Transcription
People know that lentils are healthy. What they don't know is when you sprout a lentil, you increase the vitamin C by 300%. You quadruple the antioxidants and you make it much more bioavailable because of the enzymatic activity that's happening as the sprout is germinating and it's growing.
Hey gang. Well, today Doug Evans is back. Doug is the founder of the Sprouting Company. He's a dear friend of mine. You might remember him. I've interviewed him before. And he is also the author of the Sprouting book. He is an expert on sprouts. And sprouts are still a largely overlooked superfood. And the beauty of sprouts is anyone can sprout. They're incredibly inexpensive and the nutritional content is unparalleled. And I'm hoping today's interview will get you excited about sprouting from what you learn from Doug and uh and just get you on the sprouting train, get you on the sprouting team.
So Doug, thanks for taking the time to do this. It's good to see you. How's it going?
I mean, it is by far the best ever, Chris. I am literally high on life and high on sprouts.
I know it. I believe it. I believe it. How did you get into sprouting?
So, you know, I had known about sprouting since the mid-90s. So, I always thought of sprouts as something super nutritious. I would gravitate to them at the farmers markets, but I never took them seriously. I always thought of them as like, oh, they're a garnish or they're something healthy. And then, you know, about seven and a half years ago, I moved to the desert. So, I moved to the Mojave Desert to Wonder Valley Hot Springs. And lo and behold, not only was it the desert, it was a food desert. So I had no access to health food stores, farmers markets, and my attempts to grow vegetables, you know, in an outdoor raised bed produced zero. So the universe and I really believe that we can manifest what we need if we pray and if we meditate and if we ask for guidance. So I ask the universe for guidance. I said, "How can I eat healthy being in the middle of nowhere?" And the universe whispered in my ear and said, "Sprouts." And I was like, "What? Sprouts?" And so the next morning, literally, I woke up in the morning and I started to do some research. I went on to Google and I'm researching sprouts. This is I'm very proud to say this was long before ChatGPT or AI, like I had to do the work from Google searches to going to the library and doing microfiche, right? So for those of you who know what microfiche is, microfiche is old school, old school, but I wanted to get old articles and original information. And so as I went down the path and I'm learning about sprouts, I had a few revelations. And number one was that sprouts were vegetables. They weren't just like this garnish. They weren't like this little thing, a sprout. Like what were they? They were micro vegetables. They were vegetables and they contained every micronutrient, phytonutrient, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, every amino acid to form essential proteins and soluble and insoluble fiber. And so what really blew my mind on the nutritional component is that sprouts contained 20 to 100 times the nutrient density of the mature vegetable. So you can imagine an alfalfa sprout is green and it's tender and it's water-based and it's packed with nutrients. Alfalfa hay, you know, feed it to a horse, right? It's just a lot of insoluble fiber and roughage. So, as a plant gets bigger, it may gain more water content. It may gain more fiber, but there's a finite, a precise amount of nutrients that are in the seed and in the embryo and in the endosperm. And as the plant gets bigger, these things get diluted. So that was a new concept to me because I always trivialized the sprouts as being less nutritious, etc., and just something crunchy that people added. And then the third part, and you know this very well, was that sprouts were medicine. That there were thousands of peer-reviewed published studies on sulforaphane alone, which is the anti-cancer compound within the broccoli sprouts. So here I was, you know, saying, "Okay, sprouts, like I get it, right? I got it." Like that day of being glued to the research for that one day.
So over the next month, I started to live on sprouts. So in one cubic foot with six jars, I was growing thousands of calories a day. And I'm getting all my protein. I'm getting my amino acids. I'm getting my fiber. I'm having healthy movements, but I'm feeling alive. And I couldn't quite place it, like what it was. But if you think about almost the entire food supply chain of what people are consuming is dead, right? Or it's dying. So, you know, an apple, the time to eat an apple is when it falls off the tree and that's when it's freshest and the universe is saying, "Here's the ripe fruit. Eat it." Right? But if you take that apple and they, you know, the average apple, most people don't know this, is stored for six months in cold storage and then they're putting wax on it, right? And that wax could be beeswax, not vegan, or it could be petroleum-based wax or some synthetic other, like just incredible things. Um, and even like if you're eating broccoli, right, normal broccoli, normal asparagus, it's being cut away from the root system, right? And the average leaf of lettuce has traveled 2,000 miles across the country in a refrigerated truck, which sometimes it's refrigerated, sometimes it's not. So, do you know what happens? The moisture seeps into the wood. Like, it's a very unhealthy environment, those refrigerated trucks, and it's shipping mostly water weight and plastic. And you're the one who really, you and I really gelled on the plastics and microplastics long before it was in the news, right? We were both tuned into that. So, the idea that the sprouts were fresh became like my journey.
So over that next month as I was eating sprouts every single day as my primary source of calories, I was like, "Why isn't everybody sprouting? Like, what's going on?" So I called up Dr. Dean Ornish, who I knew previously, who wrote "Reversing Heart Disease," and he's like, "Oh my god, I love sprouts, concentrated nutrients, nutrient density. Sprouts are great, great for heart disease, etc." And I called up Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. Joel Kahn. And so all of them, they love sprouts. Then I ventured a little far out of my choir, right? So, I reached out to Mark Hyman, who's not plant-based, he's functional medicine, and he loved sprouts. Then I went even further and I spoke to Dr. Josh Axe, who wrote the keto book, and I was like, uh, what do you think of sprouts? He's like, "Oh, I love sprouts. I love the indolic carbonol. I love the sulforaphane." This is really, you know, nutritional field. He even invited me onto his podcast. So, it was really hard. So, as I interviewed all these medical doctors, even though they all had different disciplines, they all were huge proponents of sprouting. And I asked them, I said, "Hey, could I officially, officially interview you because I'm feeling inspired to write the Sprout book? Like, I really want to write the book and get this message out there because there had been people before us, you know, Ann Wigmore, Viktoras Kulvinskas, Steve Meyerowitz, Gabriel Cousens, David Wolfe. There are people who talked about sprouts, knew the insight of sprouts, but they weren't out there beating the drum every day. And there had never been a book published by a major publisher on sprouts. So I went and I said, "I'm gonna write the Sprout book." And so I contact, you know, the universe really provides, right? Um, so I had met Oprah Winfrey and Oprah had a great book. Wasn't all the way we would eat, but she had a great book. And I contacted the recipe developer who wrote Oprah's recipes book, who wrote the recipes for her book. And I said, "Look, I'm writing a book on sprouts, and I would like you to write the recipes. And here's the criteria. I want it to be all plant-based. I want it to be all raw, and I want 50% of the ingredients on average to be sprouts. And I need 40 recipes because I'm not a chef." So, I wanted to go not just to a chef, but to a chef's chef, the one who makes the recipes. And she said, "Doug, that is a tough assignment. I will do it." So, I wrote Lita a check. She comes up with the recipes and then I write, and you've written books. I wrote a book proposal. And so, I went to New York. I pitched one publisher. I contacted a local chef in New York. I gave her my recipes. She made the sprout dishes and I show up at the publisher and I was very enthusiastic at the time. I'm subdued now because I'm talking to a screen. In real life, I go off and you're pretty enthusiastic even on screen.
Well, yeah. I felt like I was bouncing off the walls. And I bring the sprouts and I lay out all the dishes and I swear, Chris, this woman was eating the sprouts out of the palm of my hand and she bought the book. And so that's how I got into sprouts.
Yeah. And the Sprout book, I think I called it the Sprouting book earlier, but yes, the Sprout book is fantastic. I do have it. And, yeah, that's amazing. Like, and I know it's done really well and a ton of people have bought it and read it. I want to encourage everybody listening to buy it, to buy it because it's great. Uh, I got into sprouting in 2004 because I started reading about raw food when I was trying to heal cancer. And sprouts were in all the raw food, you know, sort of healing books. It was a, it was just a major, you know, component of eating a healthy, plant-based diet that was either all raw or predominantly raw. And it's funny because my mom used to buy sprouts when I was a kid and she, we would always have alfalfa sprouts in the fridge, but it was just as a garnish. Like she loved to make for lunch or whatever, she would make me like a turkey sandwich, wheat bread, avocado, mayonnaise, and sprouts. And it was delicious, right? And that was so I was accustomed to sprouts being on sandwiches, right? And so I knew about them as a kid. But anyway, uh, but yeah, then coming full circle and learning like you did, oh wow, these are really nutrient-dense, like superfoods. And it, that big revelation that you had was a surprise to me too, is that you think of a bigger vegetable gets, the more nutritious it is, but there are certain nutrients that they don't, they don't multiply as the plant gets bigger. And so all the nutrients you could ever get are in the sprout. And when it becomes a mature plant, it's still the same amount, right? Like you said, it's more fiber, but it's not necessarily more nutritious in terms of micronutrients. So anyway, um, I think that's, I think that's amazing. And, uh, and I love that you have sort of brought the sprout, or you are bringing like sprouts back into the conversation of health and wellness because they really have sort of been like a stepchild, right? That they're just largely overlooked, underestimated, and people just view them as a topping on the salad or a garnish or a little added to your sandwich and not as a whole meal. And you've been living on sprouts, like giant sprout salads for years now, right? I mean, predominantly eating your diet is what, 90% sprouts or something?
It it ranges between 50 and 90% sprouts just because it's, it's literally hard to eat other vegetables when I know they're not fresh and I don't know where they came from. And our mutual friend Mike Pinner, um, he went to eat at a major restaurant at Sweetgreen. And so he's eating at Sweetgreen and he's meeting one of our other best friends for lunch. And Mike is bringing his glass Tupperware with a sprout salad and he's bringing his own part because the other stuff is just less even attractive to him. Like he wants to be able to control and direct everything that he's eating. So, he's choosing this on a very methodical level.
I want to show you something. I just created a slide here just to show you. Um, check this out. Just look at the color, the variety, the texture of these various sprouts, right? From the radish and that red is actually the antioxidant anthocyanin and the garbanzo sprouts and the lentils and the broccoli, like they have so much color and flavor and texture. And when you look at the progression of growth from like day one to day five, literally the sprouts grow 10x their size. So if you look at, I'm going to play this little video. This is, you know, the process. Those are my hands. I take a quarter cup of seeds, soak them, you know, over the course of a day. Then I rinse them. You add more water. You strain out the extra water. Then every 12 hours you're basically hydrating these seeds, now sprouts, and they are going through a metamorphosis from a seed into a vegetable literally right in front of your eyes with no other outside input. So you're already starting to see them green on day five. The transformation from day five to day six is extraordinary. Like literally, this is in a 12-hour growth, and the sprouts are going from 35 grams of seeds turn into 350 grams of sprouts. And so when you look at this, this is six servings of organic vegetables. You can take one quarter cup, this is four tablespoons of seeds, right? And they could be beautiful seeds. They could be a salad mix. You know, they could be these high glucoraphanin broccoli seeds. And one scoop of these will literally fill up an entire jar of sprouts in five days. It is really a miracle. Like I almost feel like the sprouts are so powerful they will burst out of the jar. So just imagine, you know, this to this in five days without extra inputs, like it's just water and the sprouts are intelligent enough to sequester carbon from the environment, oxygen from the environment, and a seed. Like no one should ever underestimate the power of a seed. A seed is a complete living organism that's in a dormant state. And when you soak that seed, you remove the phytic acid, the enzyme inhibitors, the lectins, and you unleash this life force into a metabolic transformation that is similar to that of a caterpillar into a butterfly that can fly. Like this transformation happens. The universe designed it or God designed it, however you want to say it. But this is a miracle. And because it's a living food, it's a miracle food. It is a fresh food. They don't sell it um in stores. It's rarely that you could find more than a cup of sprouts in a few selected health food stores, you know, in your neighborhood because what's selling in the grocery store, if you go down the aisles, canned food, boxed food, pasteurized food, frozen food, additives, preservatives, um, fillers, um, fortification. And the reason why they do that is because things have to sit on those shelves for long periods of time. And sprouts are highly perishable. So, the reason why sprouts have never made it into the zeitgeist and into the mainstream in the United States is because it's really hard to have a sprout business when you have short shelf life, low margins, lots of returns, plastic packaging, distribution. It just as a business, it really doesn't make sense to sell. We don't eat, we don't eat enough sprouts. We've not been educated on sprouts to eat enough for there being there to be enough demand for them to sell large amounts of sprouts in the grocery store. So yeah, you typically just see a very small container of alfalfa sprouts or broccoli sprouts. And I want to point out that what I was eating and I know what you eat are also, they are uh the sprouted legumes because the sprouted legumes are incredibly nutritious and also very high in protein. I mean, sprouted garbanzo beans, that's chickpeas, sprouted mung beans, sprouted lentils and broccoli sprouts and alfalfa. I put all of those on my giant salad, which I mean, there's a, you know, you can't see it in the video, but my, there's a picture of my giant salad right here on the cover of "Beat Cancer Kitchen," and there's sprouts in there, you know. So, it was a major part of my daily anti-cancer diet where not just little, you know, just a little garnish of sprouts, but but the sprouted legumes.
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Lentils are the staple of the plant-based diet around the world. People know that lentils are healthy. What they don't know is when you sprout a lentil, you increase the vitamin C by 300%. You quadruple the antioxidants and you make it much more bioavailable because of the enzymatic activity that's happening as the sprout is germinating and it's growing. So eating a sprout and lentil, and I can go grab some from my refrigerator. This is what we were feeding our daughter from age six. Like her first solid food was sprouts and like the ability to absorb and assimilate nutrition is a big deal. And so this was a powerful, powerful part. And what you said is like, when when you have access to pretty colorful things, people gravitate towards them. When you are in an environment like, you know, Captain Hook, the pirate, would grow sprouts on the pirate ship because his pirates were getting scurvy, a deficiency of vitamin C. So he brought seeds, sprouted them, and they ate sprouts to prevent scurvy on these transatlantic voyages. So, it's so interesting that what we're clueing into is not some remote arbitrary superfood that's coming from the Amazon, right? There could be some good ones there, too. I'm not dismissing that. We're talking about familiar items that we're eating already: broccoli, radish, clover, lentils, alfalfa, mung beans, green peas. And the only difference is we're talking about a state where they are medicinal grade. Like these are medicine because you're controlling the environment. And look, when we're growing these sprouts in glass and in stainless steel, right? So these seeds, I get the seeds, I rinse them off, I soak them, rinse them twice a day, and then I get a harvest. And this is like something to cherish. And you use the term stepchild. These were disregarded. And the fact is, if you have a lot of these, you can start to use these as your salad. I had a huge epiphany where for my family because my wife liked eating sushi and she liked rice and beans and she liked doing recipes. All of a sudden, her rice and beans were alfalfa sprouts and sprouted lentils and sprouted mung beans. That became the, the rice and beans, right? Shifting. And rice, by the way, is a seed. So, you actually can sprout rice and literally bring it to life. It's just hard because most rice is treated and it's processed and it's hard to find sproutable available rice. So the sprouts on the seeds, when I was doing research for the book, I found seeds that were 1200 years old that still germinated, right? Literally, like imagine 12 centuries, this they still have the life force bioavailable in them. But for sprouting, we want the freshest seeds. Like, we want the freshest because we want the highest germination rate. And one of the reasons why I started the Sprouting Company was because I wanted to know everything. I'm really into the details. So, I wanted to know where the seeds were coming from. I wanted to test the seeds to make sure they had a high germination rate. I wanted to test the seeds to make sure they were non-GMO. I wanted the seeds to be organic and I wanted the seeds to be tested for pathogens. So that takes effort to imagine on every batch of seeds that comes in, you take off a scoop, you grow them, and then you take the wastewater and you send it off to a lab to make sure there is no pathogens in the seeds. Um, so there was a lot that went into it and no one was doing it at the level and the quality that I wanted. And then, you know, I started off using mason jars. And turns out the mason jars were designed for canning, their shape, their structure. And I wanted something that I knew would have the right angles for drainage, that would be the right size for growing sprouts for food. And cheesecloth is what I started using for sprouting. As I went down the path, it turns out the cheesecloth is porous and as you're rinsing the seeds, you're they're shedding the exudate and the bacteria and it's getting stuck in the cheesecloth. So, the cheesecloth wasn't as sanitary as I wanted it to be. So, I made this beautiful, you know, stainless steel filter. And then I made a big jar. This is double the size of an average mason jar. And because my wife has small handles, I put detents in it so she could hold it with her tiny hands and not drop it and just made something that we loved.
How many ounces is your sprouting jar?
It's 55 oz when full.
That's big. As opposed to 32 oz. Five and a half or six servings, you know, of vegetables, which is literally, you know, that quarter cup, the little cup of seeds will generate literally five and a half cups, full cups. A cup is like the size of a fist of vegetables. And US dietary guidelines recommend 7 to 13 servings, right? Fist of fruits and vegetables every day. The average American is consuming less than one, and they even consider French fries to be a vegetable. So the world is so upside down and backwards where people are considering French fries and beef tallow to be a health food, like to be.
That's right. Yeah. That's right. Well, this is what I love. I love about you. One is that you're committed to help people understand, you know, how healthy sprouts are and how easy they are. But two is that you have now taken the next step. One, you designed the best sprouting jar on the market. I have two of them. I need to get two more, frankly, because I want to have a full garden going. Heck, I could even have six, six going, really. And folks, this is the amazing thing about sprouting is like, I think a lot of people fantasize about growing their own food. When you sprout, you are growing your own food. Like this is what you're doing. And by the way, if you think about this from a prepper standpoint, there is no faster way to produce food in a crisis than sprouting. You literally have food. You can go from having no food to growing edible food in five days. You can't do that in the ground, right? And you know, you can't do that with any kind of outdoor garden. It takes a lot longer to grow food outside. Plus, you got pests to deal with and, you know, rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks, right? You know, all these bugs and animals trying to eat your food where you can grow it inside on your kitchen counter or anywhere in your house, frankly. Uh, and, uh, and have food. If you have multiple jars, you can have multiple types of sprouts going and you can, as one jar gets start to get empty, you got another one that's coming up, you know. So you can cycle your sprout production and really have your, you can grow as much food as you want with with sprouts. So I love the jar that you made and, uh, and then having, I don't know if I said this already, but your commitment to having the highest quality sprout seeds on the market. Yeah. Uh, and that's big, too, because again, there's a lot of companies that sell seeds, but, you know, they're just, they're not really into it like you are. They're not as obsessed about quality organic seeds, high glucoraphanin, broccoli seeds. No one else is doing this. There probably will be some copycats that come along. Yeah. Uh, shortly, but, uh, but you really are the, to me, you're really pioneering this, and it's awesome. And so, you know, that's what the Sprouting Company is, folks. I, I think I mentioned it at the beginning of our interview, but you can go to the Sprouting Company, see these jars, buy the seeds, like, and get going, like, like that. I mean, it's awesome.
Well, look, I think the point is, Chris, is that everyone has to find their purpose and, you know, working is tough and, you know, life in these times is filled with trials and tribulations. And, you know, what got me into this healthy lifestyle was literally when my aunt developed type 2 diabetes and my mother called me. I was 33 years old and she goes, "You got to come to the hospital right now because she was getting ready to undergo risky surgery because they were performing a double amputation." So, she was fully out and if you, you know this as well as anyone, when someone goes out under full anesthesia, they may not come back, right? So, surgery is very difficult. And so they performed this double amputation and I was mortified. Like I couldn't imagine what it would be like not to walk, not to be able to wiggle my toes, not to be able to have faculty. And it almost didn't even matter. She went through this, you know, surgery and then she died of complications with diabetes anyway because all they were doing was removing a symptom, right? They were chopping off, you know, the feet that had no lost nerve endings and other parts and circulation. And then my mother developed stomach cancer. We thought it was an ulcer, but she went into the hospital and all of a sudden three months later, she never came out. And, you know, she died and I watched her go from being a seemingly slightly overweight, sweet as could be woman into the hospital and, you know, thinking like, well, when is she getting out? When is she getting out? And so we'd go and visit her and by the time I got back to Miami, you know, where she died, um, I missed her. Like literally, like it just went so quickly. And then before I could even finish grieving the loss of my mother, my father died of heart disease. And what, you know, I didn't know this, but the first symptom of undiagnosed heart disease is death. I would argue, I think there is an early symptom in men which is erectile dysfunction. Yeah.
Well, I have to say, like that just FYI, guys, erectile dysfunction is a symptom of cardiovascular disease. So, well, that's very good. That's very good. I never checked with him on that. We didn't know he had heart disease. I guess maybe who knows, you know, what's going on. My dad was 77, so I wasn't expecting him to be that viral. Um, anyway, so but you know, he was also depressed when my mother, but the undiagnosed, and I guess erectile dysfunction is a symptom, but if someone doesn't connect the dots, they just think like they, you know, they lost it. You know what the treatment is for erectile dysfunction? They think they've got a Viagra deficiency. So they get the Viagra deficiency. So, so the drug system is they literally first they want you on statins, then they want you on blood thinners, then they want you on metformin, and now if you're overweight or obese, they want you on GLP1, you know, Ozempic or Wegovy or the like. And it turns out, and that when someone is overweight and they go on the weight loss drugs, it is very risky to what happens on the weight loss drugs. And it's almost like a double-edged sword. Like which way do you go? Because if you stay overweight, you're in really high risk of cardiovascular and other diseases and cancers. But if you do these drugs and you rapidly do it, you're on the drugs for life. And the drugs can have other complications. And so randomly, this came to me when I learned that sprouts are the number one weight loss food in the world because they are high fiber, low fat, low calorie, and they fill you up. And when they're filling you up, you, your body naturally secretes GLP1 peptide. So, and if you're consuming food without oil, without salt, without additional sweetener, and you're just eating the sprouts, there's no propensity to overeat. Like, literally, you'll eat, your brain will say, "I'm nourished," and then you'll go on living your life, right? So, it's so interesting that I've never, I've seen people overeat everything. I've never seen anyone overeat sprouts on a consistent basis. Sometimes in the beginning, if they've got all this nervous and anxiety, they feel like, "Oh, I need to eat, eat." But, you know, over a week or two, they'll just chill and they'll just eat the sprouts. They'll get their nourishment and then they can go back to their family or they could go back to their work or they could go back to the exercise. But there's a newfound energy that people will have and they're eating the other food to just kind of bring them back down, you know, that it kind of brings them down, you know, that's why they, it's like a downer. So part of, you know, eating healthy is like, be prepared to live your life. Like really think about what do you want to do with your time because you're now going to have life back. Like you've had, you know, 20 plus years life back since your cancer diagnosis. And for me, when I saw my entire family, you know, suffer from chronic illness equaling death, I thought I was genetically cursed. I thought like I was going to be next, like nothing mattered. And then I met this woman and she's like, "Oh, Doug, it's not your genes." I was like, "What are you talking about?" She's like, "It's your lifestyle. You're living a sedentary lifestyle. You're eating junk food, processed food, refined food. The food that you're eating is going to kill you. So, you're eating it, you're living a diabetic, carcinogenic, heart disease-laden lifestyle. And if you just shifted to a living foods, living light lifestyle, then you're going to have a whole, it's just you're going to be born again." And I was like, "Really?" And I registered the domain in 1999 called Still Raw because I was, it was such an effort every day to stay raw, to still raw. So, I would blog and I would post and I'd make a little checkbox and all of a sudden I started to accumulate hours because getting through a day was hard and then I got through days and I got through weeks and now it's been a quarter century and I'm going to, I can't even believe it, Chris. I'm going to be 59 in June. 59 years young and I feel like, you know, I have a two and a half year old daughter and all of her friends have parents that are young enough to be my children. So, I'm literally grandfather age and I'm like hanging out with these young, young people and my MC Jagger. Yeah. Or Bobby De Niro. He's 81. Yeah.
I think it's amazing. I mean, you're in such great shape too. How many push-ups do you do a day?
300 a day. I did 100,000 last year.
300. Think about that, folks. 300 push-ups a day eating a diet that's all raw and it's predominantly sprouts. I know it's, I mean, I know people are listening and watching going, "I don't understand. It's breaking my brain." But, uh, but that's good. We're trying to break your brain because, uh, the truth is that we've been led to believe that we need to eat all kinds of foods that we don't need, right? You don't need to eat animal protein three times a day. You don't need it. You can have incredible health and energy and strength and vitality and a youthful appearance if you eat a diet that is really high in nutrients, micronutrients that you get from fruits and vegetables, herbs, nuts and seeds, and sprouts. And, uh, when you eat a diet that is full of cooked food, dead food, processed food, fast food, junk food, that that diet will fill you up. You'll enjoy it. It will give you some energy. When you eat a lot of processed carbs and sugar and caffeine, you'll get energy from it. But over time, your health will decline because you are slowly poisoning and polluting your body with a lot of inefficient molecules like saturated fat and food additives and processed refined sugar, corn syrup, things like that. And so, um, there is an alternative. There's an alternative to weight loss drugs or taking a bunch of medications for the rest of your life. And that alternative is changing your diet and your lifestyle. It's the best path to regain your health and your vitality and increase your lifespan. And so obviously, you, you all can tell why I love Doug because he's so passionate and articulate and enthusiastic and he's also an innovator. I mean, again, the Sprouting Company is awesome. I love their jars, love their seeds. Like it's my favorite, you know, I say discovery, the company's only been around a couple years, but it really is my favorite discovery in the last couple years. As soon as I found Doug and saw what he was up to, I was like, "This is awesome. Like, why didn't I think of that?"
Yeah. Well, it, I mean, it was amazing. I almost feel that, you know, I had your book and I watched one of your podcasts and then literally in my inbox, in my email, there was a message, you know, from someone on your team that said, "Chris would like to invite you to be on your podcast." And this was before I even started the company. This was just when I wrote the book. And I was like, "Wow, wow. The universe is conspiring and doors are opening because I'm doing the right thing." And so I really feel that this is my personal mission in life is to share this message and to go to all effort to make this happen. So, you know, I love my family. My family supports my work, you know, and I travel, you know, to give talks. I talk to one, sometimes I'll talk to one person. I got invited to speak and like three people showed up, right? Because they didn't promote it. And, you know, and I was like so happy that I got to connect deep with these three people, you know, and they're all sprouting now. And so the fact that we get to share these messages and what I can tell you is a lot of people that are overweight, it's easier for them to self-medicate with more of the food that made them overweight than it is to change. And what I could share with you is that no one is going to take care of you as much as you and your creator. And you have to just take a moment and feel worthy of the blessing of life. Like if you're listening to this podcast, you have won the ovarian lottery. You have won. So you're already in the game. And doesn't matter whether you're, you know, 13 years old or 80 years old. As long as there is breath in you, you can make better decisions. You can improve your decisions. And it's up to you. I'm not going to, you know, reach through the screen and force anyone to do anything. Like this is an invitation that I'm sharing with you that Chris is sharing with you. And a lot of things are inaccessible. Like if we came out and said, "You need to have this special fruit that comes from the Amazon. It's $100 a pound, blah blah blah." No. A serving of organic sprouts is about 37 cents. You get the kit, you buy the seeds. A bag of seeds like this, an 8 oz bag of seeds will give you five and a half jar fills. Each jar is five servings or more. So it's just the, the math. It, it's, we've removed the financial barrier to eating healthy. So one bag like that is about 30 servings of sprouts.
Yeah. So what it takes, that's the miracle. You know, the, don't mean to cut you off, but really is the miracle of like a tiny seed or a small, is it a quarter, a quarter cup is the serving size?
Is yeah, one quarter cup of, yeah, one quarter cup of seeds.
Right. Turn filling up a jar in five days, like creating this incredible volume of food is so miraculous to watch because it happens so fast. It's amazing. And folks, here's the thing, you don't have to convert to an all-raw diet. You don't have to convert to a plant-based diet. Like the main thing I want you to take away from this interview is that if you get a sprouting jar and start sprouting, all you have to do is just add a side of sprouts to your meals, right? And start there. Just start with a small side salad of lentil sprouts, broccoli sprouts, or the salad mix, which they sell a bag that's got three different seeds, four, five seeds in it.
Five different seeds in it. The mix is alfalfa seeds, broccoli seeds, lentil seeds, mung bean seeds, and radish seeds.
That's perfect. Like, I love that. So, just that mix alone, sprout that up, make yourself a little side salad, eat it with your lunch or with your dinner every day, and you're already like increasing the nutritional value of your meal by a huge factor. I mean, really, just that small, small side salad. And then of course, you can, once you kind of figure that out, you can then you can, you know, branch out from there to to use a plant-related analogy or expression, I should say. But, uh, yeah, then you can experiment with what if I ate just a whole big sprout salad that's just all sprouts and that's my whole meal. And you can do like things that Doug and I do. But it's just easy to get started. You don't have to, you just don't have to overthink it.
Yeah. I mean, you can talk to your doctor, your nutritionist, your dietitian. A lot of people are using protein powders and you could actually use a handful of sprouts for your protein in your smoothie and shake. Like, and then you're getting, in addition to the full amino acid profile, you're also getting fiber, you're getting antioxidants, you're getting vitamin C. So you're improving the nutrition there. So there's a lot of ways to just tune into this. And if someone likes juicing, right, you can take the broccoli sprouts and most juicers like the Nama or the Green Star or a wheatgrass juicer will juice the broccoli sprouts and you, one little shot of that is literally like, you know, one ounce of broccoli sprouts has the concentrated nutrition of a whole head of broccoli, right? From the phytonutrients, sulforaphane, glucosinolate level. So, it's really like there's a lot going on here. And it's such a miracle that literally it's like one mic drop after the next mic drop. So, I, I want to just peel it back and just say, hey, vegetables are good for you. Sprouts are vegetables. I never grew anything successfully in a garden or a farm, but I've almost been able to. Every crop I've ever grown on my countertop has been successful with sprouting and takes a couple minutes a day. And I think people that are tuned into you, Chris, are people that want to be healthy. And this is the most affordable, accessible way to begin your health journey. And I could tell you the more sprouts you eat, the less room you will have to eat anything else. And, you know, from a support organization, it's really interesting. There's almost nothing between eating unhealthy and Overeaters Anonymous, which has a lot of shame, etc., to it. So people have to find, you know, their path in the continuum. And if you go out and you tell someone, hey, I want to eat sprouts or I want to eat this, they think you're crazy. Like, you know, where it's normalized now to eat pizza, pasta, burgers, and the like. So something else I would share with you. I'm at a level where I now have the tenacity of conviction that it doesn't matter who's approaching me and where I am. I will not be um subject to peer pressure or manipulation. I went to Washington D.C. I was invited to the Congressional Black Caucus. I'm sitting at a table with CEOs and executives from the largest corporations in America and they were serving filet mignon and salmon steak and I said, "Just give me a blank plate, empty plate." And I had two paper bags, one with sprouts in it and one with some fruits and then I would just pull something out and all eyes were on me and the waiter was coming and I was, "No, no, no. I don't, I don't want like I'm content." And people like, "Well, what are you doing?" I was like, "Oh, I just really love fruits and fruits and sprouts. I like fruits and sprouts." And no one judged me. No one, you know, felt like, oh, you need to do this. So, and and that's because I didn't make them wrong. I didn't tell them, "Oh, don't eat the, you know, don't eat that salmon because it's got, you know, pesticides and chemicals from the factory farmed salmon, blah blah blah." And don't like, I just kept my mouth shut. No judgment, just me being joyful about doing what I was doing. And I actually shared all of my fruit. I didn't get to eat any of the fruit. And I gave out little samples of the sprouts only to people who asked. I didn't force myself on anybody. And I made a whole bunch of friends and several people bought my book and they're sending me DMs on Instagram and like they're happy and I'm not attached. People do whatever they want to do. But as long as you're not telling other people what to do, no one really cares what you do.
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we're just here to encourage, right? We're here to encourage people to to think differently, to try new things, to experiment with your diet and your lifestyle choices and see what happens. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you just treat these changes, they're not an obligation. There's no guilt. There's no shame. Just treat it like a personal experiment. What will happen if I start eating differently? What would happen if I started eating sprouts more, eating more fruits and vegetables? Like, you might really enjoy it. That's my prediction is that you'll really enjoy it. But, you know, it's funny. I have a, you just reminded me, I have a little pet peeve, which is, you know, anytime I'm out eating in a situation like you're in, right? And people notice that I'm eating differently, then they start asking me questions. And I actually hate talking about it while other people are eating, right? I hate talking about food and healthy stuff while other people are sitting around a table eating unhealthy. It's just so, it's so awkward that I'd really try my best to not to just avoid it. Um, but, you know, just because I'm like, "Oh yeah, you know, whatever. Red meat, that's terrible for you." And people are like right in the middle of a bite, you know. So, um, I, I'm just like, "Well, just get my book and they can learn about it later."
Yeah. But, uh, well, I think what I've adjusted to, Chris, is rather than telling them that their stuff is bad and poisonous and carcinogenic and will clog their arteries and cause a heart attack, disease, and cancer, what I do is I just talk about how great sprouts are and how great the fruits are. And I, I let them, you know, put two and two together. So as long as, like, I'm focusing on what I love, you know, that's that's where the magic comes in. And I think that, you know, I remember going to a friend's house and the mother made like this great complex course, you know, all these meals and all these things and caviar and they had eggs and they had this blue French cheese and everything else. And I was like, um, I, I thank you so much. I love what you put in right now. I'm actually only feeling like water right now. And I'm like touching my tummy. I said, "I don't think I can, I don't think I can eat a thing. I just, I just, I just want water." And because I've done extended water fasts, to me it's nothing to get through a meal or a day, you know, skipping a meal. Like all I need to do, there's I can find fat. Like I'm pretty lean right now at 150. I can find some fat on my body. All I do is feed that fat. I go, "Oh, I'm going to be eating this left hip right now, you know, like this part of here." And like that's it. And the obsession over food is because the food today is so addictive between
The the the sugars and the concentrated fats and the sweeteners that it's really gives you a great dopamine high. And that's where, you know, being very aware of what you put in your mouth will determine, you know, so many factors.
So there are sweet things you could eat. Like I love fruit now and I'm I'm 100% content with fruit. I've got no FOMO about eating anything else wherever I am. And you know like you you know you talk about the cooked food like I'll still eat you know um a steamed steamed vegetable you know or some quinoa or something if it's there. So my hard cooked food for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
So my hard line is plant-based. That's like where my hard line is. But I prefer intellectually and spiritually I want the raw and living food like that. That's what I want. And it's hard. But I have no judgment. I only want people to have an opportunity to live their best life. And before Sprouts, it was hard for me to say with a straight face to anyone and everyone that I met that they could do it too because of socioeconomic reasons or geography. And now I can look anybody. I did a podcast with Marian Williamson talking about food scarcity and food deserts and came to conclusion that anyone no matter where you live could actually have fresh organic vegetables in your diet visav sprouting.
That's great. Well, I just love that you're such a positive example for not only eating a super healthy diet, plant-based diet, lots of raw food, uh, you know, consuming massive amounts of sprouts, which again is a revelation for a lot of people that that you can live and thrive eating a diet that's predominantly sprouts. Uh, and uh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're just leading by example, and it's great. And, uh, I'm just glad to be your friend. glad to uh enthusiastically endorse you, the Sprout Book and the Sprouting Company. And I probably said it already, but folks, just go to the Sprouting Company.com, get a sprouting jar or a couple sprouting jars. They've got deals going and sales and different things or promotions or whatever, but we'll put a link below the video, but just go get go get a jar, a couple jars, and the seeds. They'll send you the seeds with the jars and just get going. just like get some sprouts going in your house and you'll just love it. I think you'll love the process.
By the way, people are thinking like, I don't know how to do it. The the instructions are very simple. They come with the jar, you know, but it's literally you just soak them in water overnight. Then you drain the water and then twice a day you just fill it up with water and pour the water out. That's just one rinse. You do that two times a day and in five days, give or take, you'll have a jar full of sprouts. It really could not be easier. It takes almost no time like to uh to rinse rinse the jar out twice a day. So, uh that's it. Yeah.
Well, and Chris, what I could say is like whatever sauce, whatever seasoning, whatever flavors people like, whether they like, you know, Srirachi sauce or tahini sauce or, you know, Italian vinegrett, like whatever people like, they can use that, you know, for um for the sprouts. like it it it it's not an all or nothing. You know, you can add your favorite flavors to the sprouts and that's, you know, that's an amazing transformation to people because they don't know that, right? They they think, oh, it's all or nothing. And the fact is you can add the specific things that you want um to get the flavors that you want. Yeah. Just make the sprout salad your side salad, right? That's just that's just step one right there. Yeah. And look, I I just want have dressing on it. Yeah.
And well well Chris and um I think your code whatever it is is just Chris. So C H R I S. So you know pop that in there and you'll get a surprise bonus. That's right. I forgot about that. Thank you. Yeah, we set up a you set up a coupon code for my audience. Coupon code Chris. Use it at checkout and see what happens. I think you'll I think you'll like it. Uh, and I'm not going to tell you what it is because it might change over time, but it's it's there's always going to be uh a discount or some kind of bonus for you uh that'll exist perennially with the coupon code Chris. So, anyway, uh yeah, thanks for doing that. I appreciate that.
My pleasure, Chris. Well, look, um I love you. I love your family. Thank you for um giving me this platform to share the message of the sprouts. It makes me feel even more than I'm being divinely guided. Love you too, Doug. You You are awesome. Thanks for your uh your just enthusiasm and uh tenacious persistence. I appreciate it so much and I appreciate just the connections you've made for me and uh you've introduced me to just some great people and yeah, you're you got such a big heart and so uh yeah, it's fun to hang out and do another interview and thanks for watching folks. We'll put links below uh again to learn more about the Sprout Book, Sprouting Company and connect with Doug on various social media channels. He's great. Uh he he's he stays pretty active on Instagram. So uh anyway, thanks for watching. And we'll see you on the next one.