Dr Rupy: What most people don't know is that when you go into the supermarket, even to buy fresh produce, that head of lettuce or that bag of salad could be a week or two or three weeks old. But when you're growing your own sprouts, you are getting a fresh harvest every single day. I mean, it's not just less expensive, it's not just more nutritious, it's actually fresher.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life. Shoots, sprouts, microgreens, salad greens, grasses, activated nuts, it can be a confusing business. But I have Doug Evans on the podcast today, the Sproutman himself, to talk us through how powerful and easy sprouting your own can be. If you don't know Doug Evans, he is an early pioneer in the natural food industry. He now has quite the idyllic lifestyle in the Mojave Desert on a permaculture hot springs oasis. He actually co-founded Organic Avenue, one of the first exclusively plant-based retail chains in the US. And let me just say this, revolutionising gardening and growing your own food right in your own kitchen, no need for soil, sometimes no need for light, in an affordable and accessible way is going to be an absolute game changer for a lot of you. And if you haven't sprouted and you have my first cookbook, I actually talk about sprouting and how to sprout broccoli and mung beans in one of the intro chapters. But for the definitive guide, do check out Doug's The Sprout Book to learn how to grow and eat the most nutritious food on the planet. Do remember you can watch this podcast on YouTube and subscribe whilst you're there as well. And we didn't go too much into the research around sprouting, the impact of broccoli sprouts on things like liver detoxification, inflammation status. We're going to link to a few research articles on the doctorskitchen.com, but in the meantime, we will be doing a bit more research and a few more episodes on sprouting because I feel like it's an untapped resource that is super powerful. Do check out the Doctor's Kitchen app for free, you can download it from the App Store. We have hundreds of different recipes that you can filter according to health goals. And if you're in the mood for subscriptions, do check out the Eat, Listen, Read newsletter. Every single week, I send you a recipe, something to listen to, something to read, some mindfully curated content that will hopefully put a smile on your face, just like this podcast.
Dr Rupy: We we're already recording, so we edit everything afterwards. If you want to say something again or something's not quite right, I'll just take a note of it and then we can we can just carry on rolling.
Doug Evans: Oh my god, I love dealing with professionals.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, we're doing this for a little while, man.
Doug Evans: Such a such an honour dealing with professionals.
Dr Rupy: Of course, of course, man.
Doug Evans: Well, that's that's super exciting. And before we before we we start, Rupy, I'm just curious, how is your personal sprout game? Because I don't want to put you on the spot either.
Dr Rupy: No, no, no. No, no, please do. Put me on the spot. I'll I'll tell you all about it. Me and my family have been sprouting for years, which is why I was super excited to, you know, get into this and like compare notes with my mom, because my mom's been like sprouting fenugreek seeds, we call it methi, because it's it's it's pretty popular in obviously in Indian culture and stuff. Radish seeds, broccoli sprouts. I'm not a very good sprouter myself, but my my mom's like a pro, like she can she can sprout anything. You just give her any legume or whatever, she'll she'll sprout the hell out of it. So yeah, so but but we we should definitely get into it.
Doug Evans: Okay, terrific. All right. Well, the show is yours. I'm here. I guess you're recording. So I'm I'm just ready to be the best guest ever.
Dr Rupy: No, dude, you're you're already the best guest. I've I've heard a bunch of your stuff. I've been a fan. I've read the book, obviously. I'm a big fan of sprouting. I think it's one of those, I think one of the things you did really well with with the book and and all the content you're putting out there is that you're actually being a connector between people in the health game who have quite seemingly diverse views. Like some paleo folks, some carnivore, some, maybe not carnivores, but you know, the vegan folks and the and the Mediterranean folks, and like everyone can agree on on sprouts. And I think you found that sort of rare common ground that that's really good to see.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I mean, look, I do think some carnivore people like Ben Greenfield is like hardcore, eats meat, like we have almost nothing in common, except he likes his broccoli sprouts. And and you know, certain carnivores, people eating the carnivore diet won't eat garbanzo beans because they like look and they go, oh, the carbs are too high. And he's his own thinker, so he makes his own decisions. He's like, of course I'm going to eat sprouted garbanzo beans because I see the protein, I see the phytonutrients, I see the antioxidants. Of course I'm going to eat them.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Look, before we get started into it, like where are you at the moment? Are you I'm assuming you're in the states?
Doug Evans: Yeah, I'm in the states. I'm in Southern California. I'm in the Mojave Desert. We live on a hot spring. So it's a pretty epic experience in a 100 square mile community with 600 people and almost no light pollution and just beautiful energy and geothermal activity under the the land.
Dr Rupy: That's epic. Wow. The energy must be incredible. I mean, being part of that small knit community and just like the the natural resources and everything. I mean, this in part, I guess was part of your journey toward towards sprouts, right? Like finding nutritious foods that you could secure yourself and and essentially grow in in a desert.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I mean, what happened is I moved here because I wanted to be away from it all. I was in the toxic triangle of New York, LA and San Francisco. And I wanted to be in nature. And so when I moved here, everything was terrific. It was quiet. I had peace. I'm living in a tent. But then I had an existential crisis relative to food. Like what was I going to eat? And then the not being able to have food, you know, caused me to almost think I needed to leave. And that's when I I discovered sprouting or rediscovered sprouting because I had known about sprouting. Like it wasn't new to me, but I had never taken sprouts seriously. It's like your mother can sprout anything, but she also eats all these other things and they're part of her life. Imagine being in the twilight zone where your only food was sprouts, right? Because that's where it was. It was a lot of polarity. It was I either eat sprouts or junk food. And there was no way I was going to eat junk food. So I started to eat sprouts. And initially, I I wasn't dreading it, but I was like, is this going to work? And I I just developed this love, this deep love and affinity for the magic of sprouts. And this is going to be the first podcast I talk about the magical properties where the numbers in sprouts don't add up. Like there's something there's something about the, you know, math, 1 + 1 = 2. If you were to look on a molecular level about what's inside of a seed, right? And you take the seed, you you grind it up, you add whatever chemicals and acids and they do a profile of what's in that seed, you know, it's finite. It would have so many proteins, so many carbs, so much vitamins, right? And then you take water, H2O, and you add it to it, you get a fusion-like reaction where this this seed comes to life in the germination process where it doubles the antioxidant levels, it triples the vitamin C, and new phytonutrients emerge out of the seed that that seemingly did not exist before. So there's something to be said about the the real thing with sprouting. It's the seed itself, it's water, it's oxygen, there's carbon in the universe, and then there's the magic of the enzymatic germination process, which is the same life force that's in us is in the seed, which may look like a pebble, but it's actually a complete dormant living organism, and when activated, it explodes.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I remember when my my mom was telling me about the benefits of sprouting and the reason why, and I think, you know, she's quite rooted in Ayurvedic tradition. I mean, obviously, you know, she's a scientist in her own right and she she worked in financial institutions and and all the rest of it. But she still is very much rooted in the traditional explanation as to why nutritious ingredients like sprouts are so healthful. And the way she would explain it to me, as like a as a medical student and as a doctor many years later, I I just never really got it. And I had to really deep dive into a bit of the research to figure out, okay, what are these phytochemicals? Why is it so healthful? And I think the simplest way that I think about sprouts is if, you know, you have a seed for a massive tree, that seed has the potential to go into a huge, huge plant with all the other derivatives of it, the leaves, the branches, the extensive root system, everything is compounded within this little seed. And that that germination process is capturing a lot of that energy, capturing a lot of that nutrition that you can consume. So I think perhaps to anchor the listener, why don't we, because we're going to be using a lot of these words interchangeably. Why don't we talk about like what is a seed? What is a shoot? What what about grasses? What about activated nuts? Give us the sort of the bird's eye view of this whole arena of sprouting, and then we can perhaps dive into some specific examples.
Doug Evans: Okay, Rupy, that's a that's a great place to start. So if you think about fundamentally, all plant life on the planet begins with seeds. And there is the seed is actually a product of the fruit of the plant. And we, you know, fruits and vegetables are seemingly combined into one discussion, like in the health food store, there's the produce section that contains fruits and vegetables. What I've learned over the years is that actually vegetables and fruits are actually part of the same plant. That that if you were to take the evolution, you know, of a seed, you get the seed, you soak the seed and germinate it, it it sprouts, which gets a shoot that comes up, a root that goes down. The roots can get root hairs and the shoots go up and form leaves and then grow. And in sprouting, what really is the biggest insight that I've had about sprouting, which really propelled me to write the book, which was sprouts actually can grow from zero to seven days without soil, without sunshine, without fertilizer, that they contain within them that potential. Beyond the one week, they then require something for those roots to sink into. They require additional nutrients, ala fertilizer. They require sun or daylight for photosynthesis and then they grow. So we go from seed to sprout, and the next level of beyond that in the non-technical term is called microgreens. So people are having microgreens and the microgreens are grown in soil or a sprouting medium, whether it's coconut or jute or hemp, or in my book, I even mentioned you can use an unbleached paper towel as a growing medium. Then it needs to go into deeper soil or into the ground, and then it grows from the microgreen into like an herb size, and then it grows over months into mature vegetable. And then if you let the vegetable keep growing, it will then flower, right? It can be pollinated, and then the flowering will then fruit. And inside the fruit will have seeds or it may have pods, like a like a bean pod, and inside that pod may have dozens, if not hundreds of more seeds, which can then plant and grow and it's the infinite multiplicative properties of nature to to spread. And similar to like sperm cells where, you know, you only need one sperm cell to meet with the egg to to form a baby, that nature is intelligent knowing that the environment for success is very low. Like the percentage of of actual seeds that will form, you know, the oak, like a an oak tree may have tens of thousands of acorns, right? And every year produces tens of thousands of acorns. The amount of those acorns that actually form new oak trees is very, very little. So, so the insight that that I had was, wow, plants are producing copious, seemingly infinite amounts of seeds, and certain seeds we eat in various cultures. Like we eat sesame seeds, we eat poppy seeds, we eat pumpkin seeds. So those seeds are very common in various cuisines. No one that I know eats broccoli seeds or radish seeds, right? And they can be eaten and they have great nutritive properties, but seeds in order to survive in nature have been designed with a natural form of preservatives. So the seeds have enzyme inhibitors to protect them over time. They have lectins, they have trypsins, they have phytic acid, and these are designed to protect the seed, right? They're protecting the seed. And what happens in various forms of nature, one is that for the seed to properly propagate, it needs to have the right environment. So that right environment in certain aspects of nature might be the belly of a beast. An animal eats the fruit, they're digesting through their intestinal structure, the various fruit and nutrients, and the stomach acids are helping remove the enzyme inhibitors, and then the seed will go through the entire digestive tract unharmed. I mean, very unlikely that most animals will actually be chewing the seeds 50 times, breaking them down. So the seeds will largely go through the entire digestive tract undigested, but ready and fertile to sprout. And then they go into the poop and they go into the ground, the the fine line between poop and fertilizer and soil, and then will sprout and then grow. So that's one path. What we do is we simulate that environment, you know, by just using water or paper towels or sprouting medium to create the balance of moisture. And part of the book was really the sprout code, right? What does it take to take a specific seed and help it through the metamorphosis from seed into vegetable? And that process can be as simple as soaking the seed overnight, then rinsing the excess water and then adding water and straining it two to three times a day so that you're hydrating the seed, slowly wearing down the outer shell while providing the water molecules inside to trigger and activate the germination process. And then nature does the rest. It's pretty easy that in that one week, we we almost get a hall pass. Like, it's so easy that anyone can do it. Once it has to go out into nature and into the garden, then it requires that green thumb and that level of sophistication. But in that one week for sprouting, anybody can sprout, literally from ages six to 100 years old, people are capable of sprouting. So they get that hall pass, the cheat code, it's that easy.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I I I totally agree with that. I think one of the best lines in the book that I came across was, um, not not everybody has a green thumb, but everyone has a sprouting hand. And I I love that line because I'm not great with plants. I'll be honest. Like, uh, if there is an indestructible house plant, uh, if I'm looking after it, it doesn't usually survive. But when it came to sprouting, like, I I'm pretty good at sprouting. Like, I can do my broccoli sprouts, I can do sunflower seeds and all that kind of stuff. And I want to get a bit into like some of the the individual benefits and and how that, you know, 1 + 1 = 3, uh, because the the benefits that, um, I've certainly seen in some research studies for broccoli sprouts, which is like the darling of the sprout world, are pretty impressive, but I I feel like we're just scratching the surface here. And you know, you've got a habit of of coming to things pretty early and being, you know, a bit of a pioneer in these things as you were with, um, juicing and and all the other kind of stuff that you did with organics, uh, and and organic Avenue as well. So I I'd love to dig into some of the other sprouts that we should really be thinking about beyond, um, broccoli.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I think broccoli, um, to me is very medicinal. Like, you know, you being a doctor are well aware that there's been a lot of research over the last several decades of the anti-cancer properties of cruciferous vegetables. And out of all the cruciferous vegetables, um, the the top is broccoli, right? And the work of Dr. Jed Fahey at Johns Hopkins was looking for a variety of broccoli that would have the most anti-cancer properties. And what he concluded, um, in his research is it wasn't which type of broccoli, it was which stage of broccoli. And that's where he really pioneered broccoli sprouts and approximately day three has the most of the glucosinolates, um, that are the precursor to sulforane. So that's on the broccoli. Other cruciferous vegetables may or may not have the sulforane, but broccoli does and it does in large amounts. And the interesting point about that is that as the broccoli grows larger, it doesn't gain more of the glucoraphanin, this isothiocyanate. It actually, as it grows, it actually gets diluted, it gets thinner. So there's a finite amount dispatched to every seed. And so that's where the broccoli seeds are used in this medicinal purpose. So, so that's one little vector to think about. There's other reasons to consume sprouts. Like for me, sprouts are my primary source of calories, right? So if I'm using sprouts as calories, then the broccoli, alfalfa, radish, clover, those are much more of the garden variety. They're more like lettuces. But if I switch over to the legumes, the lentils, the azuki, the green peas, the garbanzo beans, those are packed with calories, they're packed with protein, they're hearty to chew. Like you can easily fill up in the process of soaking and eating the sprouted legumes. So what what if we look at it in in the book, when I started sprouting, I was sprouting alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts. And I know mung bean sprouts are very popular, you know, in in India and they're popular in Asian cuisine and they're typically grown in the dark so that they actually don't turn green and they're not forming the chlorophyll. And so that was my uh original thinking like, oh, I'll have some alfalfa sprouts and I'll have mung bean sprouts. Fortunately for me, we live in this time where way before me, many people had pioneered sprouting, Steve Meyerwitz, Ann Wigmore, Victoria Skavinska, Brian Clement, and there were niche groups around the world that were sprouting, and as a result, there were many sprouts available. So we went from alfalfa and mung bean to alfalfa, azuki, radish, clover, broccoli, chia, all sorts of lentils, all sorts of peas, um, all sorts of hemp, fenugreek, mustard. There was a seemingly infinite amount of seeds that were available to consumers that you could add water, sprout and grow into vegetables. And and that was just amazing. Now, some, like you would use for flavour, like radish is a great spicy pot. You cannot, I mean, maybe I'm sure there's some people that do. For me, I can only have a few radish sprouts at a time, but I would mix the radish sprouts with the alfalfa sprouts, with the mung bean sprouts, with the broccoli and form a big salad. And so in my world, um, sprouts are vegetables and they are my typical vegetable replacement. So instead of eating radishes, I eat radish sprouts. Instead of growing and eating mature broccoli, I eat broccoli sprouts. And as a result, you know, I'm feeling like light, clear, intuitive, um, energetic, my energy is through the roof, and I attribute that to sprouts. And the other psychological impact was that when I started to grow sprouts, I was originally feeling scarcity and risk of hunger and starvation. And by growing my own sprouts, I shifted my mindset into the abundance consciousness that I was now in one cubic foot growing more sprouts than I could possibly eat. Like literally, I was just growing them and eating them and I had surplus. And as soon as I had surplus food that I could totally 100% satiate my hunger level, then I felt abundant and I could relax because I had struck into the the the infinite source of food and I knew that I would never be hungry again.
Dr Rupy: That's pretty epic. I mean, you know, when when you're talking about that, that one cubic foot space, uh, the idea of the Martian, you know that movie with Matt Damon where he goes and he gets lost in space and he has to grow his own food. I'm just thinking like, you know, if you just had a lifetime supply of uh seeds and uh and uh like broccoli sprouts and all the rest of it, like he could literally make his own food in that respect. And and you know, you must be eating a lot of sprouts if that's your main calorific source because they're not very dense in energy, are they?
Doug Evans: Well, I mean, the certain sprouts, like a handful of alfalfa sprouts would maybe be 60 calories. But a handful of garbanzo sprouts would be 200 to 250 calories. So it's not that difficult to actually have 2,000 to 3,000 calories from sprouts. Now, I also eat fruit and fruit is also calorically rich. And, you know, it's I'm I'm balancing out. I have no fear of naturally occurring glucose and fructose coming from plants. So I, you know, I could easily be, if I lived in the tropics, I'd be a fruitarian. Like I would just eat fruit all the time. Now, fruit is much more sparse and it's more expensive. So I eat fruit as a treat, but I certainly will easily get 500 or 1,000 calories from fruit and 1,500 to 3,000 calories from sprouts. And then if I add a sesame paste, tahini, that adds quite a bit of um calories to it. Seaweed has very low calories, but I don't think in terms of calories. Like my my I think of like, am I hungry? Am I um full, right? And I'm so that's like the method that I'm eating. So I just eat whenever I want, um, in my feeding window, because I I typically eat between noon and 6:00 p.m. And I eat fruit and I eat sprouts and I eat seaweeds and I eat my nut paste and I'm a happy camper that is no longer obsessed with food. Like food is just like, oh, I look at my gas tank, it's running down, I better get to the solar charging station because I only have so many miles left. Like I think about that and so I'm gauging and if I have to travel and there's not high quality food available, I now also have enough experience with fasting that it doesn't create anxiety for me. It's like I know that I could go for weeks without food and days without water. So like whatever circumstance I'm in, it's like I just need to tune into that frequency of knowing like, oh, this is impermanent. It's not like I am Matt Damon on Mars. I don't know when I'm coming back. You know, if I'm stuck in a terrible airport, it's like, I can get water and uh within hours or days, I'll eventually be in a safe place where I can have high quality nutrients. And I'll make the point and I haven't said this um recently, people are much better off remaining hungry than eating food that is um junk. Much better off being hungry than eating toxic food.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. It's a it's a bit of um uh uh an unconventional uh thing, maybe even deemed controversial thing to say today where it's no longer sort of socially acceptable to to be hungry. But I I would make the case uh with you actually that we need to re-establish those mechanisms that allowed us to survive in the first place. And those are things like abstaining from food, uh they are things like, you know, uh making conscious choices and being aware of what things we consume that harm us versus uh feed us and nourish us truly. So I I agree. I think it's good that you've sort of like hacked into those survival instincts as well because we have the machinery that allows us to thrive. Um and and sometimes particularly living in an urbanized environment where you are bombarded with poor choices or you find yourself in an airport, which is a very common occurrence for a lot of people, and there aren't any healthy options, it's good to have like uh a backup plan.
Doug Evans: Yeah, well, look, one of the things that is causing me, like my life is set, right? So I'm I feel safe and abundant. One of the things that's causing me to share this message is because I'm aware of the fact that 10,000 people die every day of starvation and hunger. 10,000 people a day, 25 million people a year. And as as a global society, we are producing more food, more vegetables to feed the whole world. The problem is that for every one calorie that's grown and consumed of plants by humans, 10 are consumed by animals, creating toxic waste, um, and uh bleeding environmental resources and um other complications, but we're growing. So I think that if more and more people were creating demand for consuming sprouts, then there would be a shift. Like we don't need more um we don't need more GMO crops, we don't need, I mean, I don't know what your feeling is as a doctor of golden rice, you know, and that experiment of, you know, adding the vitamin A and the belief that the only way we can survive on this planet, you know, is by genetically modifying food, um, because the research is pretty clear, you know, that there's been hundreds of thousands, I mean, you know, this may be the first time, you know, your audience is hearing this, hundreds of thousands of deaths of by suicide of Indian farmers drinking the pesticides that have failed them because they've gone into debt. And it's really crazy that, you know, up until the last 100 years, the planet was doing fine. And it's now this engineering of the food and the pesticides and the um the genetic modification and spraying is creating tons and tons of complexity. And that's where, you know, if we shift and and we talk about what kind of seeds should we sprout, I would say organic, non-GMO seeds to support yourself and to support the farmers and to support the environment.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, I I couldn't agree more. I think, um, the the Indian farmers, uh, situation is something that hits home pretty close. I mean, my my dad grew up on a farm, we still have family who work the land, uh, and the struggle as a result of using seeds that are reliant on pesticide use, coupled with the destruction of the environment is leading to a pretty decimate situation. And then also, you know, um, controlling of um of seed prices and crop prices as well. And then we've actually discussed this actually with a good friend of mine who is um, uh, she she produces a food program called The Food Program here on on BBC 4. It's very, very popular. And we talked about how you're right, we are producing enough food in terms of the total amount, but it's more of a distribution problem and where we are allocating that food to, such as intensive uh farming of animals. Um, and yeah, I agree. I don't think this this the uh solution is creating bespoke grains with specific attributes like high vitamin A to cure blindness uh as a result of malnutrition. It's actually looking at nutrition more holistically and the environment more holistically and how everything is interconnected. So I think, you know, in in summary, our approaches are very uh uh naive and they're they're they're short-sighted. Um, and we need to to take nutrition a lot more holistically as it pertains to planetary health as well as human health.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you 100%. And I think that one of the other things about this is that when you're trying to distribute fresh produce, it's very complicated because it requires refrigeration and the primary weight of the produce is water-based. So that's the the insight of of spreading, sharing seeds that you then add water and then you grow the vegetables, uh, environmentally, much less fossil fuel to ship, much lighter, much less expensive to ship, and arguably fresher. What most people don't know is that when you go into the supermarket, even to buy fresh produce, that head of lettuce or that bag of salad could be a week or two or three weeks old. But when you're growing your own sprouts, you are getting a fresh harvest every single day. I mean, it's not just less expensive, it's not just more nutritious, it's actually fresher. Like that's like I I you know, you could just stack on, you know, why sprouting is so good.
Dr Rupy: I talked about sprouting in my first book, uh, a few years ago, and I I went through, uh, some methods of sprouting mung beans, uh, and I believe I did broccoli sprouts as well as azuki. And, um, I I actually put a recipe for using broccoli sprouts in a a sort of salsa that you you put on top of of some other things on on tortillas and stuff. And, um, uh, the response was was great, but some people found broccoli sprouts, particularly those those three-day old broccoli sprouts, very intense in terms of their flavour because of the, you know, the glucoraphanins and it's quite an intense sort of bitterness if you're not used to it. And I and I wonder, uh, is there like a a gateway sprout that you kind of recommend people try before they go to the more sort of spicier varieties like radish and and broccoli?
Doug Evans: Well, what I would say is for the broccoli sprouts, you know, there's a lubricant that you could add to it, which is a fat, right? So if you add tahini or avocado, that will cut the bitterness, you know, of it and make the wheels, you know, spin easier. Or if you were to take, you know, a balsamic vinegar and put it on there, it'll cut the bitterness of it. Or even if you take something that's very acidic, like lemon juice, the lemon juice will cut the bitterness of it. So it's a matter of being creative and being resourceful. Now, the sister sprout to broccoli sprouts, which looks very similar to broccoli, which is alfalfa, is like eating iceberg lettuce. But in no way, shape or form does it have a nutrition profile like iceberg lettuce. Alfalfa sprouts are one of the most nutritious plants on the planet. They just don't have those same um spicy characteristics. And if you think about alfalfa hay, which is what the primary food for a horse is very big, long, dry, cellulose-based with high degrees of insoluble fibre. Well, the the alfalfa sprout is tender, it's bioavailable, it's crunchy, and it's mild. So you could start doing like three parts alfalfa sprouts, one part broccoli sprouts, and then slowly adding more as you're developing the taste buds and the feeling. But if you just lather them with tahini or balsamic vinegar or fresh lemon, um, you could probably go right into it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I I want to dive into some of the research for for different types of sprouts. Um, you know, Jed Fahey and and a few other, uh, uh, people in the research world have have eloquently demonstrated some of the, uh, the impacts, um, the glucoraphanin, the indole-3-carbinol, the glucosinolates we were just talking about a second ago, as well as some interesting studies looking at the removal of environmental pollutants, particularly pesticides, uh, by measuring it in the urine. Are there sort of indications as to what the similar effects in other sprouts or maybe other, uh, uh, health benefits? And what specifically are we talking about in terms of doses as well? Like, are we talking about we have to like have literally, you know, a huge bucket of this stuff to to to have the same effects that we've seen in research or is it the equivalent of cups or or or smaller amounts that are more palatable, say, for for new users to sprouts?
Doug Evans: Wow, that that's a that's a big series of questions. And I'll do my best to unpack it. If I miss any of them, you know, we we can go back to it. So, if we look at sprouts from a medicinal level, highly researched, um, point, on a macro level, all sprouts are phenomenal for weight loss, right? All sprouts because they are high fibre, low fat, and um rich with phytonutrients. So all sprouts categorically are good for weight loss. If we think about weight loss, weight gain, and one of the major plaguing chronic illnesses of our time, which is diabetes, right? And insulin resistance, sprouts are an incredible food, all sprouts, literally all sprouts are incredible for regulating insulin levels in diabetics. So very powerful from that front. And I believe most of the information associated um and in the public domain about diabetes is probably wrong, right? Because they're recommending low carb diet, high fat, high protein, and they are demonizing um sugar and demonizing carbs. And have you met uh Robbie and Cyrus from mastering diabetes?
Dr Rupy: Not yet. No, I think I've uh I've heard of their course that that started recently. Um I want to say they're based in America, right?
Doug Evans: They've got a course. Yeah, they're based in America. They've got a course, they've got a New York Times best-selling book. They're both type one diabetics. They're both consuming, you know, um 700 grams of carbohydrates a day and only about 40 units of insulin. And um their thesis is that if you are consuming fresh fruits and vegetables, um steamed fruits and vegetables and you're removing oil and you're removing fat, that the fat and the oil creates the insulin resistance. And so they've had extraordinary success in reversing type two diabetes through diet and lifestyle. And I've gotten to know them and it turns out they love sprouts for regulating insulin levels and reversing type two diabetes. If you look at in the United States, there's a million firefighters that are exposed to toxic air pollutants in fires, um, ala including benzene. There's very good evidence that you can detoxify benzene from the lungs with sulforane from broccoli sprouts. Um, there's early research, you know, on the impact of the anti-inflammatory aspects of the sprouts that, you know, could prove to be very effective, you know, in Alzheimer's and early stages of dementia. So there's a lot of of research going on. I, that's kind of, um, I'm exposed to it. I'm less of a researcher and an analyst and more of a consumer of sprouts and as you described in the beginning of the podcast, as a conduit between like people practicing various forms of medicine that have a common theme of sprouts and I want to connect them and share this information because I really believe that the more sprouts you eat, the more you will achieve your optimum weight, optimum health, high quality red blood cells, white blood cells, strong immune system, like all of these things are intertwined and interconnected and sprouts seem to be able to play a powerful role in many of the um serious issues facing the world today.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, that I think that's a it's a really nice sort of comprehensive overview of the the general benefits of sprouts that we can see, you know, anti-inflammatory benefits from all those different phytochemicals, you're getting diversity, you're getting fibre. I think in the context of a diet that is otherwise uh uh good and according to healthy eating principles, there are definitely a great addition. What I would love to dive into is how much, how how much of all these different sprouts does one need to consume to reach some of these benefits? I know broccoli has been sort of um studied more from an extract point of view rather than using fresh sprouts because for obvious reasons, research studies using fresh sprouts is quite hard. Um and extracts are just very simple. You just give them to people. Are there similar sort of um doses that you we can talk about with with regards to the other types of sprouts?
Doug Evans: Sure. It's it's very interesting you as a doctor speaking of doses when I think in terms of portions, but we we can translate that. I just want to add, I I want to add one more to this that um peas, green peas can have an antihistamine effect um by by um soaking them and sprouting them in the dark. That they form DAO naturally, you know, in the green peas because by removing the access to daylight or sunlight, it creates a stress in the plant which actually which is very effective, you know, in dealing with histamine issues. So there's a lot of work that's being done in different parts and I read things like that and it it blows my mind. I think in terms of the broccoli sprouts, you know, you can do it with two to three ounces a day could be very effective and they don't even need to be every day. So maybe four times a week you're eating broccoli sprouts. Um other sprouts, if we think about doses, you know, um I say good things in moderation, right? I avoid bad things at all costs, but good things in moderation. So a good thing about sprouts is that it's very hard to overeat sprouts. Like the absence of oil and salt and sugar and artificial sweeteners is that when you're eating a when you're eating sprouts in general, you're going to eat when you are hungry. You're not going to want to overeat them because it's not going to create this like crazy pleasure sensor of the serotonin and the dopamine in the brain. You're going to be eating them in a very functional, um, practical way. Okay, I'm hungry, here are some sprouts, I'm going to eat them, and when you're done eating them, the body says, time out, enough, I don't need any more. If you were to lather them in oil and salt and sweeteners, whether it's sugar or agave or coconut sugar, what have you, you will tend to overeat them because they become a base for carrying, you know, these other um fat and sugars and salts. And so that's where um I recommend eating them with minimal seasoning, prefer spice, and, you know, having normal portions. So if you if you have access to the sprouts, you know, I think a fistful or a handful of a variety of sprouts would be very effective. The US dietary guidelines used to recommend seven to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables, and a serving is a fist fistful. And if you think about it, if you actually follow their guidelines, there's really no room for anything else. And unfortunately, or factually, uh in the US, the average American is consuming less than one serving of fruits and vegetables, and many of those servings are potatoes, and those potatoes are actually cooked at high heat above 128 degrees Celsius or 240 degrees Fahrenheit. And when you cook the carbohydrate at that high heat, you're actually form known carcinogens like acrylamide. So it's really you want to be careful and simplify uh your diet is to be as close to their natural state as possible.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, it it it makes total sense and it's pretty shocking to hear that uh the average American is less than one portion of fruits and vegetables. That that's pretty shocking. And and I I've alluded to it already in terms of like the cost of of sprouting and the cost of uh seeds in general. When I was sharing recipes uh with sprouts in them, the commonest question I would get is where'd you get those mung bean sprouts or how do I buy those or how do I, you know, what where on earth do you get them from? And unfortunately, there aren't too many places, even in the middle of London where you can buy sprouts. So let let's let's dive into how do you make them yourself? So what's a nice sort of starter sprout that people can start making as soon as they listen to this podcast, go and get the seeds, uh and uh and and get making it in their in their kitchens?
Doug Evans: I I would say lentil sprouts. Like if you take lentil sprouts, you take lentils and lentils are the staple of the plant-based diet around the world. Um so many different cultures and are consuming lentils. When you sprout lentils, first of all, they sprout very quickly. Like they can germinate in 24 hours. Once you begin this germination process, you double the antioxidant levels, you triple the vitamin C, and you quadruple the soluble and insoluble fibre, like just by the process of soaking lentils. And you can soak them, you can take a jar, um you could put some cheese cloth over it as a strainer, you could use a colander and basically you soak them for eight hours and then you rinse them twice a day and you eat them at various stages to your preference of texture and taste, but there's something that's very easy to sprout, very familiar flavours and crunchiness. And I've had people and I've been, you know, sharing information about sprouts on my Tik Tok, Sprout Wiz, or on my Instagram at Doug Evans, and people are coming back and saying, oh my god, I was eating lentils every day, but I was cooking them and now I'm eating sprouted lentils and I just love them so much more. That they liked lentils and now they love them.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Doug Evans: And that that's pretty inspiring for me to hear.
Dr Rupy: That's epic. And I'm I'm just going to go through a few more because I've got your sprout book here and you've got this handy little um table of uh different sprouts, uh salad sprouts, gelatinous sprouts, legume and bean sprouts. Let's talk about salad sprouts. So, uh I I think I we were talking before, my my mom's a big uh fenugreek sprout fan. Um so I I kind of know how to do those. Why don't we go for hemp, unhulled hemp uh sprouts? I haven't done that before. Walk walk us through that.
Doug Evans: I mean, those, you know, there's as many, you know, hemp is a weed, right? And and some people smoke the THC variety of that in the form of cannabis. Um hemp is also grown, you know, for clothing and industrial um perspectives. So there's a wide range of of hemp seeds. And in the US, um when I was writing the book, I didn't realize that hemp is still unhulled hemp seeds is still uh regulated on a federal level. So it's actually harder, like, you know, being a a hippie and being in in community, it was easy for me to obtain them. But basically, the hemp seeds, you would take them, you'd soak them eight hours or overnight, um you would um they'd start to germinate, they're still very crunchy. Hemp, you know, is very rich in protein and hemp is also rich in ALA, omega-3, medium chain fatty acid. And um just easy that they're not growing, you know, with a long shoot. You're basically just want to uh germinate them, activate them, and, you know, the hull can be very hard and crunchy. So by by soaking them, you're making it more palatable because otherwise, if you're just chewing unhulled uh hemp seeds, they could be harder going out than in. They could be sharp and and could be irritant, be they could become an irritant. So that's why you want to soak them.
Dr Rupy: And one of my favourites that I used to buy, there's a company in the in the UK, I'm not too sure if you're aware of them, they're called Sky, and I think they're called Sky Sprouts. Uh and they're based uh in the West country. And so they they do three or four different types of sprouts. Uh one of them is mung bean, they do alfalfa. Um and they they also have sunflower uh seeds sprouts. And that's my favourite because they're nutty, they're really robust. They're great, really, really good because it they give you some of the sort of like um the oils and the fats of the normal sunflower and you can easily flavour them as well. And I I find those really robust. Um similar sort of process for sunflower seeds?
Doug Evans: You know, it's interesting. Um I am very pro using a jar because it's the the hygiene and the cleanliness. Typically, sunflower sprouts are soaked in the jar until the germination begins, and then they're put on a sprouting medium, which could be soil, unbleached paper towel, the coconut coir, and then they're covered and then you spray mist them or you add water and it wicks up and they typically will take um 12 days to 16 days to grow and you get the shoot and then you you cut out above the fold because you don't eat the black um sunflower shell. You you eat the shoot that comes out of it. I've posted and this feels like it's probably been a year ago, I've uh sprouted sunflower seeds in the jar. And with the same process and the only thing at the end is that you have a manual process of removing the shells and instead of getting a straight shoot, you get something that looks like a curly hair. The advantage of sprouting in the jar and removing the shell by hand is that you get to eat the root because when you're eating it and you're cutting it above the fold, you're only getting the shoot and the leaves. And that's one of the things that I love, love, love about sprouts is you get to eat the root, the shoot, the endosperm, the embryo, you eat it all. And so that's a powerful differentiation between sprouts and microgreens where the microgreens are eating above the fold and the sprouts are eating everything. There's probably nothing more true than eating whole foods than eating a whole sprout because like even if you're eating a grape, you're eating, you're not eating the stem and the vine and the root of the whole ecosystem. You're just consuming the grape. Well, the sprout begins with a seed and becomes its own fully intact living organism that you get to consume and you're getting those enzymes, living enzymes and life force.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, that's epic. I mean, that's definitely one of my favourites to use and I I just throw them into everything, salads and even like the end of stir fry or something just to add a little bit more texture as well. There's so many different things you can do. And I think, you know, with the cost of living crisis over here, um the the expense of these things are so low and the fact that you can grow your own and the yield is like sometimes four or five times the amount that you put in initially, it's it's a pretty interesting experiment for a lot of people to to start doing. I think, you know, you give away a lot of content already on your social media. Um so people should definitely check that out to um to to figure out how to how to grow themselves. I I guess we should talk a bit about sort of the the things you need to watch out for in terms of safety. So like what things should we be making sure in terms of the hygiene of where you're growing, you mentioned unbleached uh towels, those sorts of uh parameters.
Doug Evans: Yeah, so so it's very important to, you know, in life in general, to live clean, but not to be fanatical, right? When you walk into someone's home or a hotel or a commercial facility and you smell the um chemicals of the cleaning agents, you know, it burns your eyes, it burns your your nose, like this is, you know, a warning system. But it is important to be clean. So you want to use, you know, and clean your supplies with hot, soapy water, very effective, you know, hot, soapy water. Like you as a doctor know how to wash your hands properly for 20 or so seconds using hot water and and scrubbing, etc. So you want to be clean and you want your equipment to be clean. When it comes to nature, the microbes actually are on your side. Like the the we need the microbes to grow, we need the microbes in our gut bacteria. That's a whole separate um, you know, discussion. So we want to start with clean equipment. So the jar and the screen that you use, you want them to be clean. You can take the seeds and the research is that if there's any contamination um on the seed that could be dangerous, it's when things come out of the field and they're either exposed to human fecal matter or the feces of a bird or a rat or the like, um, uh, and those are risks with any produce. It turns out the seeds probably have a much lower risk because of the way they're handled and they're growing the seeds and the pods, you know, to to do that. To be safe, um the best thing to do with the seeds is to do a level of surface level sanitation, which means you want to soak the seeds for five minutes in a rapid oxidizing um solution, whether it be hydrogen peroxide, um hypochlorous acid, sodium hypochlorite, white vinegar for five minutes in any of those things and then subsequently rinse them. Um you will be reducing um potentially any mold, fungus, pathogens, bacteria on the surface of the seed by a million to one. So, so that's something you could do. You take the seeds, you soak them in the in the agent, you rinse it off, then I'd rinse them two or three times to make sure there's no residue of that. And um that process is clean. The next thing to be concerned with is you want to use the best water you have. So, um if you have spring water or filtered water, that's preferable above tap water, but I would still use tap water uh above not sprouting at all. So, so that's it. And I think, you know, I'm I'm
Dr Rupy: Would you would you boil the water and allow it to cool just to to uh clean it somewhat or would you just simply from the tap?
Doug Evans: I I mean, it really depends on where you are in the world. If I was in a, you know, remote village where there was known contaminants in the water, you know, I might boil the water, I might let it soak in a copper, you know, uh uh uh pan or or vessel, um, to do that, but I think in most cases, that is not a necessary step. Um to do. If the water is potable and you can drink it, then um you can use it for sprouting. You're asking all the good questions, Rupy. I'm I'm wildly impressed.
Dr Rupy: I'm just uh I'm I'm asking for myself as well. Like, you know, I I do want to get back into it properly and I think there's also an opportunity that I'm sure you you've already thought about exploring for those of us who are more akin to instant gratification and we just want it now. We don't want to put like the effort into it. And yes, you know, I understand there is the um the extra energy that you get from growing something yourself with your own hands, watching it grow, nurturing it, uh you know, blessing it, talking to it, all all the extra sort of intangible things that we should really be uh nurturing when it comes to our connection with food. But let's say we don't have time, you know, childcare, we have a busy lifestyle, we're always on the on the move. I'm thinking about some of my my colleagues, like nurses and and doctors who are working 12-hour shifts and they barely get to do all their other stuff in in between those non-working hours. How do we get more sprouts in the hands of more people? Like there's got to be an easier way where we can access it from supermarkets or or maybe even bring machines into our into our houses that can do the sprouting for us. Is there anything like that available today?
Doug Evans: I mean, I I think that the greatest thing today is, you know, the the solution is really community, right? Like going back to community and having people contribute, you know, whether it's bartering or sharing and bulk buying, and some people have more time than the others and sprouts are inexpensive enough to share that if you know anyone that's sprouting already, you could say, hey, I'll pay for the seeds, can you sprout a little bit more for me, you know, while you're doing it, and you just, you know, figure out different ways of of using community to support the sharing of the sprouts. The other thing is, you know, raise your hand, um, whenever, like anyone who's listening to this podcast, um, I I would beg you that when you go into a restaurant, um, the, you know, every time you go into a restaurant, just say, hey, what sprouts do you have on the menu? Uh, what do you have sprouts? And they're going to be like, well, what do you mean? Say, well, do you have alfalfa, do you have mung bean, do you have broccoli, you know, these are the most nutritious food on the planet. I'm here, you know, I'd love to have some sprouts on the menu. And I think that could trigger. Like I think I'm going to I think that's going to be my post today. I'm going to say, will everyone please, when you go out to eat, ask the restaurant for sprouts and then tell them why and we could spread and share the consciousness of sprouting.
Dr Rupy: I think that's a great idea, man. And totally. And I can see like, you know, the concept for a store where it's just sprouts and you literally go in and you have your salad sprouts, you have your shoots, you have your your grasses, your legumes, um there's information about it as well. And so I can just pop into my local sprout store and be like, I'm going to grab this, this, this, this, this, and you know you're getting a really healthy dose of phytochemicals with all those extra benefits that you can quickly use, you know, whenever you whenever you need.
Doug Evans: Wow, Rupy, I wish, you know, we we have to do this more often. Like I I'm just I just love talking to you. Like if I didn't have another meeting, I I would just block out the rest of the day and and continue. But this has been really good. Maybe we should think about doing a part two at some point.
Dr Rupy: For sure, man. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now we'll do a part two and uh we will um we'll carry on the sprouting conversation. But yeah, no, look, it's a pleasure chatting to you and uh um I the the book is fab. I've learned so much more about sprouting from it. And I think there are some ideas that we need to kind of spitball about how we actually increase the sort of uh the knowledge base of of sprouting and how we make it more accessible for people too. So maybe we can do that on another episode.
Doug Evans: Well, I would love that. You you are terrific. I love you. I love your work and I'm so grateful uh that we connected in this way.
Dr Rupy: Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
