Sprouts Will Change Your Life with | Doug Evans

Mr. Doug Evans, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I am the best ever. So glad to be here.

I love your energy, and I have a feeling you have so much energy because of sprouts. Is that true?

I think it's because of sprouts, and also, I'm a hungry guy. So, I walk around like a starving lion, fiercely searching for food. And so hungry for information, hungry for knowledge, hungry to share information. And the sprouts just make the whole body, you know, just operate and fire on all cylinders.

They really do. Well, I'm excited to talk about your bestselling book, The Sprout Book, today. And we, we invited you on the show actually because I started sprouting because of you only about a month or two ago. And then I saw you followed our page, Book Thinkers, and I said, wow, this timing is perfect. We have to get Doug on the show to tell us all about sprouts. So Let's go back to your diet as a kid. You shared that it was not great, and as a result, you had some kind of health issues. Once you moved into sprouts and a better diet, things got better. So let's go back to that time. Tell us, what food did you eat growing up and why didn't it serve you?

So I ate the standard American diet, also known as the SAD diet, and we were also living in somewhat scarcity. So we had limited amounts of food and everything was somewhat rationed. And then when I became, you know, when I went into the Army, I started to overeat, right? Because I was self-medicating. A, just the anxiety of being in the Army, being a paratrooper, jumping out of planes. Like when there was food and you could go in the mess hall and you could get seconds and triples and quadruples and just Keep stuffing your plate. It felt just good. It was very much aligned. But I grew up eating, you know, pizza, pasta, bread, meat, chicken, fish, dairy at almost every meal, and some produce. Like, I always loved produce, but like, I remember my mother, may she rest in peace, would give us like one orange or an apple. or 12 cherries or a small bunch of grapes. And so fruit was, and vegetables were part of our diet, but small part. It was always like, you know, pasta and bread and meat. And when I got out of the Army and I had some money saved, I started to eat. And I thought of fast food as like a delicacy. It was like a brand. you know, it was programmed and it tastes good. So I ate a lot of fast food and I ate processed food. And then as I, my career went from like age 23 to 33, then I started to get into fine, what I thought was fine dining, like fancy restaurants where the prices were exorbitant. And I would go to all the steakhouses and I, and the Italian restaurants and the, in Little Italy. And I remember eating just because it was— I thought it was an indication of success. Like, if you could go to an expensive restaurant and food was celebratory, and that's what I ate. And then when in, in 1999, kind of the whole family started to rapidly drop like flies. Like, my aunt got type 2 diabetes, and they, they had to perform a double amputation of her feet below her ankles. And like, processing that for me was, what would it be like not to have my feet, like not to move my toes? And then she died at the same age I am now with complications with the diabetes. So I didn't even know what diabetes was. But I knew that she became overweight, obese, diabetic, and then had this double amputation and then died. And then my uncle died of heart disease, and then my mother got stomach cancer and she died, and my father got heart disease and he died. And my brother, who's still alive, my older brother, had the first of 3 strokes and a heart attack. And so all of this To me, I thought was genetics. And then, you know, I was just saying, okay, I'm just operating my life. I'm a little bit heavier. I'm eating this food. Maybe I should exercise. But I thought like I was doomed to a short life just based on my my family. And then I got turned on to the whole food. plant-based raw diet. And I didn't even know what that was. Like, I never even heard the word vegan before. I thought it was like ludicrous that, that you could actually live on raw fruits and vegetables. And I actually registered a domain way back then called Still Raw because I thought it would be my blog documenting my journey of staying raw one day at a time, like I was an addict in recovery from processed food and I was just staying out. And I had no idea how much fun it would be to just be able to have the abundance of varieties of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, seaweeds, and sprouts.

Oh, that's amazing to hear. I have kind of a follow-up question to that. How did you make the correlation between your health and then like your family's health and how did you correlate that between food? since you didn't grow up necessarily with good food education, which most people, like you've said, in America don't, how did you make the correlation? Was it just that, that person that put you onto it and then you're like, oh, I'm gonna do this, this, and this, and that's gonna change my life? Or was it a gradual process? Like how did you come to realize that was going to affect your health in the long term?

I met this woman named Denise Mari and she was vegan and she told me that, you know, her sister died of leukemia, her mother died of cancer, and she saw the connection between diet and lifestyle. And then, so like, I overnight went vegetarian, and then within days I became vegan. And then in that first week, I, I bought a book called Nature's First Law: The Raw Food Diet by David Avocado Wolfe. And I read that book and it really resonated with me. Like, the words in that book resonated. And so I strived to follow what I was learning. And, you know, the, the, the key kind of tips or techniques were, if you're eating raw fruits and vegetables, You can eat as much as you want until you are not hungry or you're full. And that was very different than being rationed or everything else. And it turns out, like, the more produce you ate, the higher the quality poops you had. But instead of gaining weight, I was losing weight. And so it was like this mind-blowing thing. And then instead of, like, eating a slice of watermelon or like a quarter, like a pizza slice of watermelon. I'd eat a whole watermelon and I loved every bit of the watermelon. And I'd eat a pound of grapes or I'd eat a whole romaine lettuce or a whole bunch of celery or a bag of organic carrots. And so, I just got comfortable with eating as much as I wanted until I was no longer hungry or I was full. And it made the mental connection to me that when you're eating this much raw produce, that eventually it clicks into the brain that says, oh my God, I've got all these nutrients, these minerals. Like, you're satiated, your nutritional requirements are fulfilled, and then you stop eating. You just stop. But if you're eating cooked food, processed food, refined food, you know, meat, dairy, animal products that are engineered to trigger the pleasure sensors in the brain, the dopamine, the serotonin, the salt activating your drooling part, you'll end up overeating when you're not hungry. And so, you know, my diet does not include salt, oil, and sugar added. So obviously there's a lot of sodium in a lot of things that I'm eating. A lot of fruit is, you know, sugar, but it's really whole fructose containing, you know, fructose and glucose along with the fiber and all the phytonutrients. So I'm getting that. And oil, you know, things are very fatty, like I'll eat avocados or I'll eat olives, but I don't eat olive oil. And I know there are people that I like. I have friends who swear by olive oil, and they have other people that says olive oil is a junk food. And for me, you know, I've honed in on this diet or this lifestyle that just works for me. And I wrote, you know, the book to share a little bit of my journey because I was like in the, in the foxhole. Right? And then now, like, I'm 56 years old. I'm, I'm a new parent, so I have a 6-month-old daughter. And, and I've got the most clear energy that I've ever had in my life. You know, physical, mental part. I'm in better shape today than I was when I was in the US military back in 1984.

Do you think everybody can achieve the state of wellbeing that you're in? I mean, you say in the beginning of this book, the Sprout book, that In America today, we have the worst food ever available as a species, but we also have the best. We have sprouts. So can everybody reverse the damage that they've been doing to their bodies if they adopt sprouts in their diet?

I mean, it's hard to make absolute comments, right? It's hard to be categorical. I'm sure there are some things that are genetics, but kind of as a whole, if someone were to shift from eating food that's going to poison themselves to eating foods that will nourish themselves, like, you see the transformation. And I think that's what happened, you know, for me when I wrote the book. You know, I think I got the smallest advance, you know, given that year. They did a little paperback book. You know, the first edition was a couple thousand copies. And, you know, now the book hit number 7. I mean, this is— we're talking to Booker, you know, book readers, right? The book peaked at number 77 on all books on Amazon, right? So how many books are on Amazon? I don't know, but north of 3 million, right? So to hit 77, to break through, and it became number 1 in vegetarian cooking, vegan cooking, low-budget cooking, fiber cooking, and all these categories I didn't even know that were categories. But it was really powerful that the message resonated with so many different audiences. And, you know, in the book, because I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a nutritionist or a dietitian, right? I'm a simple— like, I'm the guy next door, right, who You know, people make all sorts of excuses like, oh, well, this is the way that I grew up. That's why I'm fat, sick, and nearly dead, because this is what was given to me. And then other people are like, well, I grew up, you know, with a family that was fat, sick, and nearly dead, and that's why I'm not. So the, the key for me was providing a solution. something that someone could do, and that someone was me. So I'm an audience of one. Now, you know, I think the book is going to be 3 years old in April, you know, tens of thousands of copies sold in print, in Audible, in ebooks. And I've gone on countless podcasts. And now social, you know, validation is tens of thousands of people are messaging and posting their sprouting success stories. And the number one question is like, well, why didn't I know this? Like, how is— how was this kept as a secret for so long? And I want to like take a moment, you know, and credit the sprouting forefathers and foremothers before me. Like, Anne Wigmore, Viktor Skovinskis, Brian Clement, Steve Meyerowitz. These people, like, knew about sprouts, promoted sprouts, wrote books, you know, created health centers. And then they just kind of faded. They just faded because they didn't have the megaphone, you know, and the timing. to communicate to the masses. And for me, after, you know, I moved to the desert, and I thought like idealistically, oh, I'll just grow my own food. And I'd never grown anything other than sprouts that I looked at. Oh my God, to create a garden, you need soil, you need water, you need irrigation. You know, it's hot in the summer, it's cold in the winter. that it was really difficult to grow mature fruits and vegetables, really difficult. And so while I'm soaking in the hot springs, looking at the sky and the stars and the Milky Way, I'm starting to hallucinate and I'm starting to see the different constellations and the different stars twinkling. And I got this download for the sprout book. And like, I, you know, it was so simple. Like, sprouts were food. Like, sprouts were really food that you could eat as many calories as you want. Like, I've had 3,000-calorie days of eating just sprouts. I lived on sprouts for a month. So sprouts were food. And then the second part were sprouts were vitamins and minerals that we have in society, $120 billion supplement category. And yet, where do these supplements come from? They're either synthesized in a lab or extracted from plants or dead animals. And why couldn't you go right to the source? And so I started to do deeper research and turns out that sprouts contain every single vitamin, mineral, micronutrient, phytonutrient, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, every amino acid to form complete proteins. And I was like, whoa. And, you know, that's where like even guys and people that are not like plant-based know the power of sprouts. And in, in my book, I interviewed medical doctors that some are plant-based, and those were easy. Some are keto, some are functional medicine. And the thing that they all had in common is they all love sprouts. And none of them were saying, hey, just eat sprouts. But they— it was undeniable the power and potency and efficacy of sprouts And then the third part, which when it— when it— when I got the basic download, I knew the early Hippocrates quote, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. And so I knew that. But what I didn't know was in contemporary society that major academic institutions like Johns Hopkins University had been researching broccoli sprouts for 30 years, that there were peer-reviewed published papers that talked about the anti-carcinogenic properties of sprouts, how sprouts could be used to kill cancer cells, how sprouts could create heat shock proteins to reverse the symptoms or lessen the symptoms of autism. How sprouts could detoxify benzene from the lungs of people exposed to toxic chemicals and air pollutants. How sprouts could regulate insulin levels in diabetics. How sprouts could be the number one food for weight loss because they are high fiber, low calorie, low fat. And so The medicinal aspect of utilizing sprouts for medicine, Hippocrates knew it way back when, but we now have been validating this in scientific and academic institutions for decades.

I'm so curious. I'm so excited to get on my sprouting journey. Nick has kind of encouraged me to, and then I read your book and I'm like, okay, I've got to do this. I have 3 kids at home and I'm excited to get them involved. I just ordered like a whole sprouting kit and the broccoli sprouts. I'm just, I'm enthusiastic and excited about it. And hearing you talk about this is making me even more excited. But I wanna go back just a little bit. Like, why do you think, in your point of view, from your opinion, why do you think like nutrition has become so complicated and elusive in America? Like we have, we all know we have such bad diets, but it doesn't seem like anybody's really talking about this and it's still kind of pushed under the rug and people are still eating tons of fast food. In your opinion, why do you think that is and how do we, How can we kind of break out from this and how can we share more of this information about sprouts and other healthy avenues?

I mean, we live in America, right? Arguably the most capitalistic country in the world, right? China may be the richest country, but it's communist. So all the money is floating up to certain leaders, right? In America, it's about capitalism and You know, there's a fine line between overregulation and underregulation. And there's just a lot of corruption. There's a lot of profit-oriented mechanics in place that people— it's perfectly legal to sell things that you can consume that will kill you. Right? We still, even though they've got a warning sign, you know, on cigarettes, right? Cigarettes are still a billion-dollar industry. And, you know, we know that, and they're still selling cigarettes, right? They've had some restrictions, which took decades or like half a century to go into place that says, oh, you can't advertise cigarettes to kids. Like, half a century later, it figures it out. But if you look at the sophistication around branding, advertising, marketing characters, around trying to brainwash the kids, brainwash the adults, that it's— if you're watching television or reading newspapers or magazines, You will be like brainwashed. You'll just be brainwashed because the editorial content is a vehicle to collect profit from the advertisers. So it's this circuitous, complicated means. And that's where, you know, in my house we have no TV. I haven't had a TV in over 20 years, right? No cable, no TV. And I will, if I consume something online, and I probably use my iPhone more than I would like to do it, just admit it. Like, I have the addiction like other people. I'm on the phone more. You know, I broke the addiction of looking at my phone in the middle of the night. Like, if I get up, I will not under any circumstances, you know, look at my phone. I will not unlock my phone. I'll see what time it is, but I will not unlock it because you could go down the rabbit hole. for hours and then screw up the next day. So I won't do that. And also, you know, I turn the phone off and I stop looking at it at a certain time of day. I go to do not disturb and I'm off. So these are things that I am doing. But if you think about the power of using brands, using characters, using colors, using voice, using stories, and then using government subsidies that if a burger wasn't subsidized, the meat and the corn and the feed, like a typical burger would cost $35, right? But everything is non-calculated, like the carbon footprint isn't calculated, the cost. So we're in a society that there are people that aren't like trying to make you sick. Like, I don't think like it's that kind of diabolical, right? But I do think they don't give a hoot about you. So they will sell you something and let the buyer beware. And if you have long-term consequences, well, you know, that's on you. And so therefore, you know, we're in a society where instant gratification— like, if you had to go find your own food, it's a lot easier if there are berries there to fill a bowl of berries than it is to, you know, go hunt and stalk and find a piece of animal, you know, and then kill it, preserve it, whatever. So if you're around things. But we went from being active where we had to go hunt and gather for survival to now we have Instacart, you know, we've got delivery services, we've got, you know, even in the poorest communities, there's grocery stores and bodegas and fast food chains that people will go. And I go into Whole Foods Right? Which is, you know, now, like, in my brain, I go Amazon. When I go into the Amazon store, right? I go into the Amazon store, there's 30,000 SKUs in the store. Maybe there's 30 that I will consume, right? Just that, that's it. Most of that store is there. And, you know, you develop the habit That I look at other stuff, but I make my beeline. I create my shopping list. I create alternatives to the shopping list so that I'm prepared because I don't want to get lost in there. I want to go in, get my stuff, and get out.

Doug, I love this conversation about the state of America. And, and I think Luke and I, you know, we work with a lot of personal development type authors. And I think a big piece of personal development, improving every area of your life, Nutrition and diet leading to energy, better sleep, better performance cognitively. Like these are subjects that we love to talk about. So I'm curious, kind of going back a little bit, you went from vegetarian overnight to vegan a week later. When did sprouts enter the mix? When were you first introduced to broccoli sprouts? When, when did you start researching the benefits of broccoli sprouts? How did that happen?

So I started to sprout before I was even vegetarian or vegan. Like, I was in New York, I'd go to the farmer's market, and, you know, I was drinking and juicing wheatgrass like over 25 years ago. So long before I was even vegetarian or vegan, and I would suck it up and take the 2 shots of wheatgrass and hold them in my mouth. And I would eat the sprouts when they were available, right? And I never even heard of broccoli sprouts until I started to research my book. And what happened is once I woke up and I got my download and I was like, oh, okay, I think I have a solution for how I'm gonna live in my tent in the desert. Because it was not only the desert, it's a food desert. I, I said, okay, I'm gonna sprout. And then when I went online, I was pleasantly surprised 5 years ago with how many sprouting options were there. I can tell you now the sprouting options have increased 20x. Like, literally every little rinky-dink sprout company has grown 3x, 5x, 10x since the book came out, since this enthusiasm for sprouting. Like, we are seeing a sprouting revolution. Like, 2023 is the year of sprouts. There's no question. Like, now we've hit critical mass. It's snowballing, and it's, it's going. So I first learned about broccoli sprouts when I was researching for the book. So, and the story of how the book came about was, I'm sprouting now, and in about 1 cubic foot, I had 6 jars going. And I was able to make enough food in rotation to eat. And that first month was like going really deep on sprouts and getting used to the sprouts. But there was nothing that was a guideline of how to actually sprout. You know, the early sprouting that I knew about was alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts, and how could I go deeper? And then when I saw this variety of sprouts, alfalfa, adzuki, radish, clover, broccoli, chia, lentils, fenugreek, all sorts of peas, that there were so many options. And there's not like USDA data on these. There's, you know, no one was talking about it. It was just starting. So I said, I'm gonna have to go do academic research and go deep so I can find the information and even how to do, how to grow. Like, there's a difference between how do you grow certain types of seeds in the timeline, what the soaking duration is, whether you're using a tray or a jar or soil or a sprouting medium that I had more questions than I had answers. And then I thought like, okay, I'm gonna keep a log. I'm gonna document what I'm learning. And then I felt like, okay, this is powerful enough. This is new enough. Like my perspective, my voice was fresh and contemporary and energetic. And I'm gonna use, you know, my, my skills and my resources. And you talk about personal development. I'm gonna use everything that I learned in personal development and focus it and channel it And unleash sprouts to the world, man.

Unleash sprouts to the world. I love it. I think you're doing a great job at that, by the way, because I mean, you've got 2 believers right here and we're gonna have many more after this podcast is finished. Can't wait to introduce more people to your book. I had a, a question about just sprouts and this might be going back a little bit, but as far as sprouts versus like the actual full-grown thing, like broccoli sprouts versus a full-grown head of broccoli. You make the argument in your book that the sprouts are healthier, or at least more nutri— nutritious, sorry, have more, yeah, have more nutrition, more nutrition than the, the full-grown counterpart. So why is that? And is that true amongst all, all fruits and vegetables?

I mean, if you think about it, sprouts are like a seed is a living organism in a dormant state. And inside that seed contains an endosperm, an embryo, you know, and fuel. And the magic of the sprout is that it can grow without soil, without sunshine, without fertilizer, and it can grow in days. And so when you soak the seeds, you're removing the enzyme inhibitors, the trypsins, the phytic acid, the lectins, all of those things decrease. And then the seed germinates and a root pops out, a shoot pops out, and you have a tender little vegetable. And there are specific compounds, glucosinolates in particular for broccoli sprouts, that are the precursor to this compound called sulforaphane. And they exist in the seed. And turns out that in the seed there is a finite amount of that. And as the plant grows, the, the amount and the dose of the glucoraphanin actually gets diluted. And what happens is when the plant goes from seed to sprout to microgreen to market-stage vegetable, you get a lot of fiber, you get a lot of vitamin C, you're getting antioxidants, but these concentrated phytonutrients actually get diluted. So you can benefit greatly from consuming all of these items. Like, no, I'm not at all saying don't eat mature vegetables. But from a medicinal level, like if you wanted to treat one of these chronic or acute illnesses, you would need to have an exponent of the mature vegetable in order to get it. And probably so much that you actually wouldn't get it. It would still be healthy, but you wouldn't get it. And that was the insight that I discovered along the way. And I decide to kind of publish it and put it out to the world.

Doug, there's a clip that's gone viral. There's a clip that's gone viral a few times on Rich Roll's podcast where you talk about broccoli sprouts having 50 times the cancer-fighting material than an actual mature piece of broccoli. And so what is, what is the chemical there that's helping to—

That, that's actually glucoraphanin. Which is the precursor to sulforaphane.

Sulforaphane. Yeah.

Sulforaphane. And what happens is inside of the plant, there's almost like little vacuoles, and one of them contains the glucoraphanin, and one of them contains an enzyme called myrosinase. And when you chew them or crunch them or even freeze them, The, the vacuoles open, they mix, and then they get a reaction, and that reaction is sulforaphane. And, you know, you're, you're not asking me. I'm gonna, you know, kind of go down the track here. That reaction is part of the plant's defense mechanism, right? And that plant defense mechanism is designed to protect the plant from insects. So if an insect bites in, it crashes through those 2 vacuoles, and they get something really bitter, and then the, the insect goes away, right? For us, those plant defense mechanisms help us to create heat shock proteins. It helps kill cancer cells. So it's one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Are there downsides to it, Doug? Because I, you know, in the comments section of that video in particular, people are saying, okay, well, the plant defense mechanisms can also hurt humans. Is that—

I, I mean, you would have to have, you know, the poison is in the dose, right? So the, the amount I've never heard of, I've never seen anything to that effect where the plant defense mechanism— think about yourself versus the size of an ant, right? You are the size of 20,000 ants, right? There's almost no comparison in it. And people talk about the defense mechanism, right? The defense mechanism of a bull is its horns and its teeth and its mass. Right? No one would be, you know, everything has a defense mechanism in place. The plant defense mechanisms actually create the potency, you know, for the healing, you know, in a very clear way. Now, there could be people that have damaged guts that could have autoimmune diseases. They could have other things to make them concerned, you know, to be more concerned about what they're doing. But basically, the plant defense mechanisms are extremely healthy. And these items, you know, 50% of the world is vegetarian, right? So people are eating plants all the time. That the notion that the, the anti-nutrients and plant defense mechanisms is like one of the biggest fallacies that I've ever heard of. It's incomprehensible. you know, to, to do it. And therefore, I don't spend a lot of time talking on it because if they were so dangerous, every plant eater adult would be sick or dead. And so the, the, the mechanism, you know, of why, um, they're talking about that is like there's a narrative that says you need to eat meat to be masculine, to be tough, Like, you know, and it's just part of this bravado for separationism. You know, it has nothing to do with, with health.

Yeah. And I, I, I asked the question because I, I feel like it's probably the most contentious point around your argument for eating sprouts, and I'm happy that you addressed it in that way. I've been eating sprouts now constantly, almost every single day now for about a month. I think it's something I'll continue forever because I've had an amazing experience with it so far. I'm putting my sprouts In my salads, sometimes they're mostly sprout salads. You could put them as a garnish on the side of other meals. Sounds like you eat a lot of sprout salads. What other ways do you consume sprouts?

I use sprouts in wraps. I use sprouts like I did a little post probably last year where I made like my popcorn equivalent where I took sprouted garbanzo beans And I added some nutritional yeast and then let them just dry out, and it was just like a great little snack. I use sprouts to make hummuses and dips, so you could use lentils, you could use peas, you could use garbanzo beans. They blend really well, and they make beautiful little dips. And so, you know, you can go really gourmet with it, but I think the easiest thing for one to do is salads. Like, it's a no-brain way to start is to make a salad. And in my house, we don't buy vegetables, we grow our own vegetables vis-à-vis sprouts.

For somebody who's listening who's like, okay, sprouts sound awesome, this seems great. How, what's the, like the easiest, what's the simplest way somebody could get started today? Like they, they, you know, put down their phone, they're listening to this, they put down their phone and they can go out. What is the first thing that they can do to just start down this journey of sprouting?

Yeah, I, I think great, great question. I think you get a mason jar, you get a special lid that costs a couple dollars or some cheesecloth and a rubber band, and then you just go online and buy some organic sprouting seeds. Hundreds of varieties available, tons of sources. And, you know, and then I would say you, you'd get a real competitive advantage by buying my book, The Sprout Book. But also I put out so much free content that you don't need that. I do have, and I'll put this out there, I have a sprouting masterclass coming up in April that's coming out at One Commune. So it's a 5-part series. And I go deep on sprouts. Like you, you people will know. I, I wish I could have taken my class, you know, when I started the journey.

Doug, I've been, as I mentioned, I've been consuming broccoli sprouts now for about a month. I've got 2 different jars set up. They're on a cycle, so I, I'm always consuming fresh sprouts. What else should I be adding? I've only got broccoli sprouts right now. What are your next couple of recommendations? Only a few because I don't want my fiancée to think I've built out our entire kitchen into A sprout farm.

But I, I think lentils are really easy, really crunchy. And, you know, they go through a metamorphosis every, every day. And you could start consuming them after 24 or 36 hours. And, you know, I, I put this in the book. When you sprout lentils, you double the antioxidant levels, you triple the vitamin C, and you quadruple The antioxidants.

Hmm.

So, and the fibers. So all of these, all of these things are just happening. And I would say that the data doesn't add up. Like if you were to take a lentil and crush it and do a nutritional survey of what's in there, and then you take water, which you know is H2O, you know, 1+ 1 is not gonna equal what you're gonna get like 5 days later with sprouted lentils. All these other things are going to be blossoming inside. So, it's really, you know, what's exciting to me is every day I'm learning more about sprouting, like more nuance, more insight, more how different cultures are incorporating them. It's just really powerful to see. But I would start, you have broccoli sprouts, I'd add some lentils. To it. And Mike Posner was doing broccoli sprouts like every day for the last like 15 months. And he, you know, he just finished reading my book and I said to him like, well, what did— what, what's your biggest takeaway? He goes, there's so many more things to sprout.

And so— Yeah, I saw that video.

Sprouts.

Yeah.

So he's like amping his sprout game with more variety. Now as well.

I love that. And I think, I think you talk quite a bit about alfalfa as well. That's part of your, your continuous sprouting.

Yeah.

I mean, if you think about alfalfa hay is what they're feeding horses, which is dry and roughage and the proteins, the amino acids, the chlorophyll. But when you're eating it in the sprout stage, it's like stem cells. You have very tender, bioavailable Soluble, insoluble fiber. It's just a pleasure to eat a sprout.

What are, what are some of your favorite sprouts? If you could only, like, if you could only pick one, what, which one would be your favorite?

I mean, right now I would do the broccoli sprouts cuz I think broccoli sprouts open up the NRF2 pathways. They're the longevity sprout. So I'm, I'm, I would stick with broccoli sprouts. But since I don't have to just choose one, you know, I've got like a variety of sprouts growing at all times for different reasons, different purposes, et cetera. And like, we had a big sprout dinner. I posted this a couple weeks ago where Mike and I went over to someone's house for dinner, like, and we like brought sprouts, grew sprouts, and we fed like 13 people sprouts. And like the goal was to give them so many sprouts, there'd be no room for the burgers. And like, I think we accomplished like at least 70, 80% of the people were full, you know, on our sprout salads and, and just were over the moon enthusiastic and excited. And the next week when we weren't there, they had their own sprout salad dinner as well.

That's amazing.

That's—

oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

No, you go, Nick.

Well, I was going to say Mike, Mike Posner getting into sprouts, becoming friends with you, creating some fun content is amazing to see. Who are some of the other celebrities that are growing sprouts that you can reference?

You know, it's interesting. I have to— Mike is out of the closet on it. I, you know, I am not at liberty to, you know, to share people's personal part, but I will, I will tell you that it all walks at all levels of, you know, A-listers, B-listers, you know, the, the amount of people that— and I will say a lot of the A-listers are not necessarily growing them themselves, but they're incorporating them into it, you know. And I spoke with Tony Robbins and, you know, Tony was like, we eat broccoli sprouts all the time. We grow them. And I connected Tony for his book Life Force with Dr. Jed Fahey, and they published some of the research and the citations in the book. So you know there's people like that that are eating eating it, and a lot of the people that you know that you've interviewed that you know are in our common overlap that are in my. Vortex and Field are sprouting and eating sprouts on a on a regular daily basis. But I would tell you by the end of this year, you're going to see people just coming out. It's going to be the like not a status symbol, but people are just going to be more comfortable as more recipes come out, as more recipes, as more uses, as more ubiquity, as restaurants start to put on their menu, as If you look on my page, like so many chefs are sharing what they're creating. You know, it's a great baker up in Whistler, British Columbia, you know, who's now doing sprouted breads and he's just doing copious amounts like 5 pounds, 10 pounds, you know, of sprouting seeds at a time. And he's selling out, you know, his fresh sprouted breads. Which is Ed's Bread. You know, I'll give him a little shout out there. He's doing incredible.

Yeah, Doug, that's amazing. We've had Peter Diamandis, who was Tony's co-author of Life Force, on our show to talk a little bit about that book. And we did look in the back and, and saw the broccoli sprout citation and everything, and, and there's a little reference in the book for it. So that's amazing. I know we're getting to the end of our time, so Luke, I wanna kick it back to you for a couple more questions and then we can wrap up with Doug.

Yeah, well, I have a lot more questions, but we're not going to get to them all today, and that's okay. The big one I wanted to ask was about vitamins and Athletic Greens and things like that. For people who are listening who are like, well, I don't want to get into the sprouts because I take vitamins every single day and I'm drinking Athletic Greens, so I don't need to. What's your take on that? How do you feel about vitamins and supplements? What are your thoughts around that?

I mean, if I were to take a supplement, Like, I think a product like Athletic Greens or Athletic Greens is really clean, right? Well-researched, well-documented, and just a great product. Like, AG1 is a great product. I've been gifted it. I love the product. If I were to look at the thing that's missing in the product is the water molecules. So what I love is the water molecules in a fresh state. Like, I love fresh. So to me, if you buy produce in the supermarket, it could be a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks old. If you're growing sprouts, you are getting a fresh harvest every time. You're getting the peak of freshness at that level. So I love that. If you think about the first thing that happens when you cook food or dehydrate it or freeze dry it is you lose the water molecules from it. And, and I want to be fueled. I drink very— I live in the desert and I drink very little water because I'm consuming sprouts that are predominantly 50% or so water weight. So I'm consuming and I'm getting my water, which is extremely structured water because of how it's been consumed into the cytoplasm of the plants. So I think that, you know, in the spectrum of vitamin options, synthetic vitamins, right, processed things like Protein powders and athletic greens and other green powders and fresh. I would say, and you can survey this on your own, medical doctors, nutritionists would recommend to get your nutrition from food. And hey, that was download number 1. Sprouts are food. So You know, that's, that's what my recommendation would be. And great question.

I was kind of scared, uh, when Luke asked that because I've been having Athletic Greens for a while. So I, I typically, I do intermittent fasting. I typically break my fast with Athletic Greens and then I'll consume a sprout salad like a half an hour after. But I'm happy that you gave it your stamp of approval. Might not be recommendation number one, but it's better than not consuming that kind of stuff. And then the sprout salad, probably rounds things off in a better way than not consuming it.

Yeah, look, I, I think they've got great transparency, you know, in the product, um, and they've made it, you know, cool. They— I mean, green powder's been around forever, and, you know, Athletic Greens has been around for a long time, and I'm now seeing, you know, glad that they are displacing some of the other junk that was synthetic or additives or fillers You know, with a, a transparent supply chain.

Doug, do you have, do you have an age that you'd like to live to?

I mean, right now I'm thinking I'm living forever.

I love it. I kind of feel the same way. I, I tell people that all the time, especially with like David Sinclair and everything they're doing on anti-aging. I feel like sprouts, that's a big part of it. Do you fast? I'm curious, do you do intermittent fasting?

Yeah, I, I do intermittent fasting. I do extensive water fasting. And, you know, I'm very active. I just, I've been doing ice baths, you know, in 37, 38 degrees. I just got my Edge Theory portable cold plunge, same one that Mike has. And it's just, you know, it's just fun, you know, to do it. And, you know, Yeah. Doing that. And I think like the hormesis, I live at a hot spring. And, you know, here's something else I just wanna share with people also. You don't need a sauna to reap the benefits, you know, of hot therapy. Like, if you live in, in the industrialized world and you can take a bath and you could get a steamy bath where it's uncomfortable level, like you bring the bath up 105 to higher and you keep draining the water from the bottom. flowing the water in hot and you spend 45 minutes to an hour in the bathtub, you're getting the benefit of like the sauna, of the heat therapy. So that's like the— I, I actually take outdoor baths in natural geothermal mineral springs. So I've sacrificed a lot of things in order to be able to have that. And so I do that for my hormesis. I do the cold plunge for the hormesis, and I do eating a lot of the sprouts with those antinutrients and plant defense mechanism triggering my hormesis, which is, you know, opening up my longevity pathways.

I, I love that. We do cold plunges, we do saunas. I'm in Iceland in a couple of weeks doing the geothermal baths and everything like that, so I can't wait to get back in those. I don't live next to a hot spring like you do, so that's Maybe I'll have to relocate. Luke, any last questions? I know you and I, Luke and I each had, Doug, we each had like 40 questions and we only got to a couple of them. So maybe we'll, maybe a little bit later this year we'll do another podcast. But Luke, any final questions for Doug?

No, you know, it was just great talking to you. I love your enthusiasm. You really encouraged me. Like I've, I was already super excited to get into sprouts and now I'm like level 10, even more excited and I'm excited to get other people into it as well. Also, you know, we didn't talk about— we didn't talk about your— you own businesses, you've done a lot of crazy things. And I feel like, like Nick said, maybe we can get you back on and ask you more of those little nitty-gritty questions about the rest of your life. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your knowledge with us. You're so smart, and it's been just a joy to learn from you.

Oh, you guys are really kind, and I appreciate you reaching out. I feel, you know, like in the beginning, I couldn't get anyone to talk to me. And now people are like calling me up and inviting me, and I, I love it and I appreciate it. And, you know, find me on Instagram @DougEvans. You can find me on TikTok, which I'm new to TikTok, but I've had 25 videos go viral, you know, with over a million views at this, just Sprout Wiz, W-I-Z. And you could sign up for my newsletter at www.thesproutbook.com. So stay in touch.

Amazing. I'll definitely be signing up for the newsletter and we'll be posting some content from this interview on socials if, if everybody wants to go check it out. Okay. All right, Doug, thank you.

Hey, thank you guys. You're doing great work. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you.