily be influenced. And I went to the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C. Oh, I saw that.

Yeah.

Right. All these, you know, luminaries. I don't know how I got invited, but as a guest, and I brought a bag with fruit and with sprouts, and they were serving filet mignon and they were serving like salmon steak. And, you know, some of the people were, you know, were moderately healthy and some were, you know, very unhealthy there. And there's 12 people at my table. And I told the waiter, please not bring anything for me. I have my own food. But if I can have an empty plate. And like, all eyes were on me.

Exactly. What are you eating? What's that?

And they're like, what's that? And literally, I'm glad I ate before I went there because they gave out all my food.

Oh, fascinating.

Without judging what they had, but I gave out all my food. And now, you know, at Jesse's Running Man event, you can see videos of me, like, literally running laps, like running 1-mile laps, handing out sprouts to runners while they're running. And so I just, you know, I love sharing this and, you know, we're just starting.

I really love your approach also, because I work with people who love animal protein and it works for them. And, um, they feel that they need it, so I want to respect that. But I also work with vegans who are also thriving, which goes against what a lot of influencers and doctors in the media are saying, but it's the truth. So whatever you do, just look to add more nutrient density. And I would say, in a world right now, gosh, if you are going grocery shopping and you feel intimidated of how expensive groceries are— I remember when you could get like, you know the pre-washed cut-up salad or something for like $3 or something. It was like $15 the other day I saw.

Oh, the air one. Oh my God, you could get English peas, an 8-ounce cup of English peas is $19.99.

Well, even to spend $5, right, is actually, it's very, it's ridiculous. So let's put a lens on the cost for sprouting. And just like the wow factor there. And then let's get into the how-to so that we can really simplify this for listeners.

Yeah, so the basic sprouting kit is $100, but if you buy two, right, buy one, get one, 50% off, so two for $150. And that's like the cost of going out to meal. A bag of seeds can start at $12 and go up to $50.

And they last forever.

Well, a month. You get a, you know—

But look how much you get.

You get it.

Yeah. You're eating a lot more.

Yeah, I eat a lot more. But one scoop of seeds, right? So the simple math on sprouts are 10 grams of seeds turns into 100 grams of sprouts in 5 days, right? So you get a 10x force multiplier. So if you think about juicing, and I love juicing, You know, what you put in, half comes out, right? In a blender, it's a 1-to-1 ratio. But with sprouting, you get a 10x force multiplier. So this is the magic of creation as part of the expanding universe. And that's what, you know, where my kid looks at it and she sees like, oh, it's growing, it's expanding, and she's growing. And like, we, you know, I put on my Olaf voice, you know, and I talk to her and she will, you know, very much eat because she wants to grow. She wants to be strong. She wants to be healthy. And I'm just going to share this. My wife was so furious with me. I was with her brother and sister-in-law and their family. And they— we went, you know, we're staying in an Airbnb, going to Disneyland with the kids. And my daughter was hungry in the middle of the night. So we'd go out and like, I'm looking, we had strawberries, we got bananas, and there was Hostess white bread. And my daughter wanted that. And I was like, sweetheart, that's not food. She goes, what do you mean? I said, that's like a paper towel. And then she's like, oh. And I said, no nutrients in a paper towel. She goes, that's right. So she had the banana, strawberry banana blend. But then the next morning, she said to all the other people, why are you eating paper towels? And they go, no, no, we're eating the bread. She goes, no, no, paper towels. That's junk. And I was like, oh, and my wife was so angry at me. And I was like, look, it's 3 in the morning. I'm keeping my daughter healthy.

Exactly.

And she's like, we'll figure out another way because you can't alienate people. And so I was like, you know, I apologized to them and basically said, hey, you guys know about sprouting, right? And like, I have to be able to talk about something else other than sprouts because I have 15 or so sprout conversations every day. And in every day I'm learning.

And yeah, yeah, you know, once in a while I'll get a comment from someone on social media around the privilege of eating healthy. And I think it goes back to brainwashing. And this is where, you know, the more that we can take a stand for the quality of our food and then control with our dollar, we will see changes happen in the food industry, which will pay off tenfold for ourselves and for our children. And so the education that we, we give our kids needs to be around that to help them understand a food that's alive that will help them thrive versus a food that is dead that's made in a factory that won't do the same thing. Just help them understand. That's it.

Yeah. Well, look, I think a lot has to do with you know, the connection, you know, to your children and to the food. And for me, like, I— the amount of time that I get to spend with my daughter because of the current environment, like, to me, like, I thought, like, oh, I work hard, I come home, you know, and I don't do anything. And it's like, oh no, like, you have a responsibility and the connection.

Yeah.

You know, and the trust you build. And kids are so like, they're like sponges. Every, they pick up energy, they watch what you do. And so I think I set a great example and you can see the results.

I totally agree. And we have to do everything possible for our kids for the future. Yeah. Okay. So people are going to get their kit. Yeah, they might have a little bit of hesitancy. Maybe they've tried sprouting before. Full disclosure, when I tried sprouting once, the sprouts ended up getting moldy. I freaked out. I thought I couldn't do it, and then I never wanted to do it again until you came into my life.

Yeah.

So how do people prevent that from happening?

Okay, so one, you know, gift to the universe, um, I created a free sprout app You can download off of The Sprouting Company page.

And you get this all in your kit, by the way. So you get a beautiful, you know, catalog that you open up with step-by-step instructions with the QR code to go to that video. Just wanted to share that.

So you have that, but, you know, for me, like, whether you use our kit or use a mason jar, I wanna help people sprout.

Beautiful.

Right? So, and so they're not tied together. The second thing is like what you saw as mold, was probably root hairs. So the sprouts are growing without fertilizer, and so they have the embryo and endosperm inside of them. So the first step is you take a scoop of seeds, you soak them in water, fully immersed in water overnight. Simple. Then the next day, you strain out that water, right? Water a plant with it. And then add fresh water, spin it around so you're rinsing them, fully hydrating them, giving them a flash flood, right? And then you strain out the water, which is why the sprouter is at this 30-degree angle for the water to drain out. And then you simply rinse it twice a day. And so there's so many things that you could be doing while you're rinsing them. It's just like a non— issue, right? And if, you know, so many people are doing it that it's a non-issue. So there's no friction there. Like growing food in a garden, you got to go out, get on your knees, get in the mud. You know, this is so clean that I believe that, that nature created this stage for the survival, you know, of life on this planet. That the fact that you can eat, and just another benefit is the sprouts are the stage of the plant where there's the most meristematic stem cells, the most stem cell activity is in the sprouting stage.

Fascinating. Yeah, when I think about food, ultimately I wanna take all of my clients off of a supplement protocol and I'd rather switch them over to food. And I think that, sprouts is one of the easiest ways to do that in your house, and it's actually an activity for your entire family. So I'm guessing, would sulforaphane broccoli sprouts, is that the entry point that you recommend for most people?

I mean, one of the things I like this, and I'm joking, this is the high glucoraphanin salad mix. And this has alfalfa, lentils, mung beans, radish, and the broccoli seeds. And this is like a blend. So it's a little bit, you know, easier than just straight broccoli.

Probably more palatable too.

Yeah, it's just nice. But, you know, you add a tahini dressing or you add avocado or vinaigrette, like, you don't— you taste the dressing and the spices more. It's kind of the easiest thing. My daughter loves lentil sprouts. You know, they're just, you know, 3-day-old lentil sprouts are crunchy. They're chewy. They have a nut flavor. You know, they're lower fat than nuts and, you know, they're bioavailable. And in the process of sprouting, the starches, you know, are becoming proteins and you're just getting something that's water-based, alive. And, you know, there's not even a measurement about this enzymatic activity, but when you're consuming the sprout, you are literally eating the root, the shoot, the endosperm, and it is living. So it's, electrically alive, it's enzymatically active, and your body knows what to do with it. And so, you know, I think in our lifetime it's gonna become much more prevalent and we'll know. But now I could see just the impact, like my little book, which, you know, has now sold 75,000 copies of the Sprout Book. You know, people, people are loving it. People are sprouting. And, you know, I'm seeing this as global, like this is all happening. And, you know, you have to be careful what you wish for because it means like I get to drive 3 hours in to do a podcast and I have these meetings. But I also see the benefit, you know, of people, you know, like just getting healthier.

I love it.

That's what I want.

I always say when you walk into your kitchen, you should be walking into the first line of healthcare. For yourself and for your families. And with Ayurveda, I always say to look at your spice cabinet as nature's anti-inflammatories, but sprouts really need to be on that list. And I love that you shared that story because it almost seems like the food system or the industrial food revolution really kind of cut off that line of wisdom that comes from our ancestors, which we could have kept alive the entire time.

But, you know, fortunately, that it was so obvious that I say I didn't just, I didn't discover anything. I just, you know, rediscovered it because it was there, right? You know, and in my research for the book, they found sprouting seeds that were 1,200 years old that still germinated, right? The pharaohs had, you know, pictures of sprouts, you know, in the pyramids. Captain, um, Captain Hook would give his pirates sprouts so they wouldn't get scurvy, you know, out at sea. I mean, there's just so much fragmented data around it. But now I could, like, you know, when I went on TikTok, it was very hard for me because, like, my original, you know, post got no views, no views, no views. And now I have like 100 million views and millions of likes. And to this young audience that like wants the food sovereignty, that is skeptical about everything, but they get sprouts. Like, oh, this makes sense. Seed, add water, grows, you know, like, like what ingredients are in there? 5 unique ingredients, right? And that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's fascinating. And I think it's important. This is one of those things when you go on, you know, if you want to consider it as a protocol or think about adding nutrient density, tune into the way that your body feels. That is all the evidence that you'll need. And then pass it on. Tell somebody else about it. You know, be the person at the dinner party just like you. And through that, you create changes within the people in the community around you. And I think that's what we all want. We want to help the people that we live with. We want to help people out in the world. God, I can see a future with sprouts. Can you imagine in our school system?

Oh yeah.

Sprouts within our food deserts because it's something that we can give them. For availability.

I mean, there's a, there's a church in New York where they, they get sprouting kits, they get bulk seeds, and the members who want to be healthy. And it's interesting, like, I didn't know, I don't know a lot about religion, but like the Seventh-day Adventists, you know, are very plant-based, you know, and right here in Loma Linda, it's like one of the longest living populations. You know, it's a blue zone.

As a blue zone.

In Loma Linda. And, you know, they love sprouts, they love vegetables, and it's clued in. So, you know, I think we're just beginning, and, you know, you giving me this opportunity to share is really beautiful. So I'm so grateful.

I'm so grateful. Yeah, I'm gonna make sure that we link everything out. And I really just hope that, like, just trust the process. It's easier than you think. And once you get into the ritual of it, you know, habits come and go, but rituals become you. It's an easy ritual to take on. Will just keep going on your counter. And when you have something that's like an anchoring cue on your kitchen counter, you do it every single day. And sprouts are so beautiful to watch. It's beautiful to look at. It's something that you want to be part of.

Well, I agree.

Yeah, of course. So I'm grateful for you. And yeah, who knew? Loma Linda, California, blue zone right here, sprouting. We're going to link out all of these things below. I'm grateful to call you a friend. Can you maybe share something with the audience that you are just excited about with the future of our food system, of sprouting?

I mean, I think what's happening now is the fragmentation of media that, you know, what you seek seeks you. And so it's just the connection and just be discerning. Like, I learned a lot. You know, I'm a young, I'm a young parent. Right. And so what I'm excited about, I just love the trend towards DIY to movement and people taking health into their own hands. And so it's— you just have to believe, right? So, you know, what I encourage— like, I see more people, especially women now, like finding out what they really want. You know, and going for it. So this age of transparency and openness, you know, is really positive.

Yeah. And I think it's about going after what we really want and feeling great at the exact same time. And when I think about ancient wisdom, there's such a strong focus on connection with community and with food. So for that, I'm grateful for you. Thank you so much for making the drive here. I've been so looking forward to this for so long. So thank you.

Well, thank you for having me.