September 9, 2024 • 47 mins
Doug Evans, author and a pioneer in the sprouting movement, explains how adding sprouts to your diet can transform your health, boost energy, and support athletic performance.
Learn about the incredible benefits of sprouting, from enhancing nutrition to providing a sustainable, living food source that’s easy to incorporate into any lifestyle.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, it's Nathan Crane, founder of Plant Powered Athlete, and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Plant Powered Athlete Podcast.
(00:06):
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(00:31):
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Thanks again for tuning in, and let's dive into today's episode.
Mr. Doug Evans, welcome to the podcast. Happy to have you here, man.
(00:53):
Hey, my pleasure. Great to be here, Nathan.
So I've been diving into your Instagram lately and watching all your passion and wisdom around sprouts.
And I'll tell you what, I've got this thing that happens where, and I've been doing this for probably 15 years,
I'll get excited about sprouts. I'll get passionate about sprouts. So, you know,
(01:13):
I'll have a conversation like this or obviously a video or something. I'm like, I got to start
sprouting again. I'll do sprouts and I end up like overdoing it and then end up with too much.
And then end up with a lot of waste. And I might be on the sprout train for a few days, a few weeks,
a few months, and then it kind of falls away. I haven't been able to, you know, total transparency
(01:37):
and honestly, I haven't been able to bring sprouts into my daily life over the last however many years
since I've been plant-based. And I'd like to. I think they're important. I think they're...
So I'm looking forward to this conversation today because this might help solidify it for me,
my wife, my kids. I love sprouts. The benefits of them are so substantial. They're healthy.
(01:57):
They're easy to make, right? It's just I haven't figured out how to like bring it.
I guess I'm just not committed enough. I don't know. I mean, what do you think about that?
I mean, I think...
By the way, let me give a little context. So you're the sprout guy, right? For people who
don't know, I mean, you wrote the book on sprouts. You have a prolific following. You've got a
sprouting company. You know, there's been a big part of your life for many years. You've been raw
(02:22):
vegan for over 20 years, is that right?
Over 25 years.
Yeah. So like this is your life. This is your domain. So excited to hear. I'm sure you've run
across this many times.
Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing is sprouting never was a math adopted in the United States.
So there's, you know, I had dinner with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, and he said
(02:46):
that, you know, there's a hundred sprouting companies in the United States and they're all
like local and regional. So sprouts were never made ubiquitous in the United States because they
have a short shelf life and low margin, AKA, they're hard to commercialize. So sprouts are
relatively foreign outside of being a garnish, you know, to a soup or to a sandwich in a hippie
(03:12):
place. And we have so many, you know, I live in the Mojave Desert near at Wonder Valley Hot Springs,
which is an environmental desert, but it's also a food desert. I came from a food swamp, right? New
York is a food swamp, right? We have everything there. And when you have everything and you have
(03:37):
access to fresh fruits and vegetables and processed food, then you don't need sprouts initially as a
top of mind because you have so many other options to eat. So in order for you to establish
sprouting as part of your regiment, you really need to determine why. Like, why do you want to
(04:02):
do this? And it's similar to like, why do you brush your teeth? Right? You may brush your teeth
because you have a bad taste in your mouth, right? Why do you floss your teeth? You floss your teeth
because intellectually you are aware that if you don't floss your teeth, you can get periodontal
disease and other invisible items. Sometimes people would only floss if they had something stuck in
(04:26):
their teeth, right? So if you establish a routine for daily flossing, even though it's invisible,
there's no instant gratification. It's a step. You develop that habit. Now, in order for you
to put forth that effort, you have to understand like, why? Well, why would I sprout every day?
(04:47):
Why is it so important? So the main reason for someone who's already plant-based, who's already
jacked, who's already healthy, the reason why you sprout is because you want living foods in your
diet, right? So sprouting is upgrading anything that you are consuming because even if you're
(05:09):
eating like a piece of kale or a piece of broccoli or cauliflower or an apple, you're eating either
raw food or steamed food or cooked food, but that raw piece of cauliflower or broccoli or an apple
has been disconnected from its life support system. It's been cut away from the source of nutrients,
(05:36):
from the source of life. So as soon as it's harvested, it is dying and decaying. Now, it is
still better than something that is massively processed, but it's no longer alive. With sprouts,
uniquely, you are consuming the entire living plant organism, the root, the shoot, the endosperm,
(06:02):
the embryo. It is this living food that is also rich with polyphenols, bioflavonoids, phytonutrients,
amino acids, B vitamins. And if you think about like lentils, a staple of the plant-based diet
(06:25):
around the world, right? But they're not a vegetable, right? A lentil is a legume. When you sprout
the lentil, in three days, it goes through a metamorphosis and it becomes a vegetable.
And it actually increases the vitamin C levels by 500%. It triples the antioxidant levels,
(06:50):
and you're getting this living food. So like that's just starting, and I'm going to take a breath
and turn the mic back over to you. But the main reason why you want to sprout on a regular basis
is because you are increasing your phytonutrient living food content, and you're also increasing
(07:15):
your microbial microbiome diversity with this very friendly soluble, insoluble fiber for your gut.
Yeah, I mean, that's a great point right there, especially like I started as raw vegan, my wife
and I, and our daughter went after she was born for a year. And then same thing, we moved to the
(07:40):
Mojave Desert. In fact, we moved to Wikup, I don't know if you know Wikup in Arizona, but a little
tiny town in the middle of nowhere on the 600 acre ranch. And it was like a two, two and a half hour
drive round trip just to go get groceries at like a, where they had almost nothing organic and very,
very few choices. We were definitely in a true food desert as well. And then we started cooking
(08:05):
food. And so, you know, stopped raw, but have always, you know, eaten raw vegetables and raw
fruits and things like that. But do a lot of cooked food. And so just the idea of, yeah, it's an easy
way to get in a lot more raw living, you know, vegetables and foods into my diet every day. So
(08:26):
I'm not a big salad eater. I've just have never really like, I'll eat a salad, I'll enjoy it, but
I'm just not that into it. I'd rather just blend it and drink it, you know. So like that's how I get
most of my, or cook or cooking veggies. So I see your point in being able to get a lot of nutrition
that way and more living foods in the diet. We know the more living foods you get in the diet,
(08:50):
you know, the healthier you're going to be, the likelihood of living longer, you know, the less
inflammation, all of these wonderful things that happen when we add more living plant foods to our
diet. You also mentioned embryonic stem cells, you know, plant stem cells. A friend and colleague of
mine who's in my holistic leadership council, Jennifer Payer, has a company and they extract
(09:14):
tinctures made from, you know, the embryonic stem cells, the plant stem cells. They get them from
the young plants and have realized that by creating tinctures from the buds and the, you know, the
younger versions of the plants that actually they get a significantly more enhanced effect from that
(09:36):
if you're making tinctures or using, you know, any kind of tinctures as medicine, for example. So
in your case, you're just eating them and not making tinctures, which is great, you know.
Well, look, I think I'll just throw in, I think there's a role in a plant-based diet for juicing.
I think there's a role for blending and I think there's a real role for chewing.
(10:01):
Yeah.
Right. And like, it's important that when you're in this rat race, right, and you're in the grind
and you're doing multiple things, you have a podcast, you have a business, you have a family, you
tend to want to rush things so you can get onto the next thing. And food shouldn't be something
(10:23):
that's rushed. Like no one is chasing you, right? You don't have like this competition for your food
that if you don't eat it, you know, your wife and kids are going to grab your food and it's going to
disappear. So it's important to just take a little time for yourself to be present with the food
(10:46):
because digestion really begins with the eyes, right? You get the food, you stare at it, you start
to anticipate the digestive process, the salvatory fluid start to occur. Then when you chew it and it
hits your tongue, you start to process it a little bit more. And then if you actually go through this
(11:10):
almost meditative process to chew your food slowly, you enhance your digestion, your bioavailability,
the mastication. So you can chew your smoothies and I hear that, but it's just important to have
some solid, you know, whole food that you actually chew. And sprouts are that. And, you know, if you
(11:35):
think about, I don't care where you are, the freshest crop you can have is pulling some sprouts out of
the sprouting jar. And if in fact, you have extra sprouts, like I don't wait for day two or day three,
like if I have extra sprouts on day one, then I will throw them in the juicer, throw them in the
(11:57):
blender, make them into a smoothie so that I am commandeering them, you know, or I throw them in
and I make them into a dip, right? Throw them into a hummus or some other puree, pate, some blended
concoction because they're just there. So I want to make sure that you're consuming them because
(12:20):
in this world where there is an abundance of food, for some reason, not everyone is living in this
abundance consciousness. So there's also a substantial amount of food waste. So we want to
make sure that, you know, you are planning, you know, what you're going to eat and then you eat it.
(12:42):
You have a plan just, you know, whether you're working out or a business plan or a family plan
or a financial plan, you know, you have a nutrition plan and you bake it in, you know, to your plan.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great point. And to your point, slowing down, spending time, chewing our
food, being mindful with our food, right? I've done retreats over the years where, you know, we'll
(13:07):
sit in silence, you know, silent retreats, for example, Qigong retreats and, you know, mindful
eating where you'll take, you know, one bite and savor it and sit with it and just be with that.
And, you know, it might take you 30 or 40 minutes to eat your meal, but you're doing it in a
meditative state. And there's tremendous benefit to that, of course. But nowadays, it's like most
(13:28):
people, we just put on our phone, watch something and eat mindlessly, right? I stopped watching
stuff on my phone when I eat some time back. So generally, I don't do that anymore. I used to just
put on whatever it was, even a podcast or a show or something like that. And I've stopped doing that.
I might play a little chess, you know, or just put the phone aside. But I think the benefit of being
(13:55):
more mindful as we eat is clearly, especially when we're dealing with obesity, we're dealing with
chronic disease, we're dealing with overeating and over consumption, right? Number one, eating
healthier is going to really support that, but also paying attention to, you know, our satiety
signals, right? Paying attention. Absolutely. And that's really hard to do when you're just
(14:16):
gobbling down food and you're distracted and paying, you know, watching a show or whatever. So,
yeah, no, tremendous benefit to what you're talking about. And I wanted to ask you a couple
of things. So I want to get to athletes as well and sprouts for athletes. I mean, you're an athlete.
I see people on your channel, you have athletes there use sprouts a lot. Actually, let's talk
(14:38):
about that first. So talk about sprouts and benefits for people who are athletic. And when I say
athletes and we were in a plant powered athlete, just so you know the context, we look at everybody
and we want people, we encourage people to consider yourself an athlete. If you're active at all,
at any age, I don't care if you're 75, if you're 25, if you're working out seven days a week,
(15:01):
you're a college football player, or you're playing tennis a couple days a week, or you jog
a few days a week, or you walk around the block every day. If you're active at all, we want you
to consider yourself an athlete. And the reason being is, as I adopted more of an athlete mindset
over the years, I noticed how much more time and attention I put on my health, on things like
(15:24):
recovery, sleep, nutrition, taking better care of my body. It's like if you think of yourself as an
athlete, you generally take better care of yourself. You'll get massages, you'll do myofascial
release, you'll maybe even practice meditation. Maybe that's the thing that gets you into
meditation because you heard that it's going to help you be better at your sport or whatever.
(15:46):
Thinking of yourself as an athlete. So when I'm talking about athletes, I'm not only talking
about elite level athletes, I'm talking about everybody of all ages who is athletic at all.
And so with that context, and that broad range from the bodybuilder to the 75 year old person
walking on the golf course, and everybody in between, how are sprouts beneficial for athletes?
(16:12):
Well, we talked about like first, sprouts as a food source, right? So if someone is eating
plant-based, then sprouts are a higher quality plant that one can eat because it's a living food.
So when I moved to the desert, I realized that the food desert gave me limited options.
(16:37):
And then I discovered or rediscovered or became aware of sprouts as the highest quality
living food source. So there wasn't a compromise. There was actually an opportunity for me to raise
my standard of consumption. So the first kind of chunk for me was sprouts are vegetables,
(17:01):
vegetables are food. The second one for athletes, non-athletes, for everyone, sprouts are this
incredible bounty, this source of vitamins and minerals. So when I went down the sprout rabbit
hole and I saw that sprouts contain every amino acid to form complete proteins, varying degrees,
(17:26):
right? Not as concentrated as a protein powder, but they were not just select amino acids. They had
a complete nutritional amino acid profile. And if you added variety and you combine like alfalfa
sprouts and lentil sprouts, you had a more complete protein, similar to the way that some vegetarians
(17:47):
would eat rice and beans, that there's enough diversity in the sprout kingdom of sprouts that
you can get the diversity. They also contain this amazing profile of vitamin C, vitamin B, folates,
(18:08):
polyphenols, bioflavonoids. So it's a very rich item of what you can get from a nutritional
perspective. So to me, and there's research coming out that I'm working on that you can even get
vitamin B12 from sprouts because the microbiological bacterial process in this metamorphosis from seed
(18:36):
to vegetable is actually creating an environment conducive to forming vitamin B12.
Would that be true? Now you said you're doing research on that, but do you think that'll be
true even as you sprout on your countertop? Or I mean, we know that B12 generally is,
if you're going to find it out in nature, it's generally going to be in manure or something
(18:58):
like that, right? Yeah, no, this would be in a jar, sprouting in a jar, sprouting seeds at a
certain level. So you guys are doing a study testing that? We're testing it. We're going out
to third party labs. That'll be awesome. See what happens. Yeah. So an early indication is very
positive on this. It's just another level that there's never been a Super Bowl ad for sprouts,
(19:27):
so there's no TV commercials and billboards. So there's just never been money behind sprouts.
And we're putting real money behind sprouts and sprouting research. And there was research,
and I'm digressing consciously here for a moment, there was fear that sprouts were unsafe. And the
(19:48):
main reason why is because no one was defending the sprouts. Like every day in America, there's
food outbreaks, there's hospitalizations, there's illnesses with foodborne illness. Predominantly,
they're meat, chicken, fish, dairy based. But there's also associated with lettuces or spinach,
(20:11):
or romaine, and they're doing a recall. But all of those categories of food have big dollars behind
it. Like a bagged salad is a $5 billion market, right? So if there's something going on with a
bagged salad, they have a crisis response team, they've talked to the press, they've mitigated,
(20:37):
etc. There's no money behind sprouting. So when there was an instance of an animal centric
sandwich chain using sprouts, cross contaminating with meat, using non-organic
produce that's mixed with sewer sludge, and they're not using proper sanitation,
(21:04):
they're not wearing gloves, who knows what it is. That's what people remember. So we studied 25
years, Dr. Jed Fahey and I, and Jack Smilovitz from the Netherlands studied 25 years of foodborne
illness, hospitalization, outbreaks, deaths, and came out with like, hey, sprouts are as safe,
(21:28):
if not safer than any other food. But perception wise in marketing, people just didn't know.
Now I think people are know and they're more open to it, and it's moving. But I look at sprouts
as a vitamin source. So I don't take multivitamins anymore. I get everything that I need from sprouts.
(21:54):
And until I finish this research, I'm still taking a vitamin B12 supplement once a week sublingually.
So that's the second thing about sprouts. The third thing in particular is that sprouts are medicine.
And when I look at medicine and a normal dialogue for me is the anti-cancer properties of the
(22:18):
isothiocyanates and the glucosinolates, sulforaphane, which is the result of
glucoraphanin and morosinase. So the first part, when I think about medicine, it's sprouts as a
cancer prevention mechanism. But if you go further down the path with sprouts, sprouts are incredible
(22:41):
for detoxifying benzene and air pollutants from the lungs. If you go further down the path, sprouts
actually help regulate insulin levels in diabetics. But if you think about the mechanisms that
are working on the diabetes, the cancer, the air pollutants, they also are extremely anti-inflammatory.
(23:09):
So for an athlete that's going through the stress in the recovery phase, you actually can get a
hermetic effect from the sprouts, similar to that of doing heat treatment, sauna and bath and hot
(23:30):
spring or cold treatment creates hermesis. You actually get that from the sprouts that are
actually creating heat shock proteins in the brain that actually can have this anti-inflammatory.
So I'll take a breath. Yeah, a lot of benefits for athletes. Exactly. I mean, and you talked about
(23:51):
complete amino acid profile, right? And that's obviously when you're mixing different kinds of
sprouts together, you're getting a complete amino acid profile. I'll do a little plug for our
Plant Powered Protein because one of the core sources of anti-inflammatory is the protein
because one of the core sources of plant protein we include in here is organic quinoa sprouts for
(24:17):
that reason, right? And so we actually have five different kinds of plant protein specifically to
create what I've seen in the literature as the most studied branched-chain amino acid profile
ratio. If you're looking at improving overall gains from the work that you're putting in as an
athlete, which is a 2-1-1 ratio of branched-chain amino acids or BCAAs, that's why we have those
(24:41):
five plant proteins in the proportions that we have them in there. And that's a misconception for
a lot of people who are learning about plant-based or listening to some carnivore doctor online and
thinking, oh, plants don't have all the essential amino acids. They're not a complete protein,
(25:03):
which anyone who's ever looked at the literature at all knows that's not true at all. Every single
plant, including every single sprout, has every amino acid, not just every essential but every
non-essential amino acid, but the complete protein thing where that misunderstanding comes from,
as I'm sure you know, I realize a lot of people don't know this, is that if all you did was eat
(25:26):
brown rice all day long as your, let's call it main, which would be carbohydrate, let's say your
main protein source, that brown rice by itself would not give you enough of those essential
amino acids to really hit your daily requirements of what your body needs. So that's why they say
mix rice and beans together because then you get a good balance of those branched-chain amino acids
and those essential amino acids, but they still have all the amino acids. They still have every
(25:51):
single one, but you can't just, if all you ate was beans every single day, you may end up deficient
some number of years down the road, but as long as you're mixing rice and beans or in this case,
sprouts, different kinds of sprouts, lentils, different kinds of legumes and broccoli sprouts
and seed sprouts and all that stuff, which you do, I know you and I know you don't recommend anyone
(26:12):
just eat one kind of a sprout always. You're generally mixing lots of different kinds of
sprouts. You're going to get all the essential amino acids your body needs to thrive, and that's
the beauty of plants, right? Well, when I lived on sprouts exclusively for 30 days, I was doing
alfalfa, broccoli, radish, clover, lentils, peas, and that was like my base core, and like I was
(26:41):
fine. I mean, I was flying on those, and what happens is if you're not adding salt, oil, sugar,
and you're not in that trap of the processed foods that are triggering the dopamine spikes
in the brain, then all of a sudden you look at food as fuel, and you eat when you're hungry,
(27:04):
and you eat when you need it. So, you know, I still had discipline around my intermittent
feeding schedule, my noon to 6 p.m., but it was probably less important then, than for people
that are eating food that just tastes good, that's processed, that's very easy to overeat.
(27:25):
Yeah, I mean, as the yogis teach, right, food is one of the sources of prana, and if you start
looking, you know, prana meaning life force energy, it's one of the sources we get our life force
energy from. If we look at food as supplying life force energy to our physical being, right, to our
body, and we think of it as, hey, this is life force, and the more life force that we're getting
from the food, and especially living foods, you know, the more energetic we're going to be with
(27:50):
the less, you know, sluggishness, and everyone knows the experience of going out and eating some
big processed meal, or some huge meal, or Thanksgiving dinner, or whatever, and just feeling
unbelievably, you know, fat and tired and sluggish and lethargic, versus, you know, when you eat,
I mean, the way I eat, and I eat different than you, but I, you know, the way you eat, I'm sure
(28:10):
you feel the same way, is like I eat, and I'm immediately, like I could work out immediately
after I eat, even though it's not recommended, you know, when I'm eating, because I'm eating
majority whole foods, real foods, plant foods, yes, a good portion of it's cooked, but it's
quinoa, it's tofu, rice or beans, it's vegetables, it's fruits, right, things that like immediately
(28:33):
start turning into energy. I rarely, after I eat, feel like, oh, I need to go lay down and take a
nap. I'm like, I eat, and I'm, you know, I go for a little walk around the block, and I'm ready to go,
and that's the beauty of eating, you know, real foods, whole foods, plant foods, and especially,
you know, raw foods, more raw foods we eat, that more prana, that more life force that we can feel
(28:55):
inside of ourselves, and everyone's looking for more energy, that's why they have a third or fourth
cup of coffee, or a Red Bull, or some caffeine pill, or whatever, to try and have more energy,
it's like just eat better food, and you'll have way more energy, you know, do pranayama,
do breath work, do meditation, you'll have way more energy than you know what to do with.
(29:15):
I mean, it's really interesting that when I look at food, like immediately, like we live in a society
where everything is ranked, everything is rated, right, like the Tesla Model S is better than the
Model 3, right, so everything, you know, and a Tesla Model 3 is better than a Toyota Prius,
(29:39):
and a Prius is better than a Hyundai, like everything in our society is really ranked,
you know, whether accurate or not, everything is ranked, and you know, I became aware of this
almost like when I'm hallucinating in broad daylight without any psychoactive, psychedelic
(30:01):
substance, but I can look at a watermelon, and like literally, as I'm scanning the watermelon,
I'm seeing like which parts of that watermelon are the tend, right, the center core, beautiful
texture, beautiful color, seeded part, and then as you get closer and closer to the rind, it goes
(30:26):
down in quality, quality, till you get to the the white part, which you can still eat, but it just
doesn't have the flavor, and you can, like I scan the whole part, and then as I cut up the watermelon
for my family, like I'm thinking like, oh, do I keep this 10 piece for me, or do I give it to
(30:49):
the wife, or do I give it to the kid, and just being fair, even with this category of a fruit,
which would otherwise just be all bundled in to watermelon, and then we rank it, and so I do that
with all food, everything that I look at, like I'm really rating and ranking to see, am I consuming
(31:14):
the highest quality nutrients on a per calorie basis, and the mystical, magical thing about sprouts
is that with sprouts, unlike the watermelon, my entire batch of sprouts is like the 10 level.
(31:35):
There aren't like the eight nines, and twos, and ones, like the entire batch is like this bounty
of goodness, and so that was really like a shift for me to think like, oh wow, and so it's an effort
initially for people to shift from eating snacks that are calorically dense, with oils, with salts,
(32:05):
that are devoid of nutrients, but actually taste good and give you that dopamine spike.
I'm less concerned with the glucose spike, and I'm more concerned with the dopamine spike,
because the dopamine spike causes overeating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and this whole
(32:26):
rage about glucose spike, and now you got to wear cgm, and you got to be afraid of your glucose
going up, I mean it's total nonsense that's a podcast for another time, right? It's like,
you're going to, anything you eat from nature in its natural form, fruit or otherwise, healthy
carbohydrate, you name it, you're going to get a glucose spike, and that's normal, you want that,
but you don't want it to go too high, and you want it to come down naturally, but people are like,
(32:50):
avoid the glucose spike, it's bad for you, which leads people to a ketogenic diet, which we know
long term can have a lot of damaging effects for people. On that note, I really love the work,
I was just hanging out with Cyrus, and I love Robbie from Mastering Diabetes, and you know,
Robbie is 80, 10, 10, raw vegan, so he can have, as a type 1 diabetic, he could be consuming 500,
(33:18):
800 grams of carbohydrate in the course of the day, and without spiking his blood sugar, as a
matter of fact, he's looking for more, like if there's too much time in between a meal, he'll
bust out and eat like five, you know, wet medjool dates, because he wants more, more sugar, so I
(33:42):
think all of these problems occur when we deviate from natural way of living, which is the processed
food. 100%, 100%, yeah, and I mean, and those guys, Cyrus and Robbie at Mastering Diabetes, I mean,
they help thousands of people reverse type 2 diabetes by doing the opposite of what everyone
thinks you're supposed to do, right? They go on a high carbohydrate, low fat diet, whole foods,
(34:08):
and you see insulin use go down, you see insulin sensitivity increase, you see, you know, people
get completely off of insulin dependency, it's beautiful. But on your diet, so I read that you
eat like a 50-50 diet, is that still true? Like 50% sprouts, 50% fruit, is that pretty much what
your diet looks like? 50% sprouts and 50% fruit, and I'll eat some raw vegetables. And
(34:39):
for the purpose of like simplicity, if I'm traveling, if I'm in a restaurant,
I may eat steamed vegetables, steamed Brussels sprouts, or steamed broccoli, or steamed cauliflower,
or just as a filling source. And it's so interesting when I do that, it reminds me how much I love raw.
(35:03):
Like how much I prefer raw, because it's just so much better. But yeah, my diet, I've been in my
26th year of raw veganism, and 50% of my diet is sprouts easily. And I take sprouts for snacks,
like I'll take a half gallon mason jar, half gallon jar, and I'll fill it with a variety of sprouts.
(35:31):
And if I'm going on a road trip or a drive, I'm just eating the sprouts like right out of the jar.
And they're just so easy to eat. And my brain is tuned in to know like, hey, this is good. And
I broke away from the addiction to the salt, and the sweeteners and the other parts. So now,
(35:59):
like if I'm eating sprouts, I can easily, effortlessly distinguish between an alfalfa
sprout, a radish sprout, a clover sprout, a broccoli sprout, like all the sprouts. I know with my eyes
closed, you know, just, you know, give me a give me one of those and I could do the test. I feel I
(36:22):
could go on Penn and Teller fool us and fool them, but not fool me.
What are your favorite combos of sprouts to eat together?
I like some like the good thing about sprouts, by the way, you can grow them separately,
but you can eat them the same. Right. So you can mix and match any sprouts together, very effortlessly
(36:47):
because they're all they're all like food combining. They just are in flow. I don't care whose food
combining standards you're using, the sprouts all go very well together. I like mixing the alfalfa
sprouts, the clover sprouts, the broccoli sprouts as a mix because the broccoli sprouts can be very
(37:14):
intense and the alfalfa sprouts are just very light and fluffy. So that mix allows me to consume
a lot more of them. I do make sure that I want to eat at least, you know, two to four or more ounces
of the broccoli sprouts every day and which is very kind of Japanese. Like I visited Japan last
(37:39):
Christmas and they are selling 400,000 servings of broccoli sprouts every day across that country.
Like they're available in little grocery outlets similar to like a 7-Eleven. They're selling
broccoli sprouts. Well, I mean, it's a testament to Japanese culture until recently, you know,
(38:03):
where they've imported and we've exported a lot of the Western diet and lifestyle there. I mean,
Japanese people generally have lived primarily plant strong diet, right, whole food for centuries
and longest living healthy people. And I'm not just talking about Okinawa or Blue Zone, like Japan
(38:24):
in general, right, for many, many years has had very low chronic disease, cancer, etc., and has
lived long healthy lives with a more diverse plant. I'd say plant strong diet. They eat a lot of
vegetables in their diet, a lot of sprouts, a lot of nori and seaweed and these kinds of things
until, you know, the last whatever it's been 50 years or so of now, you know, all the McDonald's
(38:50):
and taco smells and all the stuff that's gone over there, unfortunately, has just seen the disease
rates skyrocket like here in the US. Yeah, the adoption of the Westernized diet is very
corrupting to these local cultures. I agree 100%. So alfalfa, clover, broccoli, sounds like a great
(39:12):
mix. Do you have any like recipes that you recommend people? Does your book have recipes,
by the way, of the sprout book has 40 recipes, and all the rest all the recipes are raw, and
about 50% of the ingredients in each recipe are our sprout based. And another combo that I'd like,
(39:33):
you know, is a garbanzo bean, lentil, mung bean, just simple, because they actually have the
caloric density, and they have the protein. So therefore, they're very satisfying to eat
those crunchy sprouts, like the crunchy sprouts are very easy. But when you mix them all together,
(39:59):
you know, it's fabulous. You know, one of the simplest recipes that I love to promote is just
like making a sprout wrap, we're using a variety of sprouts, you're using tahini, you're using
fermented sauerkraut, and you're just get this, you know, beautiful flavor profile. And then if
(40:22):
you're rolling it in nori seaweed, the nori seaweed is a great source of EPA and DHA,
a medium chain fatty acids. So like my idea of like, where am I getting my omega threes,
I'm getting my omega threes from the efficient conversion of flax and chia ALA into EPA and DHA,
(40:48):
or I'm getting it directly from a seaweed source like nori. And it's very, you know, very powerful
and very effective. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Irish, I like Irish, well, plus nori is good for iodine.
Iodine is pretty essential, by the way, especially with all the radiation we're exposed to for
healthy thyroid health. I mean, my, I don't know if she wants me to tell this publicly, talking to
(41:12):
someone the other day, and she's on thyroid medication, she had thyroid issues for quite a
while. And, and I said, Well, you take any iodine? And she said, No. And I said, Well, why don't you
look into your iodine levels and you can she has a functional medicine doctor, I said, want you know,
tell her that I suggested you start taking iodine, I sent her a company that I like really clean
(41:34):
source. And she goes to her functional medicine doctor, she goes, Hey, do you think I should take
iodine? Do you think it would help? She goes, Oh, yeah, absolutely. You should definitely be taking
iodine. And I'm like, she's been on thyroid medication for years. Nobody has told her to take,
you know, iodine, something as simple as that. You can get from sea vegetables, by the way. And,
(41:55):
and then, you know, or takes me to tell her to tell her functional medicine doctor, Oh, yeah,
you should be taking that. It's like, yeah, it's basic, you know, basic understanding of nutrition.
When you understand, I mean, same thing, like a lot of people can't convert ALA into DHA and EPA. So
taking like I take a, an algae supplement, right? That, you know, you can get plenty of EPA, DHA
(42:19):
from algae, you don't have to take fish oil, fish get their DHA and EPA from eating that, right? So,
yeah, well, I mean, I think that it, you know, similar with insulin resistance, where fat blocks
insulin sensitivity, I think that if you're eating fat and processed food, it blocks and inhibits the
(42:41):
conversion of ALA into EPA and DHA. And if you're eating clean and raw, you can get a very, very good
conversion and you can test it. And I want to put it out there that I recently, you know, met the
people behind plant-based telehealth, which is now Love Life telehealth. And they've got eight
(43:04):
plant-based medical doctors that can service license in all 50 states that if someone wants to be
plant-based, they, and they, they want help with their nutrition or their illnesses, they're going
to get someone that is symbiotic and copostatic and aligned with their values and their nutrition,
(43:29):
and they're not going to be recommended. So many people are recommending, like it's, it's really
surprising to me to see this mass adoption of the carnivore diet and bone broth and all of these
things that there's no long-term research or studies or anything about them. And the way,
(43:54):
you know, that they're using that information, it's surprising to me. Like I'll just leave it at that.
I'm surprised that there's this resurgence while plant-based restaurants, you know, are the best.
And what we need to do is work with the plant-based restaurants and raising their research
(44:15):
standards of moving them more towards more whole food, fresh food, sprouts, salads, you know,
fruits. And I think they'll all do fine. And I think that I'm seeing a resurgence of plant-based.
I'm seeing a resurgence of raw. My friend Red Fu, you know, I now call him Raw Fu because he's like,
(44:43):
you know, 80 plus days raw vegan and he's just crushing it. He's just crushing in life.
Nice. Yeah, I may do, you know, just talking about this, I'm kind of starting to see, I'm like,
yeah, maybe I'll go in 100% raw for a while again. It's been, it's been quite a while. I'll usually do
a week, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes of a fast or a cleanse. And that whole time I'm raw,
(45:06):
right? I'm just doing juices, just vegetable juices or liquid tea, water, that kind of stuff.
Try and do that once a year, sometimes twice a year. Sometimes I go a few years without doing
one. Then I'm like, I really need to do like a week or two week cleanse. But that's what I noticed
when I was 100% raw for a year, it was like being on a cleanse for an entire year, you know?
Right. So it's so beneficial. I want to be, I know we started a little bit late. I want to be
(45:31):
respectful of your time. Do you have a little bit of time to go over the hour or do you have a hard out?
I have a hard out in three and I'd like to end in two so I can have a minute to do one thing.
Okay. Cause yeah, I had a really important thing I want to talk with you about.
I could talk fast. I talk 600 words a minute.
(45:52):
Well, it's a bigger conversation. It's about getting, you know, the sustainability of sprouts.
So I recently was on a humanitarian relief effort trip, bringing seeds and tools to
tribes in Northern Kenya who are literally starving to death. To help them plant,
you know, farms so they could have food because they literally, they're lucky if they eat,
(46:15):
many of them will eat once a week, once every two weeks, sometimes once or twice a month. I mean,
skin and bones, right? We're talking, and they're in the desert like you. And so I'm just thinking
of like, is there a way that sprouts can be a sustainable and an abundant option for them?
They'd have to grow everything themselves, growing the food themselves is something we're going to,
(46:36):
you know, we're supporting them with, but through a nonprofit, I'm part of with Jonathan Otto,
but I'm just seeing like, if there's a way that that can be even sprouts could even be
better because sprouts, you need seeds, you need lots of seeds and seeds, growing seeds is different
than growing food. Right. So yeah, it takes six months to grow seeds because you have to go through
(47:01):
the cycle of sprouting, micro greening, mature vegetables, let them flower, let them fruit,
then take away the seeds. Well, we could pick that up off offline. Nathan, thank you so much
for having me. My pleasure. Best website, best place for people to get in touch with you.
You know, my Instagram, Doug Evans, the sprouting company, TikTok, you know, Sprout Wiz or Doug
(47:28):
Evans. And and I have a free app, you know, from the sprouting company. You know, my book is
available, you know, on every major bookseller and I answer, you know, every every positive question.
Happy to help. Awesome. Thanks, Doug. I appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you so much. Take care,
Nathan. Bye now. See ya.
Hey, it's Nathan Crane, founder of Plant Powered Athlete, and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Plant Powered Athlete Podcast.
(00:06):
And as a special thank you, I want to give you a 10% discount code on our Plant Powered Protein,
scientifically formulated, super clean, organic, high quality Plant Powered Protein,
designed with health and performance and longevity in mind with three super high quality adaptogens
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(00:31):
and help your body thrive. So the 10% discount code, you can use the word podcast at checkout,
and you can get Plant Powered Protein at our website at plantpoweredathlete.com.
Thanks again for tuning in, and let's dive into today's episode.
Mr. Doug Evans, welcome to the podcast. Happy to have you here, man.
(00:53):
Hey, my pleasure. Great to be here, Nathan.
So I've been diving into your Instagram lately and watching all your passion and wisdom around sprouts.
And I'll tell you what, I've got this thing that happens where, and I've been doing this for probably 15 years,
I'll get excited about sprouts. I'll get passionate about sprouts. So, you know,
(01:13):
I'll have a conversation like this or obviously a video or something. I'm like, I got to start
sprouting again. I'll do sprouts and I end up like overdoing it and then end up with too much.
And then end up with a lot of waste. And I might be on the sprout train for a few days, a few weeks,
a few months, and then it kind of falls away. I haven't been able to, you know, total transparency
(01:37):
and honestly, I haven't been able to bring sprouts into my daily life over the last however many years
since I've been plant-based. And I'd like to. I think they're important. I think they're...
So I'm looking forward to this conversation today because this might help solidify it for me,
my wife, my kids. I love sprouts. The benefits of them are so substantial. They're healthy.
(01:57):
They're easy to make, right? It's just I haven't figured out how to like bring it.
I guess I'm just not committed enough. I don't know. I mean, what do you think about that?
I mean, I think...
By the way, let me give a little context. So you're the sprout guy, right? For people who
don't know, I mean, you wrote the book on sprouts. You have a prolific following. You've got a
sprouting company. You know, there's been a big part of your life for many years. You've been raw
(02:22):
vegan for over 20 years, is that right?
Over 25 years.
Yeah. So like this is your life. This is your domain. So excited to hear. I'm sure you've run
across this many times.
Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing is sprouting never was a math adopted in the United States.
So there's, you know, I had dinner with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, and he said
(02:46):
that, you know, there's a hundred sprouting companies in the United States and they're all
like local and regional. So sprouts were never made ubiquitous in the United States because they
have a short shelf life and low margin, AKA, they're hard to commercialize. So sprouts are
relatively foreign outside of being a garnish, you know, to a soup or to a sandwich in a hippie
(03:12):
place. And we have so many, you know, I live in the Mojave Desert near at Wonder Valley Hot Springs,
which is an environmental desert, but it's also a food desert. I came from a food swamp, right? New
York is a food swamp, right? We have everything there. And when you have everything and you have
(03:37):
access to fresh fruits and vegetables and processed food, then you don't need sprouts initially as a
top of mind because you have so many other options to eat. So in order for you to establish
sprouting as part of your regiment, you really need to determine why. Like, why do you want to
(04:02):
do this? And it's similar to like, why do you brush your teeth? Right? You may brush your teeth
because you have a bad taste in your mouth, right? Why do you floss your teeth? You floss your teeth
because intellectually you are aware that if you don't floss your teeth, you can get periodontal
disease and other invisible items. Sometimes people would only floss if they had something stuck in
(04:26):
their teeth, right? So if you establish a routine for daily flossing, even though it's invisible,
there's no instant gratification. It's a step. You develop that habit. Now, in order for you
to put forth that effort, you have to understand like, why? Well, why would I sprout every day?
(04:47):
Why is it so important? So the main reason for someone who's already plant-based, who's already
jacked, who's already healthy, the reason why you sprout is because you want living foods in your
diet, right? So sprouting is upgrading anything that you are consuming because even if you're
(05:09):
eating like a piece of kale or a piece of broccoli or cauliflower or an apple, you're eating either
raw food or steamed food or cooked food, but that raw piece of cauliflower or broccoli or an apple
has been disconnected from its life support system. It's been cut away from the source of nutrients,
(05:36):
from the source of life. So as soon as it's harvested, it is dying and decaying. Now, it is
still better than something that is massively processed, but it's no longer alive. With sprouts,
uniquely, you are consuming the entire living plant organism, the root, the shoot, the endosperm,
(06:02):
the embryo. It is this living food that is also rich with polyphenols, bioflavonoids, phytonutrients,
amino acids, B vitamins. And if you think about like lentils, a staple of the plant-based diet
(06:25):
around the world, right? But they're not a vegetable, right? A lentil is a legume. When you sprout
the lentil, in three days, it goes through a metamorphosis and it becomes a vegetable.
And it actually increases the vitamin C levels by 500%. It triples the antioxidant levels,
(06:50):
and you're getting this living food. So like that's just starting, and I'm going to take a breath
and turn the mic back over to you. But the main reason why you want to sprout on a regular basis
is because you are increasing your phytonutrient living food content, and you're also increasing
(07:15):
your microbial microbiome diversity with this very friendly soluble, insoluble fiber for your gut.
Yeah, I mean, that's a great point right there, especially like I started as raw vegan, my wife
and I, and our daughter went after she was born for a year. And then same thing, we moved to the
(07:40):
Mojave Desert. In fact, we moved to Wikup, I don't know if you know Wikup in Arizona, but a little
tiny town in the middle of nowhere on the 600 acre ranch. And it was like a two, two and a half hour
drive round trip just to go get groceries at like a, where they had almost nothing organic and very,
very few choices. We were definitely in a true food desert as well. And then we started cooking
(08:05):
food. And so, you know, stopped raw, but have always, you know, eaten raw vegetables and raw
fruits and things like that. But do a lot of cooked food. And so just the idea of, yeah, it's an easy
way to get in a lot more raw living, you know, vegetables and foods into my diet every day. So
(08:26):
I'm not a big salad eater. I've just have never really like, I'll eat a salad, I'll enjoy it, but
I'm just not that into it. I'd rather just blend it and drink it, you know. So like that's how I get
most of my, or cook or cooking veggies. So I see your point in being able to get a lot of nutrition
that way and more living foods in the diet. We know the more living foods you get in the diet,
(08:50):
you know, the healthier you're going to be, the likelihood of living longer, you know, the less
inflammation, all of these wonderful things that happen when we add more living plant foods to our
diet. You also mentioned embryonic stem cells, you know, plant stem cells. A friend and colleague of
mine who's in my holistic leadership council, Jennifer Payer, has a company and they extract
(09:14):
tinctures made from, you know, the embryonic stem cells, the plant stem cells. They get them from
the young plants and have realized that by creating tinctures from the buds and the, you know, the
younger versions of the plants that actually they get a significantly more enhanced effect from that
(09:36):
if you're making tinctures or using, you know, any kind of tinctures as medicine, for example. So
in your case, you're just eating them and not making tinctures, which is great, you know.
Well, look, I think I'll just throw in, I think there's a role in a plant-based diet for juicing.
I think there's a role for blending and I think there's a real role for chewing.
(10:01):
Yeah.
Right. And like, it's important that when you're in this rat race, right, and you're in the grind
and you're doing multiple things, you have a podcast, you have a business, you have a family, you
tend to want to rush things so you can get onto the next thing. And food shouldn't be something
(10:23):
that's rushed. Like no one is chasing you, right? You don't have like this competition for your food
that if you don't eat it, you know, your wife and kids are going to grab your food and it's going to
disappear. So it's important to just take a little time for yourself to be present with the food
(10:46):
because digestion really begins with the eyes, right? You get the food, you stare at it, you start
to anticipate the digestive process, the salvatory fluid start to occur. Then when you chew it and it
hits your tongue, you start to process it a little bit more. And then if you actually go through this
(11:10):
almost meditative process to chew your food slowly, you enhance your digestion, your bioavailability,
the mastication. So you can chew your smoothies and I hear that, but it's just important to have
some solid, you know, whole food that you actually chew. And sprouts are that. And, you know, if you
(11:35):
think about, I don't care where you are, the freshest crop you can have is pulling some sprouts out of
the sprouting jar. And if in fact, you have extra sprouts, like I don't wait for day two or day three,
like if I have extra sprouts on day one, then I will throw them in the juicer, throw them in the
(11:57):
blender, make them into a smoothie so that I am commandeering them, you know, or I throw them in
and I make them into a dip, right? Throw them into a hummus or some other puree, pate, some blended
concoction because they're just there. So I want to make sure that you're consuming them because
(12:20):
in this world where there is an abundance of food, for some reason, not everyone is living in this
abundance consciousness. So there's also a substantial amount of food waste. So we want to
make sure that, you know, you are planning, you know, what you're going to eat and then you eat it.
(12:42):
You have a plan just, you know, whether you're working out or a business plan or a family plan
or a financial plan, you know, you have a nutrition plan and you bake it in, you know, to your plan.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great point. And to your point, slowing down, spending time, chewing our
food, being mindful with our food, right? I've done retreats over the years where, you know, we'll
(13:07):
sit in silence, you know, silent retreats, for example, Qigong retreats and, you know, mindful
eating where you'll take, you know, one bite and savor it and sit with it and just be with that.
And, you know, it might take you 30 or 40 minutes to eat your meal, but you're doing it in a
meditative state. And there's tremendous benefit to that, of course. But nowadays, it's like most
(13:28):
people, we just put on our phone, watch something and eat mindlessly, right? I stopped watching
stuff on my phone when I eat some time back. So generally, I don't do that anymore. I used to just
put on whatever it was, even a podcast or a show or something like that. And I've stopped doing that.
I might play a little chess, you know, or just put the phone aside. But I think the benefit of being
(13:55):
more mindful as we eat is clearly, especially when we're dealing with obesity, we're dealing with
chronic disease, we're dealing with overeating and over consumption, right? Number one, eating
healthier is going to really support that, but also paying attention to, you know, our satiety
signals, right? Paying attention. Absolutely. And that's really hard to do when you're just
(14:16):
gobbling down food and you're distracted and paying, you know, watching a show or whatever. So,
yeah, no, tremendous benefit to what you're talking about. And I wanted to ask you a couple
of things. So I want to get to athletes as well and sprouts for athletes. I mean, you're an athlete.
I see people on your channel, you have athletes there use sprouts a lot. Actually, let's talk
(14:38):
about that first. So talk about sprouts and benefits for people who are athletic. And when I say
athletes and we were in a plant powered athlete, just so you know the context, we look at everybody
and we want people, we encourage people to consider yourself an athlete. If you're active at all,
at any age, I don't care if you're 75, if you're 25, if you're working out seven days a week,
(15:01):
you're a college football player, or you're playing tennis a couple days a week, or you jog
a few days a week, or you walk around the block every day. If you're active at all, we want you
to consider yourself an athlete. And the reason being is, as I adopted more of an athlete mindset
over the years, I noticed how much more time and attention I put on my health, on things like
(15:24):
recovery, sleep, nutrition, taking better care of my body. It's like if you think of yourself as an
athlete, you generally take better care of yourself. You'll get massages, you'll do myofascial
release, you'll maybe even practice meditation. Maybe that's the thing that gets you into
meditation because you heard that it's going to help you be better at your sport or whatever.
(15:46):
Thinking of yourself as an athlete. So when I'm talking about athletes, I'm not only talking
about elite level athletes, I'm talking about everybody of all ages who is athletic at all.
And so with that context, and that broad range from the bodybuilder to the 75 year old person
walking on the golf course, and everybody in between, how are sprouts beneficial for athletes?
(16:12):
Well, we talked about like first, sprouts as a food source, right? So if someone is eating
plant-based, then sprouts are a higher quality plant that one can eat because it's a living food.
So when I moved to the desert, I realized that the food desert gave me limited options.
(16:37):
And then I discovered or rediscovered or became aware of sprouts as the highest quality
living food source. So there wasn't a compromise. There was actually an opportunity for me to raise
my standard of consumption. So the first kind of chunk for me was sprouts are vegetables,
(17:01):
vegetables are food. The second one for athletes, non-athletes, for everyone, sprouts are this
incredible bounty, this source of vitamins and minerals. So when I went down the sprout rabbit
hole and I saw that sprouts contain every amino acid to form complete proteins, varying degrees,
(17:26):
right? Not as concentrated as a protein powder, but they were not just select amino acids. They had
a complete nutritional amino acid profile. And if you added variety and you combine like alfalfa
sprouts and lentil sprouts, you had a more complete protein, similar to the way that some vegetarians
(17:47):
would eat rice and beans, that there's enough diversity in the sprout kingdom of sprouts that
you can get the diversity. They also contain this amazing profile of vitamin C, vitamin B, folates,
(18:08):
polyphenols, bioflavonoids. So it's a very rich item of what you can get from a nutritional
perspective. So to me, and there's research coming out that I'm working on that you can even get
vitamin B12 from sprouts because the microbiological bacterial process in this metamorphosis from seed
(18:36):
to vegetable is actually creating an environment conducive to forming vitamin B12.
Would that be true? Now you said you're doing research on that, but do you think that'll be
true even as you sprout on your countertop? Or I mean, we know that B12 generally is,
if you're going to find it out in nature, it's generally going to be in manure or something
(18:58):
like that, right? Yeah, no, this would be in a jar, sprouting in a jar, sprouting seeds at a
certain level. So you guys are doing a study testing that? We're testing it. We're going out
to third party labs. That'll be awesome. See what happens. Yeah. So an early indication is very
positive on this. It's just another level that there's never been a Super Bowl ad for sprouts,
(19:27):
so there's no TV commercials and billboards. So there's just never been money behind sprouts.
And we're putting real money behind sprouts and sprouting research. And there was research,
and I'm digressing consciously here for a moment, there was fear that sprouts were unsafe. And the
(19:48):
main reason why is because no one was defending the sprouts. Like every day in America, there's
food outbreaks, there's hospitalizations, there's illnesses with foodborne illness. Predominantly,
they're meat, chicken, fish, dairy based. But there's also associated with lettuces or spinach,
(20:11):
or romaine, and they're doing a recall. But all of those categories of food have big dollars behind
it. Like a bagged salad is a $5 billion market, right? So if there's something going on with a
bagged salad, they have a crisis response team, they've talked to the press, they've mitigated,
(20:37):
etc. There's no money behind sprouting. So when there was an instance of an animal centric
sandwich chain using sprouts, cross contaminating with meat, using non-organic
produce that's mixed with sewer sludge, and they're not using proper sanitation,
(21:04):
they're not wearing gloves, who knows what it is. That's what people remember. So we studied 25
years, Dr. Jed Fahey and I, and Jack Smilovitz from the Netherlands studied 25 years of foodborne
illness, hospitalization, outbreaks, deaths, and came out with like, hey, sprouts are as safe,
(21:28):
if not safer than any other food. But perception wise in marketing, people just didn't know.
Now I think people are know and they're more open to it, and it's moving. But I look at sprouts
as a vitamin source. So I don't take multivitamins anymore. I get everything that I need from sprouts.
(21:54):
And until I finish this research, I'm still taking a vitamin B12 supplement once a week sublingually.
So that's the second thing about sprouts. The third thing in particular is that sprouts are medicine.
And when I look at medicine and a normal dialogue for me is the anti-cancer properties of the
(22:18):
isothiocyanates and the glucosinolates, sulforaphane, which is the result of
glucoraphanin and morosinase. So the first part, when I think about medicine, it's sprouts as a
cancer prevention mechanism. But if you go further down the path with sprouts, sprouts are incredible
(22:41):
for detoxifying benzene and air pollutants from the lungs. If you go further down the path, sprouts
actually help regulate insulin levels in diabetics. But if you think about the mechanisms that
are working on the diabetes, the cancer, the air pollutants, they also are extremely anti-inflammatory.
(23:09):
So for an athlete that's going through the stress in the recovery phase, you actually can get a
hermetic effect from the sprouts, similar to that of doing heat treatment, sauna and bath and hot
(23:30):
spring or cold treatment creates hermesis. You actually get that from the sprouts that are
actually creating heat shock proteins in the brain that actually can have this anti-inflammatory.
So I'll take a breath. Yeah, a lot of benefits for athletes. Exactly. I mean, and you talked about
(23:51):
complete amino acid profile, right? And that's obviously when you're mixing different kinds of
sprouts together, you're getting a complete amino acid profile. I'll do a little plug for our
Plant Powered Protein because one of the core sources of anti-inflammatory is the protein
because one of the core sources of plant protein we include in here is organic quinoa sprouts for
(24:17):
that reason, right? And so we actually have five different kinds of plant protein specifically to
create what I've seen in the literature as the most studied branched-chain amino acid profile
ratio. If you're looking at improving overall gains from the work that you're putting in as an
athlete, which is a 2-1-1 ratio of branched-chain amino acids or BCAAs, that's why we have those
(24:41):
five plant proteins in the proportions that we have them in there. And that's a misconception for
a lot of people who are learning about plant-based or listening to some carnivore doctor online and
thinking, oh, plants don't have all the essential amino acids. They're not a complete protein,
(25:03):
which anyone who's ever looked at the literature at all knows that's not true at all. Every single
plant, including every single sprout, has every amino acid, not just every essential but every
non-essential amino acid, but the complete protein thing where that misunderstanding comes from,
as I'm sure you know, I realize a lot of people don't know this, is that if all you did was eat
(25:26):
brown rice all day long as your, let's call it main, which would be carbohydrate, let's say your
main protein source, that brown rice by itself would not give you enough of those essential
amino acids to really hit your daily requirements of what your body needs. So that's why they say
mix rice and beans together because then you get a good balance of those branched-chain amino acids
and those essential amino acids, but they still have all the amino acids. They still have every
(25:51):
single one, but you can't just, if all you ate was beans every single day, you may end up deficient
some number of years down the road, but as long as you're mixing rice and beans or in this case,
sprouts, different kinds of sprouts, lentils, different kinds of legumes and broccoli sprouts
and seed sprouts and all that stuff, which you do, I know you and I know you don't recommend anyone
(26:12):
just eat one kind of a sprout always. You're generally mixing lots of different kinds of
sprouts. You're going to get all the essential amino acids your body needs to thrive, and that's
the beauty of plants, right? Well, when I lived on sprouts exclusively for 30 days, I was doing
alfalfa, broccoli, radish, clover, lentils, peas, and that was like my base core, and like I was
(26:41):
fine. I mean, I was flying on those, and what happens is if you're not adding salt, oil, sugar,
and you're not in that trap of the processed foods that are triggering the dopamine spikes
in the brain, then all of a sudden you look at food as fuel, and you eat when you're hungry,
(27:04):
and you eat when you need it. So, you know, I still had discipline around my intermittent
feeding schedule, my noon to 6 p.m., but it was probably less important then, than for people
that are eating food that just tastes good, that's processed, that's very easy to overeat.
(27:25):
Yeah, I mean, as the yogis teach, right, food is one of the sources of prana, and if you start
looking, you know, prana meaning life force energy, it's one of the sources we get our life force
energy from. If we look at food as supplying life force energy to our physical being, right, to our
body, and we think of it as, hey, this is life force, and the more life force that we're getting
from the food, and especially living foods, you know, the more energetic we're going to be with
(27:50):
the less, you know, sluggishness, and everyone knows the experience of going out and eating some
big processed meal, or some huge meal, or Thanksgiving dinner, or whatever, and just feeling
unbelievably, you know, fat and tired and sluggish and lethargic, versus, you know, when you eat,
I mean, the way I eat, and I eat different than you, but I, you know, the way you eat, I'm sure
(28:10):
you feel the same way, is like I eat, and I'm immediately, like I could work out immediately
after I eat, even though it's not recommended, you know, when I'm eating, because I'm eating
majority whole foods, real foods, plant foods, yes, a good portion of it's cooked, but it's
quinoa, it's tofu, rice or beans, it's vegetables, it's fruits, right, things that like immediately
(28:33):
start turning into energy. I rarely, after I eat, feel like, oh, I need to go lay down and take a
nap. I'm like, I eat, and I'm, you know, I go for a little walk around the block, and I'm ready to go,
and that's the beauty of eating, you know, real foods, whole foods, plant foods, and especially,
you know, raw foods, more raw foods we eat, that more prana, that more life force that we can feel
(28:55):
inside of ourselves, and everyone's looking for more energy, that's why they have a third or fourth
cup of coffee, or a Red Bull, or some caffeine pill, or whatever, to try and have more energy,
it's like just eat better food, and you'll have way more energy, you know, do pranayama,
do breath work, do meditation, you'll have way more energy than you know what to do with.
(29:15):
I mean, it's really interesting that when I look at food, like immediately, like we live in a society
where everything is ranked, everything is rated, right, like the Tesla Model S is better than the
Model 3, right, so everything, you know, and a Tesla Model 3 is better than a Toyota Prius,
(29:39):
and a Prius is better than a Hyundai, like everything in our society is really ranked,
you know, whether accurate or not, everything is ranked, and you know, I became aware of this
almost like when I'm hallucinating in broad daylight without any psychoactive, psychedelic
(30:01):
substance, but I can look at a watermelon, and like literally, as I'm scanning the watermelon,
I'm seeing like which parts of that watermelon are the tend, right, the center core, beautiful
texture, beautiful color, seeded part, and then as you get closer and closer to the rind, it goes
(30:26):
down in quality, quality, till you get to the the white part, which you can still eat, but it just
doesn't have the flavor, and you can, like I scan the whole part, and then as I cut up the watermelon
for my family, like I'm thinking like, oh, do I keep this 10 piece for me, or do I give it to
(30:49):
the wife, or do I give it to the kid, and just being fair, even with this category of a fruit,
which would otherwise just be all bundled in to watermelon, and then we rank it, and so I do that
with all food, everything that I look at, like I'm really rating and ranking to see, am I consuming
(31:14):
the highest quality nutrients on a per calorie basis, and the mystical, magical thing about sprouts
is that with sprouts, unlike the watermelon, my entire batch of sprouts is like the 10 level.
(31:35):
There aren't like the eight nines, and twos, and ones, like the entire batch is like this bounty
of goodness, and so that was really like a shift for me to think like, oh wow, and so it's an effort
initially for people to shift from eating snacks that are calorically dense, with oils, with salts,
(32:05):
that are devoid of nutrients, but actually taste good and give you that dopamine spike.
I'm less concerned with the glucose spike, and I'm more concerned with the dopamine spike,
because the dopamine spike causes overeating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and this whole
(32:26):
rage about glucose spike, and now you got to wear cgm, and you got to be afraid of your glucose
going up, I mean it's total nonsense that's a podcast for another time, right? It's like,
you're going to, anything you eat from nature in its natural form, fruit or otherwise, healthy
carbohydrate, you name it, you're going to get a glucose spike, and that's normal, you want that,
but you don't want it to go too high, and you want it to come down naturally, but people are like,
(32:50):
avoid the glucose spike, it's bad for you, which leads people to a ketogenic diet, which we know
long term can have a lot of damaging effects for people. On that note, I really love the work,
I was just hanging out with Cyrus, and I love Robbie from Mastering Diabetes, and you know,
Robbie is 80, 10, 10, raw vegan, so he can have, as a type 1 diabetic, he could be consuming 500,
(33:18):
800 grams of carbohydrate in the course of the day, and without spiking his blood sugar, as a
matter of fact, he's looking for more, like if there's too much time in between a meal, he'll
bust out and eat like five, you know, wet medjool dates, because he wants more, more sugar, so I
(33:42):
think all of these problems occur when we deviate from natural way of living, which is the processed
food. 100%, 100%, yeah, and I mean, and those guys, Cyrus and Robbie at Mastering Diabetes, I mean,
they help thousands of people reverse type 2 diabetes by doing the opposite of what everyone
thinks you're supposed to do, right? They go on a high carbohydrate, low fat diet, whole foods,
(34:08):
and you see insulin use go down, you see insulin sensitivity increase, you see, you know, people
get completely off of insulin dependency, it's beautiful. But on your diet, so I read that you
eat like a 50-50 diet, is that still true? Like 50% sprouts, 50% fruit, is that pretty much what
your diet looks like? 50% sprouts and 50% fruit, and I'll eat some raw vegetables. And
(34:39):
for the purpose of like simplicity, if I'm traveling, if I'm in a restaurant,
I may eat steamed vegetables, steamed Brussels sprouts, or steamed broccoli, or steamed cauliflower,
or just as a filling source. And it's so interesting when I do that, it reminds me how much I love raw.
(35:03):
Like how much I prefer raw, because it's just so much better. But yeah, my diet, I've been in my
26th year of raw veganism, and 50% of my diet is sprouts easily. And I take sprouts for snacks,
like I'll take a half gallon mason jar, half gallon jar, and I'll fill it with a variety of sprouts.
(35:31):
And if I'm going on a road trip or a drive, I'm just eating the sprouts like right out of the jar.
And they're just so easy to eat. And my brain is tuned in to know like, hey, this is good. And
I broke away from the addiction to the salt, and the sweeteners and the other parts. So now,
(35:59):
like if I'm eating sprouts, I can easily, effortlessly distinguish between an alfalfa
sprout, a radish sprout, a clover sprout, a broccoli sprout, like all the sprouts. I know with my eyes
closed, you know, just, you know, give me a give me one of those and I could do the test. I feel I
(36:22):
could go on Penn and Teller fool us and fool them, but not fool me.
What are your favorite combos of sprouts to eat together?
I like some like the good thing about sprouts, by the way, you can grow them separately,
but you can eat them the same. Right. So you can mix and match any sprouts together, very effortlessly
(36:47):
because they're all they're all like food combining. They just are in flow. I don't care whose food
combining standards you're using, the sprouts all go very well together. I like mixing the alfalfa
sprouts, the clover sprouts, the broccoli sprouts as a mix because the broccoli sprouts can be very
(37:14):
intense and the alfalfa sprouts are just very light and fluffy. So that mix allows me to consume
a lot more of them. I do make sure that I want to eat at least, you know, two to four or more ounces
of the broccoli sprouts every day and which is very kind of Japanese. Like I visited Japan last
(37:39):
Christmas and they are selling 400,000 servings of broccoli sprouts every day across that country.
Like they're available in little grocery outlets similar to like a 7-Eleven. They're selling
broccoli sprouts. Well, I mean, it's a testament to Japanese culture until recently, you know,
(38:03):
where they've imported and we've exported a lot of the Western diet and lifestyle there. I mean,
Japanese people generally have lived primarily plant strong diet, right, whole food for centuries
and longest living healthy people. And I'm not just talking about Okinawa or Blue Zone, like Japan
(38:24):
in general, right, for many, many years has had very low chronic disease, cancer, etc., and has
lived long healthy lives with a more diverse plant. I'd say plant strong diet. They eat a lot of
vegetables in their diet, a lot of sprouts, a lot of nori and seaweed and these kinds of things
until, you know, the last whatever it's been 50 years or so of now, you know, all the McDonald's
(38:50):
and taco smells and all the stuff that's gone over there, unfortunately, has just seen the disease
rates skyrocket like here in the US. Yeah, the adoption of the Westernized diet is very
corrupting to these local cultures. I agree 100%. So alfalfa, clover, broccoli, sounds like a great
(39:12):
mix. Do you have any like recipes that you recommend people? Does your book have recipes,
by the way, of the sprout book has 40 recipes, and all the rest all the recipes are raw, and
about 50% of the ingredients in each recipe are our sprout based. And another combo that I'd like,
(39:33):
you know, is a garbanzo bean, lentil, mung bean, just simple, because they actually have the
caloric density, and they have the protein. So therefore, they're very satisfying to eat
those crunchy sprouts, like the crunchy sprouts are very easy. But when you mix them all together,
(39:59):
you know, it's fabulous. You know, one of the simplest recipes that I love to promote is just
like making a sprout wrap, we're using a variety of sprouts, you're using tahini, you're using
fermented sauerkraut, and you're just get this, you know, beautiful flavor profile. And then if
(40:22):
you're rolling it in nori seaweed, the nori seaweed is a great source of EPA and DHA,
a medium chain fatty acids. So like my idea of like, where am I getting my omega threes,
I'm getting my omega threes from the efficient conversion of flax and chia ALA into EPA and DHA,
(40:48):
or I'm getting it directly from a seaweed source like nori. And it's very, you know, very powerful
and very effective. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Irish, I like Irish, well, plus nori is good for iodine.
Iodine is pretty essential, by the way, especially with all the radiation we're exposed to for
healthy thyroid health. I mean, my, I don't know if she wants me to tell this publicly, talking to
(41:12):
someone the other day, and she's on thyroid medication, she had thyroid issues for quite a
while. And, and I said, Well, you take any iodine? And she said, No. And I said, Well, why don't you
look into your iodine levels and you can she has a functional medicine doctor, I said, want you know,
tell her that I suggested you start taking iodine, I sent her a company that I like really clean
(41:34):
source. And she goes to her functional medicine doctor, she goes, Hey, do you think I should take
iodine? Do you think it would help? She goes, Oh, yeah, absolutely. You should definitely be taking
iodine. And I'm like, she's been on thyroid medication for years. Nobody has told her to take,
you know, iodine, something as simple as that. You can get from sea vegetables, by the way. And,
(41:55):
and then, you know, or takes me to tell her to tell her functional medicine doctor, Oh, yeah,
you should be taking that. It's like, yeah, it's basic, you know, basic understanding of nutrition.
When you understand, I mean, same thing, like a lot of people can't convert ALA into DHA and EPA. So
taking like I take a, an algae supplement, right? That, you know, you can get plenty of EPA, DHA
(42:19):
from algae, you don't have to take fish oil, fish get their DHA and EPA from eating that, right? So,
yeah, well, I mean, I think that it, you know, similar with insulin resistance, where fat blocks
insulin sensitivity, I think that if you're eating fat and processed food, it blocks and inhibits the
(42:41):
conversion of ALA into EPA and DHA. And if you're eating clean and raw, you can get a very, very good
conversion and you can test it. And I want to put it out there that I recently, you know, met the
people behind plant-based telehealth, which is now Love Life telehealth. And they've got eight
(43:04):
plant-based medical doctors that can service license in all 50 states that if someone wants to be
plant-based, they, and they, they want help with their nutrition or their illnesses, they're going
to get someone that is symbiotic and copostatic and aligned with their values and their nutrition,
(43:29):
and they're not going to be recommended. So many people are recommending, like it's, it's really
surprising to me to see this mass adoption of the carnivore diet and bone broth and all of these
things that there's no long-term research or studies or anything about them. And the way,
(43:54):
you know, that they're using that information, it's surprising to me. Like I'll just leave it at that.
I'm surprised that there's this resurgence while plant-based restaurants, you know, are the best.
And what we need to do is work with the plant-based restaurants and raising their research
(44:15):
standards of moving them more towards more whole food, fresh food, sprouts, salads, you know,
fruits. And I think they'll all do fine. And I think that I'm seeing a resurgence of plant-based.
I'm seeing a resurgence of raw. My friend Red Fu, you know, I now call him Raw Fu because he's like,
(44:43):
you know, 80 plus days raw vegan and he's just crushing it. He's just crushing in life.
Nice. Yeah, I may do, you know, just talking about this, I'm kind of starting to see, I'm like,
yeah, maybe I'll go in 100% raw for a while again. It's been, it's been quite a while. I'll usually do
a week, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes of a fast or a cleanse. And that whole time I'm raw,
(45:06):
right? I'm just doing juices, just vegetable juices or liquid tea, water, that kind of stuff.
Try and do that once a year, sometimes twice a year. Sometimes I go a few years without doing
one. Then I'm like, I really need to do like a week or two week cleanse. But that's what I noticed
when I was 100% raw for a year, it was like being on a cleanse for an entire year, you know?
Right. So it's so beneficial. I want to be, I know we started a little bit late. I want to be
(45:31):
respectful of your time. Do you have a little bit of time to go over the hour or do you have a hard out?
I have a hard out in three and I'd like to end in two so I can have a minute to do one thing.
Okay. Cause yeah, I had a really important thing I want to talk with you about.
I could talk fast. I talk 600 words a minute.
(45:52):
Well, it's a bigger conversation. It's about getting, you know, the sustainability of sprouts.
So I recently was on a humanitarian relief effort trip, bringing seeds and tools to
tribes in Northern Kenya who are literally starving to death. To help them plant,
you know, farms so they could have food because they literally, they're lucky if they eat,
(46:15):
many of them will eat once a week, once every two weeks, sometimes once or twice a month. I mean,
skin and bones, right? We're talking, and they're in the desert like you. And so I'm just thinking
of like, is there a way that sprouts can be a sustainable and an abundant option for them?
They'd have to grow everything themselves, growing the food themselves is something we're going to,
(46:36):
you know, we're supporting them with, but through a nonprofit, I'm part of with Jonathan Otto,
but I'm just seeing like, if there's a way that that can be even sprouts could even be
better because sprouts, you need seeds, you need lots of seeds and seeds, growing seeds is different
than growing food. Right. So yeah, it takes six months to grow seeds because you have to go through
(47:01):
the cycle of sprouting, micro greening, mature vegetables, let them flower, let them fruit,
then take away the seeds. Well, we could pick that up off offline. Nathan, thank you so much
for having me. My pleasure. Best website, best place for people to get in touch with you.
You know, my Instagram, Doug Evans, the sprouting company, TikTok, you know, Sprout Wiz or Doug
(47:28):
Evans. And and I have a free app, you know, from the sprouting company. You know, my book is
available, you know, on every major bookseller and I answer, you know, every every positive question.
Happy to help. Awesome. Thanks, Doug. I appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you so much. Take care,
Nathan. Bye now. See ya.
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