Dr Rupy: Do you sprout? Most people I ask say no. They think of those tiny boxes of sprouts that are hard to come by in supermarkets, but sprouting is genuinely one of the simplest, most affordable ways to eat a more nutritious diet at home. It doesn't require a garden, a fancy kitchen, or even much time at all. Just some seeds, water, and a jar. You're going to learn all about why you need to start sprouting right now with myself and Doug Evans.
Dr Rupy: Hi, I'm Dr Rupy. I'm a medical doctor and nutritionist. And when I suffered a heart condition years ago, I was able to reverse it with diet and lifestyle. This opened up my eyes to the world of food as medicine to improve our health. On this podcast, I discuss ways in which you can use nutrition and lifestyle to improve your own well-being every day. I speak with expert guests and we lean into the science, but whilst making it as practical and as easy as possible so you can take steps to change your life today. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast.
Dr Rupy: You might have heard of the Liver King, but today we have the Sprout King on the show. Doug Evans is the founder and CEO of the sprouting company who was actually formerly a paratrooper in the US Army and an early pioneer in the natural food industry. And Doug is on a mission to make sprouting mainstream. After learning about sprouts as the most nutritious food on the planet, up there with herbs and spices, he wants everyone to get as excited about sprouting as he is. And this is a really fun episode where we break down a little bit about the science, but also the joy around creating your own food on a countertop with the most potent ingredient that we have access to, the seed. Unlocking the benefits of seeds via sprouting has been a game changer for me and my health personally. I use lentil, mung bean, broccoli and sunflower sprouts weekly in my meals and whenever I share them online, I always get asked about where they come from. Now, I've spoken about or written about how to sprout in my first cookbook, The Doctor's Kitchen, but now you can sprout your own using handy tools like Doug's sprouting jars that you can see for yourself on the YouTube channel where we also record this podcast as well. You can find them in health food stores as pre-sprouted, but they're so easy to make yourself at home, giving you access to nature's true multivitamin. Let's ask virtual Dr Rupy what he thinks about sprouts.
Dr Rupy: Dr Rupy, tell us a bit about broccoli sprouts and sunflower sprouts. Why are they so good for us?
Virtual Dr Rupy: Broccoli sprouts and sunflower sprouts are like tiny superheroes in the veggie world. Broccoli sprouts are especially famous for being rich in sulforaphane, a powerful compound linked to anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits, which may support joint health, heart health, and even help lower cholesterol. Sunflower sprouts are packed with protein, healthy fats, and a range of vitamins and minerals, making them a great addition for boosting overall nutrition and supporting muscle recovery. Both types of sprouts are easy to add to salads, wraps, or even as a garnish for soups. They're a delicious way to get a concentrated hit of nutrients in a small package. Would you like some recipe ideas that include sprouts or tips on how to use them more in your meals?
Dr Rupy: Well, you know what, if you want to have some recipe ideas for how you can incorporate sprouts, make sure you check out virtual Dr Rupy and the thousands of recipes that we have on the Doctor's Kitchen app. You can find out more about that by clicking the link in the bio. For now, this is my podcast with the incredible, the energetic Doug Evans.
Doug Evans: So, you need to eat, right? And if you're going to eat, you want to have the highest quality nutrition on a per calorie basis.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Doug Evans: So normally, when things are low cost, they're low quality. Sprouts are one of the only things that I can think of that is the highest quality nutrition at the lowest possible cost. So you can take a quarter cup of seeds and grow a full jar, five cups of sprouts in five days without soil, sunshine, or fertiliser. So number one, it's fresh. You are getting fresh produce, whereas in the US, I'm not sure about the UK, in the US, the average produce is travelling 2,500 kilometres, 2,000 miles across the country over a 10-day period. So, without quoting any stats, that produce is not as fresh as being able to harvest directly from the jar.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Doug Evans: The second thing is sprouts contain the meristematic stem cells of the plants. So it's concentrated phytonutrients, micronutrients in the plant. So they're up to 100 times more nutrient dense than mature vegetables. The average vegetable you buy in the market is far less nutritious than eating the sprouts. And then it cost economically, you can grow sprouts pretty much anywhere around the world for under a dollar, under a quid a serving. So it's really like phenomenal that sprouts become the potential for food equality, food justice.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Doug Evans: And, you know, we live in a bubble, right? We won the ovarian lottery. We're able to watch a podcast, you know, we can hang out in LA. You know, there's serious issues, not to go off in that direction, but 25,000 people a day, every day, day after day are dying of starvation. Like food insecurity is a big issue. Billions of people don't know where they're getting their proper nutrition and there are consequences every day. So that's on one end. Then on the other extreme, there's over 100,000 people a day that are dying of chronic illness from what they eat because they're eating empty calories and they're overeating the empty calories. And as a result, they're getting cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and you know, they're plagued and they're encumbered with this. And it's not because they're bad people, right? The obesity dilemma where two out of three Americans are overweight or obese, I don't blame the people. It's the system is designed to get people addictive. So what I could say is I've been sprouting for over 30 years.
Dr Rupy: 30 years?
Doug Evans: 30 years. 50% of my diet is sprouts today, but it's been up to 100%. I've done 30 days of just sprouts. And surprisingly, I'm getting every micronutrient, macronutrient, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidants, and every amino acid to form complete proteins from sprouts. So the more I was eating the sprouts, the more the sprouts were revealing to me like the positive benefits of the soluble and insoluble fibre, the gut microbiome diversity, and sprouts are one of the only foods that are alive. So when you're eating quote unquote whole foods, like you're eating a fraction of the food, part of the broccoli, part of the cauliflower, the apple is part of the apple tree. When you're eating a sprout, you're eating the entire living organism, the root, the shoot, the endosperm, the embryo, the entire living organism that's actually consuming CO2, respiring, and it's alive. So when you're something that's water-based, it's just like this, this gift. And like, I didn't discover sprouting, but I think I rediscovered it and decided that this message needs to be out to the world.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Dude, I love the passion for this and I think, you know, if someone's listened to this and they're not galvanised by you talking about sprouts, nothing is going to get them intrigued by it. And I just want to summarise the the the key points you've just made here. So, fresh, I think the idea of this being as fresh as possible is perhaps lost on folks because they don't realise that the salad leaf, the spinach, the green leafy vegetable, whatever it might be, the tomato that is sitting so pristinely in a in a supermarket or a grocery store has actually travelled, just like you said, an average two and a half thousand miles in the US, but I imagine it's going to be very similar for us in the UK because we get a lot of our produce from Europe and all over the EU. That process and the conditions of transport actually lead to nutrient degradation. That isn't to say that you're not getting anything from those ingredients, but it's not as good as if you've just picked it from the farm or wherever it's grown and then consumed it in that moment. There's always going to be nutrient degradation over that point. And what you're saying is that because you're, and just for the listener, we've got a a massive jar of sprouts sat in front of Doug right now that look absolutely delicious. These are ready to be harvested, I'm assuming. These have literally just they've been growing for like five days.
Doug Evans: Correct.
Dr Rupy: And so this is the living organism that you so eloquently just described that you're consuming in its entirety. So you're consuming absolutely everything in the freshest possible state where there's literally no nutrient degradation. You're consuming absolutely everything.
Doug Evans: Yeah. And when you're growing in glass and stainless steel and you're taking an organic seed, there's no microplastic involved. So this is fresh, this is clean. You know the providence of where it's coming from. And you can choose. So what happened is sprouts in the in the US, UK, Europe, there was no money in sprouts because sprouts actually can't make the 2,000 mile journey. Right? So there are no national or international sprouting companies. So sprouts were a local regional business at best. And so my idea when I moved to the desert, I moved to Wonder Valley Hot Springs seven years ago, not only was it an environmental desert, it was a food desert. And I wasn't going to compromise my standards. So I had very high standards for nutrition. And so when I looked at the options, growing your own food is really difficult and the yield from growing your own food is relatively low. So during World War II in America, 40% of Americans were growing their own food, but they had gardens, there was soil, they had training and they had the need. The government was saying, go grow your own victory gardens. And today, less than 1% of food is grown by consumers at home.
Dr Rupy: Gosh, I had no idea it was as high as 40%.
Doug Evans: 40% of Americans had victory gardens.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Doug Evans: And today it's 1%. And so my vision for me was like, wow, sprouts aren't just this garnish or a side dish. Sprouts were vegetables. Sprouts were vitamins and minerals. And then there was this whole other like deep level of research that at the time, seven years ago, I wasn't familiar with was the medicinal properties of sprouts and how they can help regulate insulin levels, how they can detoxify benzene and air pollutants from the lungs, how they open up the NRF2 pathway and cross the blood brain barrier and can create heat shock proteins in the brain that can reduce the symptoms, you know, of autism and how they have the, it's well known in the medical community that broccoli and cruciferous vegetables are healthy. But no one knew until about 30 years ago that broccoli sprouts were up to 100 times more concentration of the glucosinolates that form sulforaphane. So this whole work that I didn't know about, but I went down the rabbit hole and I'm I'm continuing to go because the papers are coming out faster than I can read them.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. So, so we've talked about the first point you made about how this is fresh, there's minimal degradation, you're literally growing yourself. And you should definitely sort of reinvigorate this idea of a victory garden in everyone's kitchen across America because I think this sort of idea of like growing your own for your health sounds challenging, but as we'll get to it in a minute, you know, the fact that you can do this so easily in five days and create something that is essentially a multivitamin is is something that, you know, will galvanise people to actually get involved. Because I I I'll be honest, I'm not green fingered in the slightest. I'm a terrible gardener, but I'm really excited about using this device because I know how easy it is. I know how easy you make it look, but it is genuinely really, really easy to grow your own.
Doug Evans: Yeah. Well, look, whether you're a a climate activist or a climate denier, right? The fact is it takes about 1,500 gallons of water to grow one pound of beef and you can grow one pound of sprouts with one gallon of water. So it's not 1%, it's less than 1/10th of 1% of the resources to grow the sprouts. So you're getting something fresher, you're getting something better for the environment, and you're getting something that's so nutrient powerhouse. And everything that I'm saying like to me, it's like a mic drop. And it's overwhelming. So I love the way that you're breaking it down and but the economic part of it, the fact that there was no money behind this really prevented the growth of this because if you go into a large health food store here in America, Whole Foods, right, 24,500 of the items that they sell are in a box, in a bag, in a jar, in a can, in a in a container that have been processed. Right? And they have about 500 produce items on the shelf and half the produce items aren't organic and they're coated with waxes and parabens or now appeal and other things. So you don't even know what you're consuming. And so sprouts are safe, fresh, nutritious and affordable. So, so this is something where I felt like it was a cause worthy enough for me to apply my energy.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely, man. And you're definitely applying the energy. Let's talk about that second point about how these are concentrated sources of some of these micronutrients. And I the comparison I make with these is kind of like herbs and spices. Whenever I look at the antioxidant or the ORAC scores of herbs and spices, they're just off the chart for the per weight amount of of these different chemicals compared to vegetables and you know, dark green leafy vegetables that we know are really, really healthy for us, but are just, you know, incomparable when it comes to a gram by gram basis. So let's talk about why sprouts are just so concentrated in some of these chemicals that you've alluded to, like the sulforaphane, the glucosinolates, particularly in broccoli sprouts.
Doug Evans: So what happens is the seed itself is a complete living organism in a dormant state. And within the endosperm of the seed, it contains precise and finite amounts of these compounds and phytochemicals, and there's more than a million phytochemicals, but in particular, the isothiocyanates, the glucosinolate, glucoraphanin. So broccoli has glucoraphanin, radish has glucoraphanin. The research on glucoraphanin is just starting. But if we stick on the glucoraphanin, which is the precursor to sulforaphane, there's a finite amount. And approximately 3 to 13% by volume in the seed is glucoraphanin. As it grows, there's no more glucoraphanin happening. Like there just is no more. So the challenge is people aren't familiar with eating broccoli seeds. They're like, you know, small like a poppy seed. They don't have the flavour, they get stuck in your teeth and they have enzyme inhibitors, they've got lectins, they've got phytic acids. But when you soak them, germinate them and sprout them, on day three, you've initiated a metamorphosis from a seed into a vegetable. And at that point, because it's still very small, the sprout is still very small, it has that full 3 to 13% glucoraphanin. As it grows into that whole head of broccoli, there's no more glucoraphanin happening. You'll get more vitamin C, you'll get more fibre, you'll get other micronutrients being developed, but you you by and large, if you look at alfalfa sprouts versus alfalfa hay that they feed the cow, it's predominantly roughage at that point. It's it's insoluble fibre. So the smaller it is, and that's where I also mentioned the sprouts contain the meristematic stem cells of the plants. So there's two two times when the stem cells are available in the plants. One is at the sprouting stage and the second when the plant grows to maturity and it flowers in the budding stage is all of a sudden this fabulous stage. So plant buds incredibly, eating flowers fantastic. Right? But flowers also have a short shelf life. Not a big and you don't get a lot of flowers on the on the plant edible. So if you are in a place where there's edible wild flowers, eat them. Yeah. Like eat eat the flowers. I mean, look at the colour, the radiance. Like there's brilliance in them.
Dr Rupy: Actually, I had some, I think yesterday I was out for dinner with some friends in LA and we had some garlic flowers. I don't know if you've had the garlic flowers, but they're like slightly like a hue of lavender, like light purple, and they have such intense flavour, not like a bitterness that you have from like a raw garlic clove, but like more of a floral nature, like a an essence of garlic. And it is absolutely delicious. And now I know that I'm I'm consuming like something even more nutrient dense.
Doug Evans: Most flowers are edible and they're extremely like nutritious on a level. Like talk about microbiome diversity, you know, eat your flowers with your probiotics, with your sprouts, like you're just set. And like that's the game that I want to play. It's like, how can I raise the standards of what I'm willing to consume in a non-exclusive way. Like that's the most like heartwarming openness is that the sprouts are available to everybody. Like anyone can sprout.
Dr Rupy: And this is what's so beautiful about the message as well because as a, you know, a potential third point about cost and access and food deserts, I think are a huge problem within the US, but it is also a growing problem in the UK as well, despite us being a much smaller country. And the access, of course, is not just the availability of the products and ingredients themselves, but also the ability to afford them as everything rises in cost and supermarkets more generally coupled with inflation. So the fact that these are so cheap, I mean, how much are the broccoli sprouts or the alfalfa sprouts or the?
Doug Evans: A bag of seeds, like organic seeds, starting with like a salad mix or lentils is little as like 12, 15 dollars a bag.
Dr Rupy: Okay. And how much weight would that give you in terms of the the amount that you could harvest once you've sprouted them?
Doug Evans: Well, one bag, an eight ounce bag will actually have five and a half scoops of seeds. So five and a half scoops, each scoop of seed will fill up, sprout into a jar that will have five or six cups. So you will get six full five or six full jars of this with five to six servings in. So 25 to 35 servings of vegetables for even the, you know, the broccoli, it's 25 or 35 dollars for for a pound. It's just totally affordable. And if you think about, you know, other magic, right? And, you know, your heritage, you've eaten lentils before, right? Lentils, cooked lentils are a staple of the of the diets around the world. When you sprout a lentil, you increase the vitamin C by 300%. You quadruple the antioxidants. You convert the fibres and the proteins into being bioavailable and digestible. So, and when you combine like lentil sprouts and broccoli sprouts, you get this complete amino acid profile with volumes that are significant for every single essential amino acid, the amino acids the body can't produce on its own. So when you go down this path with eyes wide open, you can make your decision like, wow, what am I going to eat? Right? And so if you take sprouts, and I'm glad that you mentioned spices and herbs, you can make the sprouts taste like however you want. Any cuisine, whether it's Thai, Indian, Mediterranean, what have you, and the sprouts just become a filler. So in my world, right, and I know you you're focused on the kitchen, right, the doctor's kitchen, you can replace pasta with sprouts. Take your favourite sauce, pour it over the sprouts and you will get something that's a thousand times more nutritious than traditional wheat-based pasta. You can replace rice with sprouts, right? So in your sushi, in your rolls, like in the combine, like just imagine, you know, you from a an informed doctor perspective, how much better would it be to have sprouted lentils and sprouted broccoli as opposed to rice and beans. I had a conversation, you know, with the leader, one of the leaders at the World Bank. And, you know, part of their main agenda is using golden rice. So a genetically modified rice that's enhanced with beta carotene. And if you go down that rabbit hole, you find out that the enhancement of the beta carotene gets compromised when you cook it. So in the in the state that they're selling it, it's enhanced, but when you cook it, the beta carotene gets degraded. And if they have resources to cook rice, which you need water, you could give them seeds that they could sprout and they're literally hundreds of times more nutrition for the level. But the mindset is, oh, just throw a bag of rice. Yeah. You know. So when when we think about, you know, why do this, it's like we now have chef Neil Harden from ABC Kitchen, ABCV in New York City, which is a fabulous plant-based restaurant. He's creating sprout-based recipes, a broccoli avocado toast. So you're taking something that's popular and familiar and you're adding something that's nutritious. So, so I see a world where all of a sudden sprouts shift from being a garnish and a side dish to being the centre of the plate. Just imagine having a sprout salad. So instead of having old greens, you're having sprouts as the salad. It's just game changing.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I remember when I first got into this nutrition game, I started going to the health food store and finding some of these sprouts. There is, I think one, if not two UK suppliers of sprouts. Just just for the entire country. And wherever you go, it's the same manufacturer. And they do a great job. They do sunflower, they do lentil, they do chickpea, they do broccoli and alfalfa, etc. The demand is somewhat low, I would say, and it's very specialised to people who actually recognise just how incredible the nutrition is per pound or quid spent on on their fresh fruits and vegetables for the week. But the fact that you can actually make this at home is super empowering and I think it would galvanise a lot of people to to actually start consuming more of these. I just want to dive into some of the the the studies looking at the micronutrient availability of these. So in terms of where you get your information from in the US, who's really leading the charge here in terms of investigating glucoraphanin versus glucoraphanin, for example? Because I'll be honest, I haven't heard of glucoraphanin until you just mentioned it now for radishes.
Doug Evans: So, you know, one of the things is what gets researched is what gets can turn into profit. So there's not a lot of independent research and as you know, people were trying to patent sulforaphane. You know, so there was a whole, you know, debate about that. I think what happens is the research is coming generally, someone independent, you know, has the resources, they have a lab, they're getting small funding to go down that path. But a lot of it was geared towards finding a solution for specific problems. So when Dr. Jed Fahey and Paul Talalay, 20, you know, 32 years ago started researching broccoli, who would know that Jed Fahey is still obsessed with broccoli 32 years later. And, you know, when he started researching, he um, did not have, he had a master's degree. But he was at Johns Hopkins and they don't, you know, master, they don't take you seriously. So, you know, he didn't get his PhD until he was 50.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Doug Evans: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Oh my gosh, I didn't know that.
Doug Evans: Because he was doing, he was down that rabbit hole and in order to publish the papers. So, you know, now he's in his 70s and he's still like at it every day. But we're learning. And we collaborated on our first paper that we published two years ago. And now, you know, and I have full disclosure, I have no academic background. None whatsoever. I know how to read and I'm and I'm obsessive. But like when I wrote the sprout book, you know, I contacted Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Joel Kahn, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Josh Axe. And some of these medical professionals, medical doctors in practice were plant-based. Some were functional medicine like Mark Hyman. And Dr. Josh Axe was keto. And the the thing that they had in common was they all loved sprouts. It was like, wow. And through their access to them and their information and their willingness to support the book really helped drive, you know, the potential. So for me, my role is to ask questions and then get the scientific evidence, which is why, you know, I was just here, we both saw Simon Hill, right? And, you know, he like literally, you know, he was well into nutrition, but when we met five or six years ago, he didn't know a lot about sprouts. You know, and now he's growing sprouts, he's eating sprouts, he's sprouts obsessed. So I think what happens is that mainstream media was never going to talk about sprouts. But through these distributed channels and through podcasts, like I had the benefit of going on the Rich Roll podcast twice, right? And I went on others and I went on Simon's three times and Darren Olien's and all of a sudden, this is my second appearance on the Doctor's Kitchen. So all of a sudden now we're we're putting sprouts out into the zeitgeist in a very distributed way. Sometimes like you have a big podcast. I will virtually do a podcast with one download. Some of these people are impressively sending me their credentials and they go, we're in the top 10 podcasts in the in the world. And so I go on to chat GPT, what does it mean? What kind of downloads was the top 10 podcast? And they go, 50 to 100 per episode. Right? And I was like, I'm fine. Because, you know, when I when I practiced martial arts, my my sensei, sometimes, you know, I would be the only student in the class. And here I had a great um, great teacher from Japan. I would feel bad. Like he was going to teach this whole class for one student. And he'd look me in the eye and he goes, if no students were here, I'm still teaching the class. Like that's his discipline. So for me, like I'll talk to myself, I'll talk to one person, you know, and um, whomever, when when Tony Robbins invited me to give a keynote at Unleash the Power Within, 25,000 people, you know, live in the one of the largest auditoriums in the country at the Prudential Center in New Jersey. Like that was wow, like all these people and they're listening and attentive about sprouts. So I I know that we are on to something. Like the time is right for sprouting.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. It really is. I feel like it's a confluence of a number of different things. There's a genuine interest in longevity and health. There's a metabolic disease crisis. There is a a real growing problem with affordability of food. And what you're presenting here is a unique opportunity to utilize something that has not only research behind it, but also tradition and heritage and, you know, ancient practice and beauty. And the way you describe sort of the journey of of how a seed becomes metamorphosized and goes through these different stages, you know, is something that is quite easy to overlook. And I think when you talk about it in that respect, even I think about how I'm missing this element in my diet that could be providing some pretty profound benefits. The the study that you did with Jed a couple of years ago, I think we spoke before you did the study. Can you speak to that? What were you what were you looking at?
Doug Evans: Well, we well, we were looking at and that particular study was sprouts had been demonized over food safety issues.
Dr Rupy: Oh yeah, because there's breakouts and stuff because of.
Doug Evans: Yeah, there were there were there were some outbreaks about sprouts. So before I wanted to go all in, I thought it was imperative for me to get the data. So we worked with a data scientist, Jack Smiloff from the Netherlands and Jed from Johns Hopkins and we exhaustively studied 25 years of foodborne illness, um, illness, hospitalizations, outbreaks and deaths. And we and this is, you know, would have been easier with AI and chat GPT. We did this before then. But when we studied the data, we realized and if you were to rationalize the data, like in cases per million, and I don't have, you know, I'm not in front of my computer now with it, but it was something that the number of cases for foodborne illness for sprouts were like 11 per million servings. But lettuce was 20 per million and chicken was like 80 per million. And so the probability of a serving for sprouts of of being sick was was de minimis. And then when you looked at what happened since then, you know, the major instances of the outbreaks were predominantly commercial grown growers selling to fast food that had terrible hygiene, you know, so and sanitation practices. They weren't wearing gloves, they weren't storing properly, they had cross contamination. And so since then, you know, with the knowledge now and the level of microbial testing and GNA sequencing, DNA sequencing of the various strains, turns out there's been no deaths from sprouts in years. Just none. And sprouts at home, virtually no instances of foodborne illness at home. And then the level of now with the seeds and every seed that we sell, every bag of seeds we sell at the sprouting company is going through pathogen testing. So we're taking a batch of the seeds, they grow out the crop, they take the waste water, they run it through all sorts of testing looking for listeria, E. coli, salmonella, various pathogens that could be deadly. And so, so the the essence of it was sprouts are really safe and homegrown sprouts are even safer. So that was the paper that we wrote, peer reviewed paper, easy to find, type Doug Evans, Jed Fahey, you can find the paper. And you can put it in the show notes. And you know, the next paper that we are that we we're working on and we we have an IRB approved is to take studying the a group cohort group of people, 100 people of the impact of sprouts on their diet, on their lifestyle, from weight loss to reversing of symptoms of chronic illness, to the diabetes and the like. So that's one that we're working on. Then another one is very similar to what Walter Longo is doing with the fasting mimicking diet. Turns out sprouts are high fibre, low fat, low calorie. But the fibre can produce GLP-1 secretions. So the more sprouts that someone would eat, the more satiated they would feel, the more they'd be flooding their body with phytonutrients and micronutrients and antioxidants, and they're getting water. So sprouts are mostly water. So you're getting all of these, you know, benefits in there. So I'm collaborating with Dr. Alan Goldhamer at True North Health, who wrote the book Fasting Can Save Your Life, on being able to take part of their compound, 25, 30 beds and have people go there that have chronic illness and they would be growing their sprouts, eating their sprouts, um, under very tight medical supervision because what happens is if you are severely chronically ill on many medications and overweight, obese and you go on a sprout diet, you could kill yourself. Do you know how you would kill yourself?
Dr Rupy: Not having enough?
Doug Evans: No, no. You would be over medicated. So they need to titrate down the medication.
Dr Rupy: So these guys are already on insulin or.
Doug Evans: Yeah, they're on insulin, they're on blood thinners, they're on all these various drugs. So you need to titrate them off them.
Dr Rupy: It's a very important point because I think, you know, a lot of people might find themselves in um, like a a program looking at fasting or just a simple low calorie diet. Their body responds in a positive way in that they don't need as much insulin and unfortunately, you know, there are there are consequences of having too much medication. So this is a very important point you're making about how if you are going to make these quite drastic dietary changes, even though it's a very simplistic one of like adding more sprouts, you've got to be really careful if you're already on drugs.
Doug Evans: Yeah, if you're if you're on allopathic medicine and pharmacology, you need to, you know, work with your your doctor because like, you know, you you have up to 100 million Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. And if you take the, you know, it's mostly type two diabetes. And if their fasting blood sugar level is over 125 or 150, they're being administered insulin. And if they reduce the foods that are causing the the insulin resistance, then all of a sudden what would typically and historically have spiked their blood sugar levels would not. So then they wouldn't need the.
Dr Rupy: So that's where, you know, the cases of the glucose monitoring and, you know, the the testing, but it all requires like when someone gets to a certain level of now they're on meds, they're part of this medical system and the way to get out is they have to have an off ramp out. Like and there's a whole other issue and we could have a whole episode just on Ozempic, right? People are going on Ozempic and, you know, there'll be if they don't have a off ramp plan, they will be on Ozempic for life. And, you know, what I would say is as someone is going on Ozempic to start incorporating sprouts into the diet so they could start to be getting the nourishment that they need, the proteins that they need, the antioxidants that they need. And then like, I can ask you the the doctor perspective, are you better off being, you know, morbidly obese or getting gastro surgery or going on Ozempic? Like would what would you recommend if someone is.
Dr Rupy: I would say if you're morbidly obese and you've tried all the other lifestyle and diet interventions and you've been on other drugs that are less severe as things like Ozempic and GLP-1 agonists in general, then I would say from a pure risk benefit ratio, Ozempic is a very good option. And up to that point, at least in the UK, we would have gone through quite intensive strategies to try and improve your weight before you get to that point. If the Ozempic or for whatever reasons the GLP-1 drugs do not work or they are unfavourable to you because you have side effects, whatever that might be, then surgery, bariatric surgery would be another option there. And I think overall, those are for a certain subset of people who cannot tolerate the other interventions. But I fear, and I I see this more in the US, I would say, it's probably my bias, that people are jumping, they're sort of skipping over the the middle ground stuff and going straight to the drugs. And and I think that's going to be problematic because we just don't know enough about the long-term ramifications of these drugs, not from a side effect profile, but from exactly your point, the off-ramping and how one might maintain protein, muscle balance and nutrient density of their diet because your appetite is just absolutely smashed. So you don't want to consume anything. So if you're under consuming things like B vitamins and magnesium and vitamins and other micronutrients, then you're putting your your your body at risk of other issues further down the line.
Doug Evans: Yeah. Well, look, I I think that's, you know, part of it is that, you know, health has to become important to someone. So you could preach to the choir, right? But if you're preaching to people at a football game, they don't want to hear you. Right? So the fortunate thing which I love about your podcast and the ones is that it's there's there's something for everyone. Someone's interested in rugby, they'll they'll do rugby. Someone's interested in your podcast, they're really earnestly having a desire to make the change. They're open. So in my abundance, you know, consciousness, like I am not looking for sprouts for vegans, right? Or sprouts for paleo. I am looking at sprouts as for everybody and this inclusive approach, but the people who need it most are the chronically ill. Like they need it the most, but the people who aren't chronically ill are at risk of becoming chronically ill. And what I find is that most of the people who are doing the sprouting are healthy. Like they're healthy. And, you know, they they're, you know, in their brain, they're rationalizing, like you could put broccoli sprouts in your smoothie, right? And you're going to have the most nutritious smoothie. Like I throw the broccoli sprouts into my beast blender and I'm getting like, wow, like literally almost a level of high. Like it's a different type of high and I don't do cannabis, but like when you juice or blend the broccoli sprouts and you're eating this, you're you're getting a level of like vitality that is indescribable. And so, you know, I don't really look at chronological age or other factors, right? You know, what I what I look at is like, how do I feel? Like, how do I feel? Am I able to get up at 5:00 in the morning, you know, come to LA for a podcast, have another meeting and then go back to the desert in time for dinner with my three-year-old for her little pool party and then be able to work after she goes to sleep till midnight. Like, am I able to do that and something like that seven days a week?
Dr Rupy: That's amazing, man. I mean, you I can definitely feel the energy from you every time we connect.
Dr Rupy: Let's talk about what is stopping people from sprouting. So you've alluded to the fact that the people that are currently sprouting right now are already healthy. They're already doing the, you know, the main things, they're health optimizers. They're probably someone like me, you know, I eat a generally a very healthy diet, even when I'm in America, I'm probably in the healthiest place in America right now. It's very easy to do so. You know, I have lots of fibre, I have tons of plants, I have um, legumes, I have grains, I have all this kind of stuff in my diet. I make sure I get enough protein. Um, and I'm looking at sprouts as uh, almost like in a health optimizing way. I'm looking to sort of add a cherry on top, a very big cherry, but like, you know, a little bit extra to my diet. For the majority of people, they'll probably think of sprouting as a chore, hard to get hold of. So what are the main barriers that you're up against when when you're trying to get, you know, people universally interested in sprouting to the point where they've got a sprouting machine on their countertop?
Doug Evans: Yeah, I I really think that right now it's it's such a low barrier. The main um, the main thing that we need to do is just educate. Like when people become aware of it, like I just see the growth of the sprouting company is beyond, you know, my comprehension. Like to grow 400% year over year, no big advertising budgets, like people when they hear about it, they're curious. And then they do a little research, they talk to someone and then they like they go. And so what happens is like bottled water, big category, you know, it's a lot of different things. Sprouts are somewhat, people have heard about them, they know about them. You know, I think we've sufficiently and adequately dispelled the irrational beliefs around, you know, the the fears. And then, you know, one of the other things about the fears is, you know, every day there's um, an outbreak of something, you know, whether it's meat, chicken, fish, dairy and the like. But there's it's not even newsworthy because it's just every day. And since sprouts was just such an anomaly and no one was there to defend them, you know, things could just spiral. So now with, you know, with data, right, whether it's the large language models or or Google, people can actually see and do their own research and find out, oh, this is safe, this is affordable, this is nutritious, and this is easy. So we're just seeing the beginning of a sprouting revolution. Like I'm already just seeing like, you know, for me, you know, I'm a good looking guy. I don't look like you, right? But um, I now have 500,000 followers across social media and I talk about sprouts. Like I talk about sprouts and I find something interesting to talk about sprouts every time I post. So because we're going down, we're learning more information. Like we're learning more. So I think what happens like the barrier is really education. We have people coming to me now that are crossing over. I did a project with a woman in New York, Dr. Nas Solo at the she's part of New York Presbyterian Hospital. And she has a program reaching out to the community and, you know, she's invited me in for Zooms and the like. And these are predominantly people of colour and people of faith. And I would also layer on people that are chronically ill. And people that a group of people say would never be interested in this diet and lifestyle. And they were so interested and so supportive that they lost the weight, they documented it, they sprouted, you know, like I can show you a slide of like 60 people holding up my book. Like they read my book. And, you know, I get to preach to the choir, but they weren't the choir before. So, so I think we're just like at the very beginning and I'm seeing that now the more people hear about it and the cross referencing and, you know, the the different things where we did, you know, Jesse Itzler has running man coming up in the US, open to people from all around the world in September. And it's a running festival. It's kind of a play on Burning Man, but it's a running festival. And they'll have thousands of people from all over the world um, doing three days and, you know, it's not like you're doing a normal half marathon, marathon and then you go home. So you do this and it's community and they make it fun and they have food, they have entertainment, they have camaraderie, people are camping there and you can run one mile or you can run a 50k ultra. And so we do that there. Last year, I was there and I handed out 400 servings of sprouts and I was like an obstacle on the course. Like I'm at the track and I'm handing out like with tongs on the track, you know, handing out sprouts to to people. And, you know, obviously, you know, there's a level of business, right? Like the goal is to educate and, you know, sales obviously spiked, but just the exposure, people had never even thought about, you know, eating sprouts during a performance race as opposed to taking a gel pack, you know, with with uh, you know, what is that windshield wiper fluid and you know, um.
Dr Rupy: I want to I want to push you on the on the education part of it, right? Because I I agree. I think when people hear about sprouting, they're they're going to be, you know, interested enough to to go out and and read your book and and start buying sprouts from the supermarket if not growing their own. Um, and particularly when people are at a very desperate stage, i.e. when they have chronic illness, they're even more motivated to do something about it, which is why they might fall into sprouting, especially if they hear you, you know, talking at New York Presbyterian. But there's going to be a large cohort, and I would say the majority of people who are still going to find that barrier of, okay, I got these sprouts, I got this machine. Like, you know, we've got Val here, for example. Val's our our uh, our videographer and and in charge of audio production today. She's never done sprouting before. So let's speak to Val. We're not going to get Val on the podcast. I don't want to bring her up on on just I don't want to put her on the spot. But let's speak to someone like Val. Like she's probably heard us already. She's probably like, yeah, you know, I I probably put some sprouts in my diet. Like how are we going to get.
Doug Evans: Oh no, she's all in. She's all in. I would I I'm going to let Val sit down and you you just sprout. No, no, come on Val. This is the first. This is the first. You got you got you got Dr. Rupy.
Dr Rupy: All right, you you sit down for a second. We'll sit down for a second. Come on. Yeah, we'll do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll do it unscripted. Yeah. So Val, look, you've heard you've heard Doug talk about sprouts for the first time. You probably haven't done sprouting before.
Val: No.
Dr Rupy: So what what is genuinely going to block you from starting sprouting yourself? Because you've obviously heard about the benefits, you've already heard obviously heard about from, you know, the most energetic man in LA, let alone in the sprouting community. What's stopping you from from sprouting?
Val: Well, I mean, I don't know how good they're going to taste, I guess. A little curious about that.
Dr Rupy: Okay, yeah, taste, all right. I'll bring him over to to start answering these questions in a second. Yeah.
Val: Yeah, and I mean, yeah, I just not really sure what goes into the process of growing my own, but I like growing my own herbs and so it is something that I've been interested in before. I just haven't taken the.
Dr Rupy: Have you do you grow your own herbs?
Val: I do, actually. They don't always survive, but I grow them.
Dr Rupy: Same here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got you. Okay. Okay. So we've already got like someone who's motivated to grow herbs, but, you know, never done sprouting yourself. So taste is one of them, process. Uh, what else? What else is blocking you, if anything else you can think of?
Val: I think that's kind of it. Yeah, just I guess lack of education on the process, but that's.
Dr Rupy: What about cost? Does the cost sound prohibitive? Does it sound expensive?
Val: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, seeds could be costly, actually.
Dr Rupy: Okay. All right.
Val: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: All right. We'll get we'll get Doug back on to talk to them. But thank you, Val. I appreciate that.
Val: No problem.
Dr Rupy: All right, Doug. All right, you heard you heard from the lady. Let's talk about taste.
Doug Evans: So, so taste, um, pretty much white rice. Do you like the taste of of white rice plain, unseasoned?
Dr Rupy: No, not unseasoned, no. I like it with a little bit of like Japanese seasoning on it. Um, I like the texture of it, but generally I wouldn't eat a bowl of rice on its own.
Doug Evans: Exactly. But if you take rice and you add oil, you add salt, you add flavour, all of a sudden rice becomes. Same thing, no one eats plain pasta, right? So no one eats, you know, for the most part, no one even eats a burger plain, right? They dress it up and they have a whole stack. They got the bun, they got the lettuce, they got the onion, they got the ketchup. So things are part of something else. So they need the appropriate accoutrements to and condiments to make it. So when you start to combine creativity in a culinary perspective, right? And you make things delicious and sprouts just happen to become the carrier. I'm going to do a social video with paid actors because otherwise it's unethical. So I'm just scripting. So you you'll you'll know this first. But I'm going to and I'm actually going to use um, bean curd sheets. So the yuba sheets, I'm going to deep fry them and then going to give them to people and then they're going to say, oh, what is this? I'm going to say, it's cardboard. And just to show that, you know, you deep fry anything, people will will eat it. Like they'll just they'll just eat it. So in the case for for Val, we have to make it taste good. So if you have a great marinara sauce or a bolognese sauce or a pesto sauce or a miso, like any number of the things, she will eat it up. You take tahini and add some sourkraut and you smash an avocado in it. Like I guarantee, I guarantee, won't put Val on the spot, but I guarantee we could get 10 people off the street and they will polish off an entire jar of sprouts if you let me do some magic on it on the culinary perspective.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think, you know, if you just, you know, if you just grab those sprouts and then try munching them raw, it's not going to taste great. But when you start adding vinaigrettes and fats and natural emulsions and, you know, you can get really, really creative with them. And this is when you were talking about sprout salads, this is literally how I have my sprout salad. My sprout salad is sunflower sprouts, broccoli sprouts, and um, I have lentil sprouts in there as well because you're getting different textures and robustness and the broccoli sprouts are a bit bitter. So you need to create an almost sweeter dressing that isn't too sharp. And tahini and a fat is a very good way of doing that as well. So like adding a little, you know, bit of salt, bit of herbs and spices, throw it all together, even the salad haters out there, of which there are a few, probably not listening to this podcast, will eat that up. And it's absolutely delicious. And to your point, you know, these are concentrated sources of micronutrients that are super, super healthy.
Doug Evans: Well, and also, like people today are eating, you know, protein obsessed, right? And they're having smoothies, protein smoothies. You can put a protein powder inside of your smoothie or you could put a handful of sprouted garbanzo beans has 20 grams of protein. So you could replace your protein powder. And you as a doctor, are you better off having a protein powder or are you better off getting your protein from a whole food?
Dr Rupy: Every every person listening to the podcast and every regular listener will be able to answer that.
Doug Evans: Okay. So so we so so it's a rhetorical question. So just an easy way to slip the sprouts into the diet is just.
Dr Rupy: And it's a really good point you make about, so garbanzo beans or chickpeas in the UK speak. Um, the sprouting process, which I talked about in my book, Healthy High Protein, is one way in which you can make those amino acids more available that are found in all plants. And it's just incredible when you look at the studies looking at the amino acid profiles, there's very similar profiles of the protein subfraction that you find in meat products. So, you know, the leucine, the isoleucine, the methionine, you do find these in plants, you know, they're typically sort of referred to as low in vegan diets. And as long as you're considerate about where you're getting these from, you're going to get them from plants as well.
Doug Evans: Yeah. Well, if you mix like a couple of the sprouts together, like the sprouted the chickpeas with um, the alfalfa sprouts or the lentils with the broccoli sprouts, you you kind of build up and you're getting that picture. So, so I always look at getting enough variety of plants, sprouts or or others with enough calories. And if you get the calories and you get the the parts, like, you know, I just signed up, I'm I'm happy to publish my receipts. I just signed up for function.
Dr Rupy: Oh yeah, nice.
Doug Evans: I did that. And I just had a coronary CT scan which is clearly AI. And I'm happy to share. You could look at how like crystal clear my arteries are. It's just beautiful. So I'm happy to publish my my receipts. You know, and I don't take 180 supplements. Like I'm doing it very provincially with food. And you know, I'm getting my EPA from marine phytoplankton. I'm getting my DHA from wakame and I'm getting my ALA through walnuts, chia and flax. And I also believe that if you have a very clean diet, you have a very efficient conversion of your ALA into EPA and DHA. And, you know, I'll I'll publish my omega quant stats as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be really interesting because we're all aiming to get above 8% or between 8% and 12%. I personally take an algae oil myself as well to get the the long chain omega 3 fatty acids. Um, let's bring it back to Val. So, so taste, I think we've we've scratched that one off the list, Val. So these are going to taste amazing. Val already grows herbs, which is a good head start. Not everyone grows their own herbs. I grow herbs, but not very well. Let's talk about the process. So let let's take two different seeds that may have slightly different growing times and how you would literally do this. So we've got a sprouter in front of us.
Doug Evans: Yeah, we have we have an empty one in in the box.
Dr Rupy: That's all right. We'll just imagine this one is empty for just for the folks listening.
Doug Evans: Yeah. Okay. So you take the the jar and the small seeds, the salad mix, the radish, the broccoli and the alfalfa, it's one scoop.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So the salad mix has got all those three different seeds in together, is it?
Doug Evans: Yeah, multiple seeds together. This is just a pure broccoli.
Dr Rupy: Okay, yeah.
Doug Evans: That's just organic broccoli.
Dr Rupy: Okay, yeah. I love the branding, by the way. It's really cool.
Doug Evans: Yeah, thank you. I mean, the goal was just to make it fun and, you know, not like.
Dr Rupy: It is fun, man. This is your personality right here. I love it.
Doug Evans: Yeah, thank you. Fun, not psychedelic.
Dr Rupy: Awesome. So, so one scoop of the seeds, you put the seeds into the jar and you let the jar soak.
Doug Evans: Okay.
Dr Rupy: You let the seeds soak in the jar.
Dr Rupy: How how much water do I put in?
Doug Evans: Just enough water to fully immerse. To fully immerse the seeds. And you let them soak and then you rinse them twice a day five times for five days.
Dr Rupy: How do I rinse them? Do I just literally just pour it out?
Doug Evans: You you put more water in, put more water in and then you strain it out over the sink and then you put it in the and you put it back.
Dr Rupy: Stand and there's a little drip tray here to capture the extra water. So and a couple of times a day. So when I wake up in the morning, I'll do that and then when I and when I come back from work at night, I'll do it again.
Doug Evans: Correct. So just twice twice a day. And when you're dealing with the the legumes, the the lentils, the green peas, the mung beans, the chickpeas, those only those start to germinate in two and a half to three days.
Dr Rupy: Three days, really?
Doug Evans: Three days.
Dr Rupy: Oh, interesting.
Doug Evans: So, so they're really very powerful. So from a level of people having multiple jars, doing multiple sprouting activities, you know, I have my setup can anywhere between six to 12 jars, you know, going constantly because we're we're entertaining, we're feeding, I'm eating and then I even have a separate stash, you know, where I'm sprouting. And the the amazing thing is by the way, people are sprouting in dorm rooms.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Doug Evans: Like, oh my god. Like we we have um, a university as an investor in the company. So like the school is promoting sprouting, you know, there.
Dr Rupy: That's so cool.
Doug Evans: So, so these take five to seven days.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, these take five days. You can then harvest them, you throw them in a salad spinner, spin them dry, you can store them in the refrigerator for a few more days.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Okay. And then, uh, freezing, can we freeze those or would you just always harvest them fresh and.
Doug Evans: The broccoli, the the only seeds that I would freeze, by the way, I would freeze dry every everyone. Like I freeze dry them. I have a harvest right.
Dr Rupy: I want to talk about freeze drying in a second actually. So let's hold that thought.
Doug Evans: I love freeze drying. So I use my harvest right freeze dryer all the time. For for freezing, I take the broccoli sprouts and I stuff them into ice cube um, slots. And so then they're frozen. So then I can pop them out and then throw them into the blender when I'm making a smoothie. So as opposed to ice, I'm using the frozen broccoli.
Dr Rupy: That's so smart. That's so smart. Okay, great. All right. So the process is very simple, Val. Um, so we've got three days for some of the more robust seeds and then you've got the broccoli sprouts. Cost, we we sort of addressed this a little bit earlier. So this this bag here would cost about.
Doug Evans: Yeah, that's an eight ounce bag of organic broccoli seeds is probably 20 or 25 dollars.
Dr Rupy: Okay. And in terms of like the um, other seeds, so we mentioned.
Doug Evans: The salad mix, the lentils, the green peas, those are like 15 dollars for a small bag.
Dr Rupy: And can you use any sort of lentil, like a small pea? Like in in the UK, we've got um, we've got split peas, we have um, green peas, we've got mung, obviously, we have puy, like or beluga. Can you can you sprout those?
Doug Evans: I mean, you know, I I haven't used this metaphor yet, but since I'm dealing with a doctor, like if you're going to perform surgery, yeah, you could use a Swiss army knife, you know, you could use a one-sided razor blade, but or you could use a sterile scalpel, right? So I think what happens is the a lot of the seeds, if they're not like grown, packaged, handled for sprouting, you could get dubious results.
Dr Rupy: Right. Okay.
Doug Evans: So we our standards for sprouting are non-GMO, certified organic, tested for pathogens, tested for germination rate, um, handled and like we have a little, you know, stick on the back where you could see the the germ rate and the other, you know, details. So it was a very deliberate part because when I got into this sprouting world, it was like the wild wild west. I would order seeds and because I had the resources and I was I was doing research, I took my broccoli seeds from one of the largest suppliers, I sent them to the lab to test how many micromoles of glucoraphanin they're in. So I sent them from different suppliers and some had medium, some had low, um, and then one, two of them had none.
Dr Rupy: How do you have none?
Doug Evans: Well, all the little seeds look the same. You couldn't tell the difference between a radish seed, a broccoli seed, a mustard seed and the like. And that kind of, you know, so then I what happened is it had none. So you're asking the same question I did. How does it have none? So I sent it to another lab to sequence the DNA and they came back and they go, well, it's in the brassica family, but it's not broccoli. So it doesn't have any glucoraphanin in. And that like, you know, had me, you know, go and start like a whole other thing of finding high glucoraphanin broccoli seeds. So these were seeds that were grown and cultivated for um, the making supplements. So they had been cultivated for supplements, non-GMO, um, and these were, you know, I I don't know the math, how do you say that if these have 100 micromoles and some had zero, you can't say like that level. So we took the average and we say that there's 70% more glucoraphanin in them. But the reality was like some it's so it's the wild wild west. And that's where I I said like my life was so beautiful like before I started the sprouting company and I only did this because I couldn't get anyone else to do it. I would be calling up the places and saying, hey, I want, you know, can you test your seeds? Can you do this? Hey, I want a jar, you know, that has, you know, I want a glass jar that that the threads are on the outside so it's straight. So all the water will drain out. And then, you know, I don't want a plastic filter and I don't want a mesh filter which rusts and collects. So I want to get something like this and and people no one wanted to do it. And then I wanted a bigger jar, right? I wanted a bigger jar.
Dr Rupy: It's a massive jar.
Doug Evans: But but it's a bigger jar, but I I made these detents that perfectly fit my wife's hands. So she's got dainty little hands.
Dr Rupy: That's so sweet.
Doug Evans: Well, no, it's not sweet. She broke my other jars. And I don't want to clean up glass in the kitchen. So, so this was really like, you know, designed like, you know, for for small hands and all hands. So it was just a like, like design form follows function. So everything was just a level of saying, okay, I'm doing this because if if now that I know this information and I don't do the work, then it may sit for another 100 years until someone else moves to the desert, you know, and finds themselves in a in doesn't want to eat 7-Eleven food and the like.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I love that, man. Okay. So, look, Val, we've addressed all your questions, which I I imagine like a lot of the listeners would have had the same pushback as well. So tastes great, process is super easy, cost is low. Um, you can make these at home. They are literally fresh, harvested, they're concentrated source of micronutrients. Um, they're a source of fibre. You're going to get a real good mixture of these different um, micronutrients that you don't typically get in your diet otherwise. How, let's talk, let's go quick fire through some of the things that you do maybe personally and what you would advise other people to think about. So, how much, uh, how many sprouts do you think would be a good place to start for folks and and and which meal time?
Doug Evans: Yeah, look, I I think that now that I'm a parent, I can, you know, adjust things for um, for everybody. So I'd say start with a single jar. Um, if you're scared of broccoli, start with lentils, right? You're already familiar, sprout lentils. And, you know, add them to whatever you're eating. Like whatever you're eating, throw them on the plate. Like if you if you want to take the broccoli and you want, you know, to, you know, like especially where in LA, a lot of people are exposed to the wildfires, you know, benzene, asbestos, air pollutants, like proven, proven research.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, we didn't actually talk about this, did we? The detoxification potential for some of these nutrients.
Doug Evans: Yeah, they they basically upregulate the Nerf 2 pathway and cause the detoxification of these air pollutants. So broccoli sprouts. So, you know, if you if you want to, just stuff them on a sandwich, stuff them in a wrap, add them to your soup, add them to anything and you can get them into your diet. Um, when you start to, like in Japan, broccoli sprouts are a billion dollar business.
Dr Rupy: What?
Doug Evans: Yeah, yeah, you could look at Murakami, M U R A K A M I, and maybe you could even show a little clip in there. They have a billion dollar business doing broccoli sprouts. They sell them in 20,000 retail stores across the country. And people there, they want the broccoli sprouts because they want the sulforaphane. They look at it as a longevity food. So they're making sure like in Japan that they're getting two or three ounces of broccoli sprouts every day.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Doug Evans: So they're serving a half a million servings of broccoli sprouts every day. And Japan is a city, is a is a country smaller than New York City.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Wow.
Doug Evans: Right? Like a quarter of the size of LA.
Dr Rupy: Why are the Japanese always ahead of us with this kind of stuff? Longevity and technology.
Doug Evans: I think the more culture, you know, like America is like this melting pot of people from all over and then, you know, they just adapt different climates, different heritage, different culture. You know, so where people were were living and in the same place, um, they were able to, you know, try to ward off the outside influences of the processed food. But now, you know, you see Coca-Cola is available in, you know, 140 countries around the world and, you know, the the Japan, you know, parts of Japan that have not been infiltrated, you know, by Western influences is is doing really well. But but even even in the main hearts of Hiroshima and and Tokyo, like you can practically buy broccoli sprouts in 7-Eleven.
Dr Rupy: That's amazing. That's incredible.
Doug Evans: All right. Okay. So that's given me an indication of how much I should be consuming every single day. Like, you know, handfuls of broccoli sprouts. And and literally, I'm not I'm not joking here. I had some broccoli sprouts this morning with the side of my tortillas and I had some tomatoes, um, some leftover chickpeas from the night before and some um, salsa, like red salsa that we made. And we just threw that all together and I had some broccoli sprouts on the side of that. So you can just make it as part of any meal.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I mean, that that's it. It's just a matter of like what's important to you. Like if your family's important, longevity is important. For me, it's like, how do I feel? Like I'm so sensitive that if I eat something that is not right, like I it's like I want to like just take a sleeping pill, you know, and and try to like go to sleep until it burns out of the body. And so I'm very aware of it. And now, like I know, I know the price I'll pay. Like I just I just know the price I pay. So it doesn't even matter. Like I look at the other food, you know, and I I go to like being eating the way I eat is hard, right? Just hard. But now like I travel on a plane, I carry a cooler. You know, in my car, I've got a, you know, electric cooler, so a little mini refrigerator in my car, which is why these came so fresh. Um, and, you know, everywhere I go, I'm planning for food. And I'm not like obsessive on. Like if I have to, I'll just eat bananas and apples. Um, but if the apple, you know, is totally looks like it's fake, right? It's waxy and it's things, you know, could be a year old, like I won't touch it. Like I'd rather just skip the meal. So it does require planning, but without shifting the diet, like I can see like my my clear vision in two years, five years, you're going to see sprouts, you know, in restaurants everywhere. I even see restaurants growing their own sprouts in the restaurant.
Dr Rupy: I think that's going to be a very, yeah, it's definitely going to be easier, particularly with the stuff that you've got planned for this company that I'm aware of.
Doug Evans: Yeah, you know, there's a there's a restaurant, a Michelin star, green Michelin star restaurant, Plates.
Dr Rupy: Where's that?
Doug Evans: In the UK.
Dr Rupy: Oh, is it?
Doug Evans: In the UK. Um, and Kirk, the chef, um, he sprouts. And he's my he's my friend. Look at look him up. You should go like he'll blow your mind. It's a it's a Michelin star plant-based restaurant that serves sprouts.
Dr Rupy: Wow. Okay. I got to check this place out. It's in it's in uh, it's like a farm retreat thing, is it?
Doug Evans: Yeah, they well, they have two now. They opened up one in the woods.
Dr Rupy: Wow. Um, you mentioned dehydrating um, sprouts. Let's talk about that.
Doug Evans: Freeze drying.
Dr Rupy: Oh, sorry, freeze drying. So yeah, why don't you tell us the difference between freeze drying or the different sort of preservation methods and and what you do and why you do that?
Doug Evans: So, nature has a lot of different preservation methods. So I like fresh. By far under all circumstances, I like fresh. You can freeze the broccoli sprouts. Um, you could probably freeze the legume ones, but then you'd want to cook them because they they just the texture doesn't doesn't good. Dehydrating of them is at a relatively low temperature, keeps the enzymes alive, um, takes a long time um, to do it and there's not a lot of body to them. So you dehydrate them. Certain things if you dehydrate the the legumes, they become like rocks. So it's just not appealing. Freeze drying is this phenomenal process where you take something, you freeze it at 20 degrees below zero. And then it pulls a vacuum. And then you start to warm up the temperature and the vacuum is so strong that as the temperature is warming and the vacuum's there, it's causing the ice crystals to sublimate into a gas. And then all the moisture is sucked out of it. So you're left with something with zero humidity, zero moisture left in it. And the moisture is what causes the degradation and the like. So freeze drying, you know, you can freeze dry your sprouts, put them in a mason jar, you know, preferably over a mylar bag and vacuum um, suck it and it will last for 25 years.
Dr Rupy: So, uh, this isn't sound like something you can do at home, right? Freeze drying. That's.
Doug Evans: You in in the US, we now have um, home freeze dryers for like under $5,000.
Dr Rupy: Really? I had no idea you could get even a domestic one available because it sounds like it's a a commercial process.
Doug Evans: Yeah, it was commercial, but now it's being made for the home. A lot of Americans are homesteaders. So those are the big audience. And you can freeze dry anything. Like my friend just freeze dried guacamole.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. You berries and like, yeah.
Doug Evans: Yeah, freeze dry everything. And because I have a three, like we got the freeze dryer because of my my three-year-old.
Dr Rupy: Oh yeah?
Doug Evans: Um, because we would go to parties and they'd have junk there. So I would, you know, in order to not like offend the various hosts, I'd bring over pounds and bags and everything else and to displace the other crap with freeze dried berries and like mango and banana and it's expensive, you know, like you get a little tin of um, organic berries, but, you know, health is more important than anything.
Dr Rupy: That's amazing. What what's the you got to tell me the brand of this freeze dryer.
Doug Evans: Yeah, it's called Harvest Right.
Dr Rupy: Harvest Right. Okay, great. I'm going to look this up. Harvest Right.
Doug Evans: This is not a paid endorsement.
Dr Rupy: No, no, of course not. No. But the thing is like freeze drying for me because we looked into some of the preservation methods um, from a budget point of view. We did an episode a little while back where we're looking at um, frozen and canned and pre-prepared and all that kind of stuff, particularly as, you know, people struggle to afford fresh food on a weekly diet. And we, you know, freezing was really good. In terms of the best nutrient preservation, we we came across freeze drying as like a method that we should be looking for, particularly for some of these supplement companies that are doing like green powders, you know, a lot of them are just like dried at very high temperatures. You're removing a lot of the nutrients through that process. Those who have actually gone the extra mile and done freeze drying using the the method that you just described, you know, that's going to be a lot more nutrient dense and that's a lot more worth it when it comes to spending your money on these products.
Doug Evans: Yeah. I mean, I I think there's a level like, you know, we have a lot of things going on in the US around health. Like to me, with my eyes, like I can look at a piece of fruit and know whether it it's been modified, whether it's been waxed or the like. I can look at this sprout and know like, wow, this is like my eyes are tuning in. Like this is wow, like this is medicine, this is nutrients and the like. As soon as, you know, you put it in that box or the bag and it's processed and treated, it's it's dubious. We don't know what what it is. So for me, you know, I'd rather wait a little bit longer, do a little bit more planning, but invest into foods that are um, that I know what they are. Right? And, you know, like people do more research on what kind of computer they're going to buy or what kind of car they're going to buy or where they're going to live. And they don't realize like they're living in this body. Like where do you live? I live right here. Right? This is the human transport vehicle for Doug. So I got to maintain it and I have to have my high standards and I know the consequences. Like what would happen if you put water in your in your car, right? Like it's either going to blow up or just stop, but it's not going to run. So we have to run and the science is really just been totally there. Like we know what's good for us. But because of the whatever addictive tendencies, whatever generational trauma we've had, like the food industry knows exactly how to play us. Like they know exactly how to combine that fat, sugar, salt, you know, colour, texture, you know, like like just to just totally dominate. So that's where you just be aware. It's like if you don't have any of that, like I would today, like I swear if you gave me, you know, a bag of potato chips, you know, and once I had that first chip, I would finish it. I would finish it. It would be no stop. We we'd probably have a fist fight over it, right? And I just so I was like, okay, you know, one potato chip is too much, all the potato chips in the world aren't enough.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I totally hear you, man. Um, finally, I think you mentioned your shake earlier with broccoli sprouts in. We got to find out what's in your shake. What do you put in your shake?
Doug Evans: So, I put broccoli sprouts, romaine lettuce, um, and I generally do my shakes are are green. So I'll put the broccoli sprouts, I'll put some romaine, you know, lettuce for the body. And then I'll put an algae. I'll I'll put in spirulina, chlorella, a marine phytoplankton. And then depending on what's available, like in the in my in my house, I like um, nettle.
Dr Rupy: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nettle is very good. Yeah, yeah. We get a lot of that in the UK.
Doug Evans: Yeah, I like I like nettle. And um, if I can get, I like fresh coconut water. Like I don't like, you know, the bottle stuff. So if I can get fresh coconut water, that's very good. Otherwise, you know, I will juice like a cucumber or just throw the whole cucumber in there and that's it.
Dr Rupy: Love it.
Doug Evans: Or aloe, if I can get, you know, we grow aloe, you know, on my reservation.
Dr Rupy: Oh, do you? Oh, nice. Nice.
Doug Evans: So, you know, aloe is incredible. Throw a whole spear in there.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, amazing. That's great, man. Dude, Sprouting King, Sproutacular, so sprout a lot, whatever your name should be. This has been a great, great episode. I love, love chatting to you. It's been great to meet in person and I I'm on the mission to help you get more people sprouting, man. I think it's it's epic what you're doing and I can't wait to see what the next couple of years are like for you.
Doug Evans: I mean, you just you just watch. Like we we know where it's going. Like, you know, who gets to write the script? I get to write the script. Right? Like, you know, it's like you sent the email and I was like, I was in LA on Tuesday. I was like, hey, let's do it on Tuesday. No availability Friday. So I'm like looking in the the reality of like, okay, well, Friday it is. Right? So, so here, like we know like there's there's nothing new here. Like we're not trying to promote some crazy, you know, superfood out of the Amazon. These are things that are familiar, there's tested, there's research is there. It just takes some as Val said, some education and from what you said, some culinary flavouring and if we take the education, the flavouring, the affordability, the access, the good the equipment to make it easy, like it's just a perfect constellation of joy.
Dr Rupy: Amazing. Amazing. I love that, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate you making the time for this, dude. Honestly, it's been so good. So, so good.
Doug Evans: Thank you so much for having me.
