Sprouts Of Hope: Growing A New Path To Health With Doug Evans

February 18, 2025 Adiel Gorel

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Sprouts Of Hope: Growing A New Path To Health With Doug Evans

It’s a joy to be here with you. I am very excited. We have Doug Evans who is going to teach us a lot about sprouts and the health benefits. This falls right in line with what we love to talk about and learn. To me, it’s always exciting to learn. Doug, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Adiel. It’s a privilege.

The Journey To Discovering Sprouts: A Conversation On Healthy Living

I’m a proud fast reader of your book. I only had time to glance over it, but I did. I went through it. I’m fascinated. I have some questions. I also understand that your own route to being here is quite interesting. Can you start there? Can you share with us how you got here?

I grew up in a lower-middle-income family in New York City. My father, may he rest in peace, was an untreated combat World War II veteran. He was the sweetest guy in the world until he flipped and blew a gasket. I felt safer being in the street than I did at home. I did nothing but get into trouble as soon as I went to high school until I was seventeen. When I was seventeen, I joined the US Army and the 82nd Airborne because I wanted to get away from my family and my friends who were degenerates and criminals.

I know you’ve been to the Military. The Army taught me discipline and self-confidence. When I got out of the Military, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I wanted to become successful. I wanted freedom. I started to work 1 job, 2 jobs, and 3 jobs. By the time I was 30 years old, I made my first $1 million. I was successful by many measurements but I was a workaholic. I wasn’t following any particular passion that was truly aligned with my soul. I was doing what I was doing. Along the way, I met great people. I met Steve Jobs and Paul Rand. I did important work but it wasn’t my life’s work.

In 1999, my aunt developed type-2 diabetes. They had to perform a double amputation of her feet. That, to me, was shocking. I couldn’t imagine what it was like not to have the faculty to walk. As I was moving my toes and as we were sitting in the hospital, I was looking at her with pity because she was the age that I am now. She was in her late 50s.

Soon after she died, my mother died of stomach cancer and my father died of heart disease. My brother who’s only two years older than me, was overweight to the point that he became obese developed type-2 diabetes and then had the 1st of 3 strokes and 2 heart attacks. At that point, I was 33 years old and I think I’ve arrived. I have a nice apartment. Everything is great, but then I realized that I was going to die. It was maybe not that day or not the next day, but it was my first look into mortality. I knew that I was going to die.

I thought I was genetically cursed, which was a whole other consideration. I was like, “I was doing all the right things. Why did this happen to me?” I felt a little bit like a victim having lost my mother, my father, my aunts, and my uncles, that I was alone. My older brother was not in a position to help me. My older brother is 60 years old. He’s in a skilled nursing facility and we don’t know how long he’s going to live. He’s practically in hospice. Although, I won’t tell that to my wife and my daughter.

At 33, I was ready to make some changes. A woman whispered in my ear that it wasn’t the genes. It was my lifestyle and that I was living a carcinogenic, diabetic, and heart disease-laden lifestyle. If I changed my life, what I ate, and what I did, then I could change my destiny. It was so far-fetched. I never made the connection. My only connection to food was whether it was cheap or expensive and whether it tasted good or I did not like the way it tasted. I never put the connection in what we learned growing up, which is, “You are what you eat.” I never made that connection until then.

In a two-week period, I went from eating anything, fast food, processed food, meat, dairy, chicken, fish, pizza, and pasta to going vegetarian, vegan, and raw vegan. That was a two-week journey. That was my come to cucumber moment. In April of 1999, I started to eat fresh, ripe, raw, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, seaweed, and sprouts.

If it wasn’t one of those things, then I wouldn’t eat it. You had mentioned going to an Indian restaurant If I couldn’t go into the kitchen, take a plate, and add on a tomato, lettuce, or things, I wouldn’t eat anything because, to me, it was life or death. I’ll ask you. When you make a real estate investment, do you have someone inspect the property before you buy it? Do you have someone review the financials on it? Do you make a title check and a preliminary title report before you close?

Your standards for real estate are extremely high because the consequences are, you could be buying swamp land in Florida. You could buy something that looks good and send money to someone who doesn’t even own it. You look very good for a 70-year-old, so I am not judging you at all. For me, I believe that everything I put in my mouth will allow me to have one more breath. The level of scrutiny, diligence, and meticulous standards that I have would seem like a mashugana. I would be off the charts on a deal. Every aspect of the deal, if I’m involved, is over the top. As Andy Grove said, only the paranoids survive.

He’s not with us anymore but he did say that.

That’s how I got started. I can get to the level of how I came to sprouts if you’d like.

I would very much like that.

For many years, I ate that way and I always had money. I was always in a major city. I always had access to fruits and vegetables. Sometimes, they were more expensive than not. Sometimes, they were organic or not. I’ve traveled around the world but I kept eating the standards of raw, fruits and vegetables. I had a business in Silicon Valley that was part of a corporate takedown ridiculousness by the media before they had the term fake news.

After that, I was done with playing this New York, LA, and San Francisco triangle. I was done because I didn’t trust people anymore. People I thought loved me left me and all sorts of things. You go through it. It was the best thing that happened to me that my business went from a $500 million valuation to $0 because it was a test. It’s a part of the hero’s journey.

For me, my next step was to retreat back to the desert. I always loved the desert. There was something magical about the peace and the dark sky and being able to see the sunrises and sunsets. I went on a quest to find an oasis in the desert with the caveat that it had to have hot springs because, with hot springs, I am able to relax.

That warm water engulfs me and makes me feel like I’m in the womb and I can relax and slow down. Otherwise, I’m full throttle from the time I leap out of my bed. If I’m in the hot spring, I could relax. I found hot springs near Joshua Tree, hired geologists, well drillers, realtors, consultants, and water witchers. I did everything. I did diligence after diligence then made the purchase and moved here.

When you say here, do you mean near Joshua Tree?

I moved to Wonder Valley Hot Springs. That’s where I am. We have a bunch of land and houses but I lived here. I lived in a tent on the property for three years. I took my Burning Man yurt, set it up here, and lived there. Everything was great except the three days into living in the tent when I ran out of food. I stocked up before I came here. I went on my phone and realized not only was I in an environmental desert, but I was in a food desert. There were no Whole Foods, Erewhon, rainbow market, farmers’ markets, vegan restaurants, Indian restaurants, and Chinese restaurants. There was nothing here. There was one bar that looked like Star Wars, which is crazy.

Sprouts are vegetables. They are vitamins and minerals, and they are medicine. Share on X

That night, in my deepest meditation and staring up at the Milky Way in the galaxy. I said, “Did I make a mistake? Maybe I should sell the property or come here to get away. Maybe I need to go back.” It was another test for me. The universe told me, “Doug, you know how to sprout.” I’m talking to the universe. I said, “I know how to sprout, so what? Sprouts are a great superfood. They’re a great side dish. They’re a great garnish.” The universe said, “Doug, sprouts are vegetables. You can live on sprouts.”

I got this download that kept coming. 1) Sprouts were vegetables, 2) Sprouts were vitamins and minerals, and 3) Sprouts were medicine. I knew I could grow them without soil, fertilizer, and pesticide, and they grew in days. That’s what I got about sprouts. What I didn’t know about sprouts was that they were 20 to 100 times more nutrient-dense than mature vegetables. I didn’t know that.

I didn’t know that sprouts were medicine and there were peer-reviewed published papers on the ability of sprouts to kill cancer cells and prevent cancer. They had the ability to detoxify benzene and air pollutants from the lungs. They had the ability to create heat shock proteins and lessen the symptoms of autism. They could regulate insulin levels in diabetics and can produce GLP-1 peptides similar to that of Ozempic without the nasty side effects.

I’m very proud that I wrote my book before ChatGPT and AI came out because I had to do a lot of work on my own. I had the vision that I was going to write The Sprout Book. I called up Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Joel Kahn, Dr. Josh Axe, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman to write the foreword to the book. I’m speaking to all of these medical professionals and they all loved sprouts, whether they were keto, functional medicine, or plant-based.

I said to Dr. Dean Ornish, “Can I interview you for the book? I want to write a book.” They were all so generous with their time and their support. I went to New York. I pitched the Sprout Book to one publisher. I brought all these sprouts because I didn’t think she would know what they were. I hired Oprah’s recipe developer to make some recipes for me. The editor was eating the sprouts out of my hand and I started to write the Sprout Book. The Sprout Book, not to my surprise because I have the ability to manifest and make things happen, but to her surprise the book exceeded their projections by tenfold. The book broke into the top 70 bestselling books on Amazon.

It hit the number one vegan book and number one vegetarian book on Amazon and became a national best-seller. I decided that I knew what my life’s work was. Sprouting was the key to not only longevity and increasing quality of life but also representing food equality and food justice. It takes 1,500 gallons of water to grow 1 pound of beef and probably 2,500 gallons of water to make grass-fed beef because it’s not as efficient in utilization. You can grow a pound of sprouts with one gallon of water.

The fact that it was expensive to eat organic vegetables. There are 550 whole foods in the United States and there are 300-plus million people. Most people don’t have access. Forget about our whole foods. They don’t have a supermarket. They don’t have a farmers’ market. They are out there with no access to anything other than gas station food or processed food from a 7-Eleven. Sprouting becomes accessible for these people.

Changing Perspectives On Sprouts: From Garnish To Main Ingredient

That is a fascinating story. We are going to go deeper because not only I, but I would like our audience to learn. You were in a position yourself at the beginning saying in your conversations with the powers that be, “Sprouts are nothing but a garnish.” That’s how most people would look at them. This is a bit of a shift in thinking.

I get the fact that 1 gallon of water for 1 pound of sprouts is a mind-blowing ratio and how accessible and cheap it is. You can use it all over the world. Many people are talking about famine in certain parts of Asia and Africa. That’s a very big thing that you’re saying here But I would like us to take the little steps that you took at the beginning, transforming in your mind that sprouts are not just a garnish. In fact, they are the main thing.

What happened was I got six jars. Within 1 cubic foot in these six jars, I was growing thousands of calories a day. I went from my familiar sprouts, which were alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts to radish, clover, broccoli, chia, all sorts of lentils, and all sorts of peas. Believe it or not, I was able to consume 3,000 calories a day of organic vegetables that are growing peanuts. Under $5 a day, I was getting all this food.

Let’s step back even more. At the very beginning, the day of creation, you said something that many of us don’t have. You said, “I know how to sprout.” We don’t. You started at one. Please take us back to zero.

Most people in America who went to elementary school took some seed or some legume. They added water, put it in a paper towel, and watched it germinate. It was part of the curriculum. For me, being plant-based and eating these sprouts, I was always curious because all of the hippie restaurants would have sprouts on the wraps or on the parts and I liked them. It was fascinating to me.

I remember one of my stores in New York City ran out of the sprouts. They didn’t have it. I was like, “How do you do this?” I asked the guy in the farmers’ market and he was like, “It’s very easy. You take the seed. You soak it in water for 5 to 8 hours or overnight, then strain off the extra water. You can put it in a jar with cheesecloth and rinse it twice a day.”

The seed itself is a complete living organism in a dormant state. By adding the water for this fixed amount of time, you are reducing the enzyme inhibitors, the phytic acid, and the lectins. You are triggering a metabolic metamorphosis of that seed to start to grow. Once you do the soaking process, it needs water twice a day. It is naturally trained to sequester carbon and oxygen from the ambient environment. The seed will multiply its size every single day. One quarter cup of seeds will grow a complete jar of sprouts in five days.”

I had done that but it was only as a novelty. What happens is humans on this planet were born in scarcity. We’re born in scarcity, so our brains are trained to eat fatty foods because we never know where our next meal is coming from. Our brains are trained to procreate, spread our seed, and multiply ourselves as part of the expanding universe. Also, when you feel safe, rest. This is like human nature. Sleep, eat, and have sex is human nature.

If the food is easy to obtain from Instacart, restaurants, or Uber Eats, then we live on the phone. We live on the menu. We can go to someone’s house and they prepare the meal. We don’t have to think about survival. We only have to think about, “How am I going to get pleasure from what I’m going to eat? How am I going to get the seasoning and flavoring from this Indian restaurant or Chinese restaurant, or from Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald’s?” Humans are eating for pleasure when they don’t have to worry about survival. If someone’s surviving like Lord of the Rings, they’ll eat each other. They’ll survive by becoming cannibals. If it’s easy, they will eat that.

The food companies, which were the tobacco companies, understand the simple reptilian brain that if you make food sweet, salty, or fatty, people will eat and overeat when they’re not hungry. They will get sick and fat and go down this terrible, tumultuous path like my family. For me, I was able to see the consequences firsthand of what could happen if I ate that way.

You cannot overeat sprouts. If you're eating fresh, raw sprouts, it's impossible to overeat. Share on X

It was the sacrifice of their lives to wake me up because, before that, I was a compulsive overeater. What I can tell you, Adiel, is that you cannot overeat sprouts. If you are eating fresh, raw sprouts, it is impossible to overeat. You’ll get signals in the brain that say, “I am nourished.” If you take the sprouts, broccoli, beans, chicken, or fish and flavor them, center them, and add the oil, salt, and butter. You will eat when you’re not hungry.

What about a tub of ice cream? You see that somebody is sad. Maybe there was a breakup and out comes the tub of ice cream. It never ends. That’s even worse.

I have a two-year-old daughter. I see how addicted my two-year-old daughter is to my wife’s breast. It’s not because the breast is sexy, etc. It’s because, inside the breast, my wife is producing milk that has hormones, drugs, and casein, which releases dopamine in the brain, so the baby is getting high from drinking the milk.

When you take milk, which was designed for a baby and you give it to an adult. They’re going to love it because it’s a drug. When you take milk, condense it, turn it into cheese, and get the combination of the fat and the casein, it’s why they say cheese is the hardest thing to give up because it’s the most addictive. If you add salt to it, forget about it.

There are all these crazy things going on in diet and nutrition that it’s easy because humans are so simple and the advancements in technology have rapidly exceeded the evolutionary part. There’s that expression of taking candy away from a baby. This is like giving fat, sugar, and salt to an adult. It’s the easiest thing.

The Global Impact Of Sprouts: A Personal And World-Level Transformation

What you’re talking about is very consequential. It could make a difference not only on an individual level. I look at you as an example. You’re extremely energetic. You’re not lethargic or tired. You could say, “No, that’s my nature. Even if I ate badly at this stage of life, I still would be all wound up because it’s my nature,” but I doubt it. It’s not only on a personal level, which we will explore a little more later. As you said, it’s on a world level because it’s cheap and accessible.

One of the things about the gas station food, it has a lot to do with the short attention span that we have. People have an attention span of seconds. When you are filling out gas, there are a few minutes there that you could kill and you say, “Maybe I’ll get a bar. Maybe I’ll get a coke.” Some of it is laziness. You said DoorDash and Uber Eats. It’s laziness.

It’s important that people will realize that sprouts can be made. There are all these things about them not being safe. Where did they grow? Where did you get those seeds? Do they have led? There’s all of that stuff, but also just to learn how to do it. What would you think would be the first simple step for a reader of this show to do that will take a very short time?

I was in the position after I wrote the book that I was into sprouts, and then I realized in the course of researching the book. I bought every piece of sprouting equipment on the market from everyone. I did everything. All of them were designed for something else. The window screen was designed for the window. Cheesecloth was designed for making cheese. The mason jar was designed for canning. No one had invested any money into designing a sprouting setup with first principles. I decided that I would have to do that because I wanted the product for myself and for my family.

While I was envisioning this and drawing, I had means. I brought together industrial designers, mechanical engineers, and food scientists. I partnered with the University of California in Santa Cruz to understand biology. I partnered with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University to study sprout safety. We studied foodborne illness over a quarter century, where we looked at illnesses, outbreaks, hospitalizations, and deaths. Not only from sprouts, but meat, chicken, fish, dairy, and regular produce. I published a peer-reviewed paper on this, which came to the conclusion that sprouts were as safe, if not safer, than all those other items.

Can I have that? Can you email that to me?

I will email it to you but it’s very easy to find if you just Doug Evan and Jed Fahey, Sprout Safety. It’s very prominent. It has been cited over twenty times in other published papers. We said that if you take a seed and surface, sanitize the seed using a rapid oxidizer, whether it’s white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, or sodium hypochlorite. You can reduce the microbial load on the seed by 2 million to 1. If you’re using equipment that has been washed with soap and water and you wash your hands. You put the seeds in there and care for it. There have been no recorded instances of foodborne illness associated with home sprouting. To me, sprouts are very safe.

When I started the Sprouting Company, I went and had a very high standard like your real estate deals. I said I want to get organic seeds. I want to get seeds that they surfaced and tested for pathogens so that the seeds are tested before they’re sold into batches to see if there are any traces of E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella, or any foodborne pathogens on the seeds. I also want to test them to make sure that they have a high germination rate. An old seed won’t germinate very well.

No germs but a lot of germination.

It takes germs to germinate.

No bad germs.

While I was reading about all the lawsuits against Monsanto and Roundup, I decided to add another level of testing to make sure that the seeds had no traces of glyphosate residue on them. That was the thing for me that I wanted to design a kit that was easy to use, sterilize, and sanitize and that was larger. Anything that touched the sprouts was glass and stainless steel.

I went through a very meticulous process. I put together a little band and we launched the Sprouting Company. The website is TheSproutingCompany.com. Easy to remember. People can buy a kit. We created a free app. Whether you buy the kit or not, or seeds or not from the Sprouting Company, you can get a free app that will guide you through the sprouting process.

You can go to OneCommune.com/Doug and take a free five-day sprouting masterclass. Learn all about sprouting and its nuances, how to make recipes, and what to do. Amazon is continuing to sell my book. You could probably buy my book on Amazon or on The Sprouting Company’s site.

I bought it about an hour before we started. I glanced very quickly but I’m a quick reader, too. I enjoyed it. I’m going to go back to it.

There are many places to start. On social media, I’ve had over 100 million views of my content.

Let me consolidate it. Here is a reader of our show. Where do they go to get the information? Going back to the laziness that we all share, for the kit, where do you go?

TheSproutingCompany.com. It has my book, the kit, and a free app. It has free videos to watch on how to sprout.

Sprouts For Beginners: Adding Them To Your Diet

We now know that they are fast and easy, good for the environment. You talked about a great example of grass-fed beef needing 2,500 gallons of water and 1,500 gallons for 1 pound. You also talked about the ease of doing it at home at a very low cost. Now, let’s talk about the quality and nutrition. You mentioned at least one type of sprout. I believe it was broccoli, if I’m not mistaken. Many of them have a substance. I don’t remember the name. It starts with tri.

Broccoli sprouts are in the cruciferous family of vegetables, so they are isothiocyanates. They contain a glucosinolate called glucoraphanin, which is the precursor to sulforaphane. Sulforaphane is a unique compound which has miraculous properties to them.

What you said in the very beginning, I want you to go back to that. We understand the ease. We understand the data. Let’s talk about nutrition. You are saying that out of all the foods that you know, sprouts may be the most nutritious.

It’s well-known that seeds and nuts are very nutritious. A sprouted seed is like the stem cell of the plant. If you think about the power of seeds and nuts like an oak tree produces acorns. A big oak tree can produce tens of thousands of acorns. It all begins with one. One seed can replicate itself infinitely over time. A seed itself contains within it the energy, the embryo, the food source, and the endosperm to grow from zero to a sprout in this one-week period without external soil, fertilizer, or minerals. It’s all contained within it.

When you are consuming the sprout, you are getting this concentration of nutrients. If you think about one alfalfa sprout, it will grow into a bale of alfalfa hay. One strand of the alfalfa hay will be bigger but will have more insoluble fiber. It will have more water but the concentration of phytonutrients in that seed is the most. What happens when you sprout a seed or a nut in three days, it becomes a vegetable. It’s the beginning where you’re getting all these nutrients. When you sprout a lentil on day three, you increase the vitamin C by 500%.

On that day?

By day three. It makes sense because no one’s eating a legume for Vitamin C. They’re eating it for protein and fiber. When you sprout it, you get all the benefits of the legume but you also get the benefits of it being a complete living organism with the root, shoot, endosperm, embryo, and testa. You get to eat it all. This is the miracle. This is God’s gift to us. We know this.

No matter how good something is, it's all impermanent. Share on X

Knowing this, for me, is my path to longevity and to health. It doesn’t matter to me how good something smells or how beautiful it is. I look at it and say, “Is this going to serve me? Is this going to serve the human transport vehicle of this soul?” I know that no matter how good something is, it’s all impermanent. How many people or male friends do you know that ruined their relationship and their family because they couldn’t resist the sexual impulse for a ten-second orgasm with their neighbor, friend, assistant, or someone online for a fleeting moment? If you think about it intellectually, is eating ice cream going to solve the problems of your breakup or getting fired from your job?

It became the classic where you sit on the sofa with a tub of ice cream.

What’s happening is people are self-medicating because they don’t understand. What I’m seeing and thank God I’m seeing it, is that when you can tell someone the truth then, all of a sudden, their eyes open and it’s harder for them to go back to the old ways.

There is an equivalent that you see in so many movies, especially ones that are a little bit old. Trouble came. There was a bad phone call and something happened. The next scene, the hero or heroine is pouring a stiff drink. You see it in so many movies and shows.

We didn’t talk about alcohol, but in my view, alcohol is a metabolic poison. There’s no room for alcohol or whatsoever. As they say in AA, “All the alcohol in the world will not solve your problems. One drop will mess you up.”

Addressing Common Questions About Protein, Fat, And Sprouts

That is so true. I don’t want to lower the level of the discussion to a point that will insult your intelligence, but I will go to a place that I’m sure is annoying to you and people will hit you with, “You eat mostly sprouts, but what about fat? Isn’t fat good for you? What about protein?” I know you hate those questions.

I don’t hate them. It’s very clear, by the way. Up until this moment, you still eat grass-fed cows, so it’s almost a rhetorical question. What is the cow eating?

Grass.

Where is the cow getting its protein?

It makes it from that grass.

Grass contains every amino acid to form complete proteins. My question for you as a maven or as a genius, where did you get that question?

It’s everywhere. When people hear vegetarian, let alone vegan or raw vegan. Question number one is a knee-jerk already. It’s like, “What about protein?”

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On September 23rd, 2024, I ate fruit and sprouts. Every single fruit and every single sprout contain everything that I need, period. End of story. There are a lot of unhealthy and healthy vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores. If you’re eating fresh fruits and vegetables, seeds, and not seaweeds, you’re fine. As a matter of fact, Dr. Colin Campbell, one of the most esteemed nutritional professors from Cornell University, recommends a macronutrient breakup of 80% carbohydrates, 10% fat, and 10% protein.

That’s the ratio of Dean Ornish as well.

It’s the idea of, “Where do you get these deficiencies? I always ask people, “Are you studying nutrition or are you getting brainwashed by the propaganda machine that wants you to do this?” I have to say, I am so wildly impressed with the efficacy and the genius of the tobacco companies. When they realized that their sales were going down, they thought they should get into the food business and transfer their food scientists and marketing people to understand how to get people as sick and as addicted to their food.

The second question that has been very popular is, “We need fat. What about fat?”

Seeds are 30% fat. Every seed has fat and protein in it. Also, certain seeds like chia and flax seeds not only have fat in them but have medium-chain Omega-3 fatty acids. If your body is not all messed up with digestive issues and other things, the body is very efficient in the conversion of ALA into EPA and DHA. If you want to be conservative, you can also eat wakame or nori seaweed, which have high amounts of EPA and DHA.

This is the same question. People are taking fish oil. All the studies that recommended fish oil have all been retracted as their positive benefit. Most fish oil that is sold is rancid, which is why it smells so nasty. Whether it’s in a jar, an oil, a supplement, or a pill. It tastes nasty. Where does the fish get its Omega-3s from?

From the kelp somewhere.

From the algae. I have no seed oils. I have no Omega-6 processed oils. My levels are perfect. My energy has not always been this ballistic. This is a result of diet, lifestyle, and inspiration. I have a WHOOP. I look at my sleep score. It’s not just one bad day. I have not had a good night’s sleep in God knows how long. You can look at my recovery. What number does it say?

Thirty-five.

I’m active. I have a two-year-old baby. We co-sleep. I run 5K or 10K every day. I do 100,000 pushups a year. I’m eating and I have the energy. According to WHOOP, by 5:00, I should be ready for a nap and I’m ready to go on to my next meeting.

How about your wife?

She’s working. She’s bringing up the baby and co-sleeps. The baby’s on the breast twenty times a day. She’s young, vibrant, and wants to have more kids.

Does she eat the same as you?

She eats about 75% of what I eat but she will have some cooked food. She’ll make dal or curry. She’ll have some cooked things because she needs even more calories. It’s harder to eat the amount of calories that she needs to produce.

You brought me to a place. When you talk about traditional Chinese medicine, they go by the season. There are seasons where they say, “Cooked is what you need. For this season, you need cooked.”

All I could tell you with an audience of one, that information might be dated. They don’t like raw food at all. I love aspects of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, but I also think that we now have more information. If you ate raw food many years ago, most likely, you would die because of the bacterial content, poor hygiene, and the transfer of fecal bacteria. We’re at a level where we understand good microbes and bad microbes. We understand that we are a human organism with 38 trillion microbiomes inside that are non-human, yeast, fungi, and parasites living inside our gut. It was very conservative. People were cooking their food because if they didn’t, they’d die.

The Convenience Of Sprouting: Can Someone Else Do It For You?

It does make sense. Let me take it to something we’ve already covered. The innate fast and lazy instinct, especially when people are on the phone all day. We only have seconds to this. What if somebody says, “Even sprouting is too much for me. Can I have somebody else do it for me?” For example, maybe somebody has sprouted the best stuff and they freeze-dried it into a powder. “I’m going to buy the powder.” Does that even make sense?

Freeze drying is eliminating the water molecules. I have not had a sip of water because I’m eating my water and using the space in my bladder and my stomach with nutritionally dense water and structured water from plants. If you want the medicinal properties of the broccoli sprouts, freeze-drying is a potential option but it comes with caveats. It also comes with having to do additional things.

By the straight freeze drying of broccoli sprouts, you will maintain the glucoraphanin but you will lose the enzyme myrosinase, which will become denatured in the process of freezing and drying. All of a sudden, you have to do different things to make that work. I can’t imagine getting enough calories from freeze-dried sprouts without the water content and the like. It would be very hard to be satiated.

When you talked about structured water, you opened up a whole door to the properties of water, which in Western medicine and Western science still to this day is looked upon as some frou-frou stupid stuff. The whole field of homeopathy is based upon the water retaining a certain structure. People have those devices.

There are many studies that if you run even tap water through something that simulates a stream, that jumps into a vortex. We talked about people who want to filter their water for a lot of the gunk that comes out of the faucet, but when you filter too much, you don’t have the minerals inside. It’s a back-and-forth. You’re talking about something that, in one fell swoop, takes care of everything.

If you think about it, for most municipalities in the United States, I’d say 99% of tap water has fluorine, fluoride, and chlorine in it. If you think about your gut microbiome, the chlorine effect has an antibiotic effect. It kills things. You can go down all the paths. You can get filtered water. You could be extracting water molecules from the atmosphere and turning them into water. You could do alkaline water or spring water. You could do all sorts of water.

I’m in the desert, so I need to make sure that I’m very well-hydrated. I eat a lot of fruit. I’m getting the water that’s filtered through the root, shoot, fruit, vegetables, and plants. Sprouts are largely water content along with soluble and insoluble fiber and phytonutrients. I’m not saying, don’t drink water. I’m saying that I do this.

If you add sprouts to whatever you're eating, it will be better for you in the long run. Share on X

I went to dinner on someone’s farm. There were twenty people at the dinner party. Everybody was eating steak except for me. You could see steak and then my big sprout salad. I did not tell anybody else what to eat or what not to eat. I didn’t judge them. They love having me as a guest. They all ask questions but it’s not my job to judge people. My message is whatever you are eating, if you add sprouts to what you’re eating, it will be better for you in the long run. You can know that you can add a few sprouts all the way to being a sproutarian and being that whole way. Everybody’s on their own journey.

Certain people like yourself who is curious, smart, and independent may go deeper. I feel like I’ve been very heard in this one-on-one conversation. I feel like I got through because I do this all the time. This is my thing. You’re not trying to justify. You are deeply listening. You can question anything. The stuff that I’m saying is so obvious but no one’s hearing it.

We’re at Super Bowl 50X or whatever. There’s never been a sprout commercial on a Super Bowl. I had dinner with the Founder of Whole Foods, John Mackey. John is very clear that sprouts are a crappy business. They have a short shelf life, low margins, a high return rate, and shipping in plastic. They require a refrigerated truck to go around. There are no national and international sprouting companies. The way that the sprouting revolution is going to happen is through people who are self-seeking out the information.

I do this all the time. I went to an ultra-marathon in Georgia. I went to the West Hollywood farmers’ market. Between those two events, I gave out over 1,000 servings of sprouts. People liked eating the sprouts. A few hundred people were like, “This is good. I could do this. I’m curious about this.” For other people, in one ear and out the other. They don’t care. They’re going back to their part. I’m measuring my success based on my daily activity.

Let’s go back to the name of the book.

The Sprout Book.

The name of the website.

The Sprouting Company.

The Practicality Of Sprouts: Cost-Effective And Nutritious

I want to thank you. This has been a fascinating interview for me. It’s very practical. It’s inexpensive. It may be the healthiest thing we can do. That is the holy grail. It’s quite interesting.

That’s what I feel. That’s why I’m so excited. It almost feels like you dropped your wallet and I picked it up. It has your phone number in it and I’m calling you but you’re blocking the calls. You’re not taking the calls and I have to find different ways to get the information out. This is not going to happen by a Super Bowl commercial. Creating this health revolution is going to take conversations like this, shows, and others, and then people adopting it.

What I can tell you is the little sprouting company, in its first six months, did more sales than sprouting companies that have been around for 40 years. I feel like we’re getting through to people and we’re getting moments. There’s a lot more to figure out. I’m spending my time sharing the message. You could go onto my Instagram. You’ll see Jesse Itzler and Sarah Blakely at Runningman. I went into the sauna and I’m handed out sprout samples in the sauna. There weren’t enough people standing outside of the sauna so I went into the sauna to give out the samples. The race is a one-mile track. I was like an obstacle on the track handing out sprouts to people as they were running by.

You have a message. You’ve experimented with it and studied it. You’ve seen the effectiveness. The way you spoke to me and it went through my filter, I could not find any flaw. I’ve been around that stuff for many decades. You are fired up with a message and you want to bring it out. I get it.

That’s what I’m doing. It gives me something to be very excited about other than my wife and my baby.

Doug, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. This was fascinating. I hope to see you again soon.

My pleasure, Adiel. Thank you for having me.

Important Links

Doug Evans is offering subscribers of The Adiel Gorel Show 25% off their first order. Simply go to sproutman.com and use this code when checking out: AdielGorelShow25

About Doug Evans

Plant-based dietitian, author, health enthusiast, writer, and social media star, Doug Evans is a serial health food entrepreneur who began sprouting over 25 years ago and has been advocating for and educating on the benefits of sprouts and sprouting across all platforms including Good Day New York, dozens of podcasts, and his popular social presence on Instagram. Doug was an early pioneer in the natural food industry. In 2002 he co-founded Organic Avenue, one of the first exclusively organic plant-based retail chains in the United States. He then created and founded Juicero, the first fresh, farm to glass automatic cold-press juicing system, with the mission of bringing more fresh produce to the home. As reported in L.A. Style magazine, “Doug Evans’s revolutionary solution for the consumption of daily nutrients is one that disrupts the $35.7 billion dollar vitamin & supplement manufacturing industry.”

Doug Evans is offering subscribers of The Adiel Gorel Show 25% off their first order. Simply go to Sproutman.com and use this code when checking out: AdielGorelShow25