How Adding Sprouts to Your Diet is A Major Nutritional Solution with Doug Evans [Episode #791]

This week’s topic is: How Adding Sprouts to Your Diet is A Major Nutritional Solution with Doug Evans

I am so excited to have my very special guest, Doug Evans, who is a serial health food entrepreneur―selling to the stylish and chic as well as to the rest of us. Listen in as Doug shares his philosophy on how to incorporate sprouts into your life, transitioning from a traditional diet, sprouts nutritional value, and so much more!

[BULLETS]

• Doug’s philosophy on how to incorporate sprouts…
• The dampness in raw foods…
• How to transition from a traditional diet…
• What the oldest texts have found about uncookedness…
• Sprouts and their nutritional value…
• Affordable way to grow sprouts versus buying…

[FEATURED GUESTS]

About Doug Evans

Doug Evans is an early pioneer in the natural food industry. In 2002 he co-founded Organic Avenue, one of the first exclusively raw, organic and plant-based retail chains in the country. He then created and founded Juicero, the first fresh, farm to glass automatic cold-press juicer, with the mission of bringing more fresh produce to the home. Doug lives in the Mojave Desert at Wonder Valley Hot Springs. Doug wrote, The Sprout Book in efforts to teach people about the power of sprouts and has written a transformative plan for sprouting. He’s revolutionizing gardening and growing your own food right in your kitchen in an affordable and accessible way. His mission in life is to help people learn how to grow and eat the most nutritious food on the planet, sprouts.

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[❤️ FAN OF THE WEEK]

Doug Evans Interview

• Doug’s Website
• Doug’s Sproutman Book

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• The Top Superfoods for 2023 are Plant-Based for the First Time
• How To Transition To A Healthier Diet With Plant-Based Alternatives
• Staying In Your Truth Being Plant-Based
• Easy, Fun and Healthy Meal Prep with Kevin Curry

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Namaste loves and welcome back to our Monday interview show where I am so excited to share my conversation with you today with Doug Evans, who is a serial health food entrepreneur. He co-founded Organic Avenue in New York City, many other health brands, and he is the author of the Sprout book, which is a practical, informative and useful guide on how Sprouts are such an amazing solution that is accessible, affordable, and as we’ll get into today, incredibly, almost miraculously densely nutritious. Doug is walking the walk. He is magnetic, he is a ball of energy and I cannot wait to share our conversation with you today.

Fan of the Week

But before we get into it, I wanted to give a shout out to our fan of the week, and her name is karengallardo. I hope I’m saying that right. And karengallardo writes, keep shining your beautiful light. Hi Kim. A decade ago I read your book, the Beauty Detox Solution, and it changed my life. I got so excited when I discovered your podcast and it literally brings me so much joy to listen while I’m on my walk. Every time I’m done listening to your podcast, I feel lighter and inspired. karengallardo, thank you so much for your amazing words. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being part of our community. If you could see me here sitting in my studio, I have both hands on my heart and I really took that in and it is such an honor for me to be part of your life, to be part of each other’s lives. I just think it’s such an incredible aspect of connection and community and technology that we have access to. So thank you Karen. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and for you my love listening to this.

Leave a Review on iTunes

If you haven’t yet left us a review, I would appreciate it so much. You can leave it on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen to our show and it’s an amazing way to support and also help beautiful souls like yourself. Also find the show while you’re over there. Please be sure to subscribe. That way you stay in the flow of our interviews, which are always on Mondays and our Thursday q and a shows. And if you’re interested in me diving deeper into any particular topic or question, you can submit them over on our website at mysolluna.com. Also, please share the show with anyone that you think could benefit. This has been a huge guiding principle in my life in Creating Beauty Detox and Sal Luna and my books. This leads to just connection and abundance when we share what we think could help others. So I encourage you to share an episode or a topic or anything that you think would benefit someone else.

Community Waterfall Cleanse

Also, a little reminder that on June 7th we are starting a group waterfall cleanse, a community waterfall cleanse. So this is an opportunity to go through the three days energetically as a group. I’ll be kicking it off with a live zoom call and reminder, this holistic cleanse includes meditations, juice smoothie, and elixir recipes, a guided plan, a stretch video guided journaling prompts and more. It’s like a vision quest. This isn’t just about trying to lose some quick weight, although it very effectively will help you to deep bloat and get rid of excess waste from your physical bodily temple. But also to reclarify our vision and our focus and our goals and our intentions across our lives. So it’s a wonderful time to do it right now with the light coming into its peak with um, officially summer coming up in just a few weeks. So you can check out all the info over@myna.com. Alright, all that being said, let’s get into our show today with the incredibly energetic Doug Evans.

Interview with Doug Evans

Kimberly: 00:00 Well, this is fun sitting together. We’ve both heard of each other’s names for the past decade or so. Yes. And here we are. So, Yes. You know, sometimes spirit brings us together and we just don’t know exactly when the timing is gonna be. It’s all in divine. Perfect timing. So here we are and I’m so excited to sit with you and your incredible energy. So we, we actually connected at a party and I just felt like you were this magnetic, bouncing off the wall. Some of it I think is just the core of who you are. And some of it has to do with this amazing raw food sprout centric diet you

Doug: 00:40 Have. Yes. I mean, no one has really like tapped into the power of living foods. Mm. On at a scale basis. And like, I love all plants, right? I love fungus. I love mycelium. Right. And I love plants. And I didn’t realize the power of when you’re eating a sprout, that it is a complete living organism. The root, the chute, the endo, sperm, the embryo, the testa. It is alive. And like every millisecond, it’s changing, growing sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, converting this metabolic, um, composition of air, water, carbon. And it’s becoming like the numbers don’t add up on sprouts. Right? Like if you take the seed and you take water, right. One plus one doesn’t equal two with sprouts, it equals 11. Wow. So you’re getting far more. It’s not like the, because there’s no fertilizer, there’s no soil. Right. It’s all happening with pure love force and life

Kimberly: 01:55 Force. Life Isa it’s like coming from the inside of it. So what percentage of your diet is sprout stuck?

Doug: 02:02 It’s been at some points 100%. Wow. 100%. And it’s interesting, I talk about, in my book, I put someone who I met in a waterfall in Bali mm-hmm. <affirmative> on, I told him all about Sprouts. And he got so inspired. He did 30 days of all sprouts and he lost 25 pounds and he ran like an ultramarathon on Sprout.

Kimberly: 02:31 Wow.

Doug: 02:31 On Sprouts only. And so, um, but now I’m probably 50 to 70% sprouts.

Kimberly: 02:39 But you’re all raw food

Doug: 02:40 Plant based? Yeah. All raw vegan? Yes. Wow. All raw plant based.

Kimberly: 02:43 So I was all raw vegan for about two years, Doug. And I’ve been, you know, vegan now for well over a decade. And I lived in New York. And the thing that was a little challenging for me was when it was cold outside, I would want that vegetable soup. Um, and then I started getting into Ayurveda. So how are, how are you able to deal? And you we’re here speaking in la but how are you able to, you’re from New York as well. How are you able to deal with, you know, oh, I feel cold inside. Or, Hey, there’s a lot of information saying maybe we need cooked. Tell us your amazing philosophy. Cuz obviously whatever you’re doing is really working.

Doug’s philosophy on how to incorporate sprouts

Doug: 03:20 Yeah. I mean, I’m gonna be 57 in two weeks. Wow. And you

Kimberly: 03:24 Look amazing. <laugh>. Yeah.

Doug: 03:25 Thank you. Thank you.

Kimberly: 03:26 Energy through the roof.

Doug: 03:28 So I, I think a lot of it is psychological. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like we have these irrational beliefs. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like if you consume something hot, you get warm and Yes. And I like to consume everything at room temperature. Mm. Right. So,

Kimberly: 03:43 So will you have even hot tea?

Doug: 03:45 I don’t have hot tea.

Kimberly: 03:46 Wow. Everything. You don’t have coffee? Nothing. No.

Doug: 03:49 I’ve, I’ve never had a cup of coffee in my life.

Kimberly: 03:52 Wait, what about smoothies?

Doug: 03:53 So

Kimberly: 03:53 Room temp

Doug: 03:55 Ro Well, I rarely have a smoothie. Mm. Because I like to chew my food. Right. And I’m simple. Yes. And you know, I, I wouldn’t say I’m lazy, but I’m like efficient and there’s nothing more efficient than like grabbing a handful of sprouts or grabbing an apple. And so the smoothie seems like a step. Yes. For me. So I have a, I have a beast blender and I like that. And if I wanna mix in various concoctions, I will do that. But I’ll use th that more to make like a hummus. But like my brother, um, for some reason brotherly love, he has an aversion to like sprouts. Mm. And especially like big sprouts, like, um, sun garbanzo bean. Yes. Garbanzo beans or, or lentils. He has an aversion. So it’s so easy to fool him. So I will just take like a pickle and sprout it garbanzo beans and make a hummus.

04:51 Mm. And, and that hummus is just so alive with the life force, the prebiotics, um, and the probiotics of the brine and the pickle coupled with the sprouted garbanzo bean, um, ends up being like, he can eat all of it, but in his mind it’s not a sprout. He’s just eating it as like a puree, you know, or a dip. So for me, in, to answer the question specifically in the winter, yes. Like, I wear layers, I do movement. Yes. <laugh>. And, you know, I don’t drink cold items. Right, right. So I want everything to be ideally at room temperature or body temperature. Body temperature, 98 to a hundred. And I’m fine. And also in the winter, I know you had whim Hoff on your, on your podcast. Like I have, I do cold plunge, I do whim Hoff, Mike Posner does Wim Hoff certified breath work. Mm. Um, as well. But when I get out of the ice bath, I used to immediately jump into the hot spring. Yes. And now I do horse stance and I do movement to bring up my internal temperature. Mm. Um, just through movement. Interesting. So I think that that’s it. Like

Kimberly: 06:10 I, the balance of all the different factors, it’s not, you’re not just getting it from food. Yeah. You’re using movement, the energy of your body.

Doug: 06:17 And, and I think that for some parts, like living this truth, like my truth, like I know the power that as soon as you cook a vegetable, the first thing that goes that dissipates is the water molecules that are inside the cytoplasm. Cuz the heat causes those to transfer out.

Kimberly: 06:40 It happen, the enzymes, everything. Vitamins Yeah. To get denature.

Doug: 06:44 Yeah. Denature the vitamins, but, but the water mm-hmm. <affirmative> like what we really need, we’re water mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when you heat food and you cook food, like that’s why I really, even, I’ll have dehydrated items, you know, for storage and for convenience. But I really like things that are fresh. So my whole life, you know, since my, um, transformation, um, th 24 years ago is all about fresh. Yes. So I want fresh and cooking is unnecessary for fresh. Like, I like raw, fresh.

Kimberly: 07:17 There’s so much in there, you know, it comes to mind. We were talking about our, our babies and we have this amazing holistic mama pregnancy course coming out in a few months. And when you talk to acupuncturists, right, we’re talking about these acupuncturists that are helping people with fertility or bringing life in. Traditional Chinese medicine is like no dampness, no raw food, more meat. And that just didn’t make sense to me. I mean, I respect for all different traditions, but this idea of do you have to eat all these animal products when you’re trying to get pregnant? Right. It’s, they’re looking at it from a certain standpoint versus this life that’s coming in from the raw foods, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we have something called the glowing green smoothie in our community, which is mostly green vegetables. The sprouts. When I was getting pregnant, I was eating a lot of raw greens. It felt really good to me. Right. So we see that there’s different philosophies, but it’s really interesting how, you know, some of the, like traditional Chinese medicine will say, oh no, that creates dampness. I’m sure you’ve heard this as

The dampness in raw foods

Doug: 08:15 Well. I mean my, you know, like, I am sensitive not to judge or

Kimberly: 08:21 Yes. To c

Doug: 08:22 Criticize. My experience is that we are alive, we want living things Yes. That are plant based and thematically rich that just flow. Like you eat, um, a piece of flesh, animal flesh, it can take days to go through the digestive tract. It will require all sorts of acid forming, molecular, um, activity in the body to break it down when you’re eating fruit. Yes. Or sprouts. The bioavailability, the enzymatic activity, the fiber, um, the antioxidants, the phytonutrients. Like someone, and I rarely respond back to any haters or trolls on my social media. Oh

Kimberly: 09:14 Yes, of course. Right. Because just let it be

Doug: 09:16 <laugh>. Like I just, yes. There’s no time in, in, in, in this life. But someone I, I wrote sprouts are the most nutrient dense, uh, food on the planet. And someone wrote No meat, chicken, fish, dairy, eggs are the most nutrient. And I said, um, how much fiber is in there? How much phytonutrients are in there? How much polyphenols are in there? Yes. And he wrote back, good point. I wasn’t thinking about that.

Kimberly: 09:46 Right. They’re thinking about the macronutrients.

Doug: 09:48 The macronutrients. And, and what I’m thinking is like, we’re water based, like we’re alive, we’re electrical energy and we want to be in the flow. And what I could tell you is that I used to, at three o’clock in the afternoon, 30 years ago, I would have like this dip in energy and I would need to have sugar, or I would need to have chocolate or some sort of stimulant. Yes. And then if I didn’t have, you know, meat, chicken, fish, bread, pizza, pasta, I wouldn’t feel full. Mm. And now like it’s, when I talk about the mental aspect, I love the feeling of being a little hungry.

Kimberly: 10:33 Yeah. Tell us about that transition, Doug. You know, we’re listening to this and we’re like, well, you know, cuz there are recipes at the back of your book. Right? Right.

Doug shares what transitioning from a traditional diet looks like

Doug: 10:41 40 recipes.

Kimberly: 10:42 Wait, so when you’re eating now, are you putting sauces on the sprouts? Was there this, you know, period where you were transitioning from eating like so-called like the everyday food into this really pure way of eating where you’re looking at the energetic integrity of the sprouts and the raw foods and that’s more important to you than the actual, you know, the addiction of taste?

Doug: 11:04 Yeah. So I’m a student of, uh, Alan Goldhammer who wrote the Pleasure Trap. Right. And I’m very, very aware of my reptilian brain <laugh>. Right. And how we were brought up, you know, in current, um, society with total abundance of everything and anything but how we were wired a hundred thousand years ago, or a million years ago, was we were brought up in scarcity mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. We didn’t know how many calories we’d be able to have. So the way that we’re wired is the more calorically dense food we will consume mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which in that was meat Right. Or flesh. Um, you would get a dopamine hit, you would get pleasure and a reward for eating fatty, um, calorically dense food. And Yes. So that was an age. The other thing about that then was the meat probably had 20% fat.

12:14 Right. And if you look at a McDonald’s hamburger, it’s probably 50 to 60% fat. So the fat has shifted, but we didn’t know. So the reward system is, if you had fatty food, eat as much and just keep eating it and eating it. And that’s why Ben and Jerry’s and ice cream and these calorically dense foods are so addictive because, um, you’re getting rewards in the brain. So when people are overeating like that, there’s nothing wrong with them. They are operating with the programming and the wiring of scarcity, um, and then consumption. Right. And so when I became aware that we lived in abundance, then I had to make steps to say, oh, I don’t need to, I used to eat, like there were days in the New York, um, part where I would have 5,000 calorie days. I would eat full durians, I’d eat six, um, avocados, I would get cases of coconut.

Kimberly: 13:18 Like you had already transitioned into raw. I was all raw. But you were wanting that density.

Doug: 13:23 Yeah, I was raw, but I was still, um, very simple. I was like a simpleton.

Kimberly: 13:28 But what about the leap from normal foods or like, you know, the regular foods normal of your childhood into the Yeah. So

Doug: 13:35 Plant-based, I give that, you know, that awareness to my first, you know, my partner in Organic Avenue, Denise Murray kind of exposed me to vegan and plant-based life. Mm. And then we went to a battle of the diet in New York City at the big Apple Vegetarian Center. And Paul Nissan was a speaker there, and I forget the other people. And Paul had talked about the raw vegan diet. And that night I went back to Lifetime of, um, natural

Kimberly: 14:07 Foods. Oh, I used to go there all the time. On sixth Avenue.

Doug: 14:10 Yeah. On sixth Avenue. And upstairs they had a bookstore. Yes. And I bought David Wolf’s book published in 1996 called Nature’s First Law, the Raw Food Diet. Mm. And I read that book from cover to cover that night. And then I said, oh, this makes total sense. Mm. And he was a little extreme, like every chapter ended with cooked food is poison. But there was, um, a lot, so much information about the benefits and the power of raw food, about like, you know, we weren’t born with a, with an a stove in our stomach. Right. That all, all animals, like, um, on the planet consume raw food. Right. Just raw food and carnivore. Um, true carnivores are eating raw meat and everyone is eating raw food. So I said, I will, let me try this. Like, I was very curious. And so I went into my state of my strategy was I was going to eat as much raw food as I wanted in abundance until I was no longer hungry or I was full.

15:17 Mm. And that meant from when I grew up poor in New York City, my mother would give us like six cherries or like a small, you know, slice, uh, pizza, uh, of a section of a watermelon or one nectarine mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and here. So I would go to the farmer’s market and I would just buy abundance. Yes. And I would just eat. And I would, and I would eat as much as I wanted. And like days would go by. And I remember registering a website called, uh, domain called Still Raw. And I would, you know, just one day at a time like, could I still be raw? Could I still be raw? Wow. And it just went and one day turned into a weeks, turned into a months turned into years. But I was still like unaware of anything on nutrition.

Kimberly: 16:08 But did you have any dips in energy or was it you, you must have been sort of detoxifying at a certain point, your body purging? I, you

Doug: 16:15 Know, I didn’t, I didn’t Did you have

Kimberly: 16:17 That? You get colonics, you get headaches.

Doug: 16:19 I, I like, I went all in. Yeah. So I would do all the stuff. I would get colonics by Gil Jacobs, you know, back in the day. Back in the day. And,

Kimberly: 16:28 And like, were you doing any like lymphatic? Yeah.

Doug: 16:30 Dry brush, dry brushing. Dry brushing. I did that and it was, it was fine. I had a, you know, I had David, jb you know, coach me through Wow. You know, a, a fast Yes. And so I did all of these things. But at the end of the day, the feedback mechanism for me was if I overate, I felt if I overate too much, I felt bloated and the key was slowing down.

Kimberly: 16:57 Interesting. Yeah. The register to your brain, like I the stomach has had enough.

Doug: 17:01 Yeah. And like, and then also not eating while I was standing up. And also, you know, like the prayer, like we we’re al we always say grace, you know, in our, in our

Kimberly: 17:12 Home, as do

Doug: 17:13 We. And when I look at the food, like the digestion begins Yes. Visually. Like I look at the food and very Pavlovian.

Kimberly: 17:22 Yes. It’s starting to secrete

Doug: 17:24 <laugh>. Yeah. The secretions, the digestive fluids start to flow. And then like, if I’m able to eat slow, I will eat less. Like if I’m not conscious, like if I’m on the phone, you know, and I’m like reading things or doing things, um, I will end up overeating because it takes time for the food to register in the stomach. So therefore, like I don’t do portion control. Like I, I eat abundance, but I want, the more present I am, the the less, the more present I am, the better the eating experience will be. Right. And now intellectually, I have absolute confidence that sprouts contain every single micronutrient, phytonutrient, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, every amino acid, every essential amino acid to form complete proteins. So like,

Kimberly: 18:22 It’s your main protein source is the sprouts. Yeah.

Doug: 18:24 It’s, it’s all, it’s all in there.

Kimberly: 18:26 And like, it’s such a, a form, your body can assimilate it and take it in. Yeah.

Doug: 18:30 And it’s so simple. It’s, it’s so, so what? So now what I look at fruits to me are like treats. They’re like really like treats and I love them. So my strategy is, I, I limit my feeding window from like noon to, to darkness, six or 7:00 PM in the summer. It’s a little bit longer. And I eat in there and I eat fruit and I eat sprouts. And if I’m in a social environment, you know, then there’ll be seasonings and dips

Kimberly: 19:04 And got it. And, but usually it’s just simple

Doug: 19:06 For me. Yeah. It’s just simple.

Kimberly: 19:07 So when you’re traveling, let’s say you’re going somewhere and sprouts aren’t really available, let’s you go to Paris or something, what do you do? Do you,

When sprouts aren’t available

Doug: 19:15 Oh, it’s so easy to sprout. Like,

Kimberly: 19:16 Okay, so you bring your kit with you to do it.

Doug: 19:18 Yeah. I, you can sprout anywhere but in, you can find, I mean, the amazing thing is if you, you seek it out, you seek it out, you will find it. And I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve been to China, I’ve been to Taiwan, I’ve been, you know, all over Africa.

Kimberly: 19:31 And you found sprouts.

Doug: 19:32 I sprouts everywhere. As a matter of fact, in Japan, they sell broccoli sprouts in like the way we sell iceberg lettuce. In 20,000 retail stores are selling broccoli sprouts.

Kimberly: 19:44 I that, wait, I gotta tell you something, Doug, this is amazing because, you know, you and I were talking about Yogananda as you know, my last book was about Guruji as well. And when I went to India the last time and I used autobiography as my guide, and I was staying at his ashrams, they always served sprouts. Did you know this? Yes. Yessir outside Calcutta. And I noticed there’d be this large amount of sprouts. And if you go back to the Gita, if you go back to the earlier texts, they’re talking about this raw, it’s like the sun energy. It’s the most direct energy coming in. They’re talking about the raw, they’re talking about the fruit. So I actually said to my auric teacher, cuz Ayurveda doesn’t come until the art Tava Veda the last of the Vedas. So it’s the, the, you know, the most recent one, quote unquote, it’s still ancient, but I’m like, Hmm, maybe there was these <laugh>, you know, this is my own theory. Like you all the population in India and people getting sick and like, maybe they were promoting all this cooking because they didn’t want people to get parasites, you know, creamy. Which is such a big thing. And he was like, oh, I don’t know. Because a lot of the oldest texts that I have found talk about this real pureness, this uncooked ness.

What the oldest texts have found about uncookedness

Doug: 20:51 Yeah. Well, if we think, if you think about it, all nutrition emanates from seeds. Mm. Right. So seeds sprout, they become grain, they become soy, they become corn, they become grasses,

Kimberly: 21:06 They become trees,

Doug: 21:07 Trees, vegetables, like everything sprouts. So there’s like a, a seed is a complete living organism in a dormant stage. And that we, um, if we do nothing, the seeds find a way to make themselves all over the world. They will germinate, they will sprout, and they will grow. We have the power to co-create and to guide this nutrition Yes. Into our food. So I look at sprouts as like nature’s cheat code. They’re saying like, Hey, they’re here. And if you think about the evolution, like one broccoli seed can turn into a broccoli sprout, and that broccoli sprout can turn into a broccoli microgreen. And then six weeks, six months it goes and becomes market stage broccoli. Like full broccoli as we would understand it. Yes. With florets, the

Kimberly: 22:04 Mature,

Doug: 22:05 Mature, if you let that broccoli continue to grow while it’s connected to the root structure, it will then flower and those flowers will then fruit. Right. And inside the fruit, the pods will be exponential abundance of seeds. So like, one seed replicates itself to 10,000 seeds.

Kimberly: 22:28 Yes.

Doug: 22:29 And then infinite

Kimberly: 22:30 Generation.

Doug: 22:31 Right. So, so the fact that we can, you know, at any stage, these plants, at any stage, you can eat the root, you could eat the stem, you could eat the floret, you could eat the flour, you could eat the pod, or you could eat the seed again. And so nature is providing for us, as long as we get the ego out of the way, like the ego wants sensations, the Yeah. Ones The addictions. The addictions, the flavor, and

Kimberly: 23:00 The sensory overload.

Doug: 23:02 So, so that’s where the, this the simple eating for like, you know, I, I was just with, uh, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, um, two weeks ago I visited his eat to live ranch. Oh.

Kimberly: 23:16 I’m a huge fan of his work as well. Yes.

Doug: 23:18 And so he wrote the forward to my book, I love him. Mm. And when you know his ideas, you can either live to eat, right. Think what’s my next meal? How am I going to, you know, derive all of my pleasure and all my sensations through eating? Or how am I going to eat to live? Right. What, what does my body need? Yes. And so we have this paradox where significant portion of the world is living with food insecurity. 10,000 people a day are on average or dying of starvation and lack of food. And then on the other hand, we have 10,000 people a day dying from overeating and chronic illnesses tied to, um, excess of processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, chicken, animal products causing inflammation, heart disease, cancer. And so many of these chronic illnesses are directly not correlated, but caused by our consumption.

Kimberly: 24:24 Yes. It’s crazy. It’s like you wake up and we’re in a like, kind of a, like a crazy, well, I mean literally a crazy world. And it’s almost shocking. Um, and also what I love about your Sprout book too, Doug, is there’s a whole section of almost, um, like, it’s so eye-opening when you break down the nutrition of Sprouts, because we’re always asked as plant-based people, oh, where do you get your protein? Where you, you know, as a mama in this pregnancy course, everyone’s asking where do you get iron? Right? Yeah. And the vitamin A and all these things. And when you look at the, uh, levels in sprouts, the B vitamins, all the things, all this nutrition, all these gaps supposedly that we’re supposed to, you know, hyper fixate and fix, it’s really in the sprouts. It it’s in the micro, it’s, it’s in there and it’s all so very, very affordable If you can sprout yourself.

Sprouts and their nutritional value

Doug: 25:18 Yeah. My, when I got the download, it’s, it’s, so, it’s a pleasure Kimberly, to, to sit with you <laugh>, because I feel so seen and so loved. Yes. And so, like, the connection that I can just share, like when I got the, the download Yes. For, for the Sprout book. Like, I was sitting by myself in the hot spring Mm. Um, at Wonder Valley Hot Springs. Like, I’m sitting in the springs, I’m looking at the stars, the Milky Way, the galaxy galaxies and beyond. Mm. And being a raw vegan, uh, for the first time I was having an existential crisis of where was I gonna get my food? Because wow. I was normally doing the New York, la San Francisco, living in apartments, having access to lifetime air. One rainbow market. Yes. Whole foods abundance of food. And here, my, you’re in the desert. I’m in the desert.

26:20 And I realized I was in a food desert, and I was wondering like how I was going to make this work because I liked to eat, like I wanted to be healthy, but I didn’t want to be in the car driving, you know, hours. Right. <laugh>, you know, like to get food. And I started to see the stars twinkling, and constellations started to hallucinate in my, my brain. I was hallucinating. And I saw, oh, those are alfalfa sprouts and those could be mung bean sprouts. Wow. And those could be like radish clothing. It’s a real message. And so a and then like, I start to, like, while I’m there, cuz I’m totally relaxed, I’m weightless floating like in the hot spring, like my my head, my ears are merged. I’m like lying back, these springs are just beautiful and open. And I’m staring at the, the, the, the sky.

27:24 And then I was like, oh my God, I could live on sprouts. Sprouts are food. Like I’ve always thought of them as a garnish. Right. Or as a side dish. But if I just ate more, they would be food. And I started to think about which fat, which sprouts would have more calories, more protein, and like the healthiest way unequivocally for me to like, to consume soy. Like yes. I used to like emami mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. But it was salty and was cooked. And then, um, very rare to find raw soybeans. Right. In America. Yes. But if you get dried raw soybeans and brought, and you strout them like they’re protein. Incredible. Wow. 500% more vitamin A, vitamin C in the sprouted, um, soybean, like when you’re doubling, tripling, quadrupling the antioxidants, the, the vitamins in them. So I got the first bar, I was like, oh, I’m confident that I can get the caloric requirements if I eat enough sprouts.

28:40 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like that was the one thing. Sprouts could be food where be in the past, they’re just a little garnish. And then the second was that they contained like every benefit of the whole food, plant-based diet. Like in my brain, it was like I was going through a rollercoaster, navigating through all the variety of seeds, thinking like how, what would be the unique properties of like radish sprouts versus soy sprouts versus lentil sprouts versus alfalfa sprouts. And like I knew alfalfa sprouts had been around, you know, for 5,000 years and I started to like really think about like, oh, alfalfa sprouts become alfalfa hay. Yes. And hay, you know, turns a horse into this beast of muscle and of strength and a vibrancy hundreds of pounds. Yeah. Hundred, like a thousand pound horse. And so I started to think like, oh, I don’t, I never need to have like a protein powder or a multivitamin that sprouts could provide all of the vitamins and minerals and antioxidants in them. And then the third part, this was the, the, the part that I thought I was really like off the rails, like I was hallucinating a little too much was I thought of, you know, Hippocrates saying let food be thy medicine and medicine be th thy food. And I remembered, um, Brian Clement talking about sprouts and that they would have like this whole at Hippocrates Yes. In West Palm, their entire like luncheon buffet is filled with sprouts

Kimberly: 30:24 And, and Wigmore too. And

Doug: 30:26 Wigmore and I went to the N wigmore, there’s all

Kimberly: 30:28 The buck weed and the sunflower sprout.

Doug: 30:30 Incredible. And the fermentation and the rejuvelac and the, the energy soup of

Kimberly: 30:35 Energy soup.

Doug: 30:36 And so, so, but I I got this, you got it. Real

Kimberly: 30:40 Clear download

Doug: 30:41 That sprouts were medicine. Wow. And then I, like, I was so eager and I’m, I didn’t jump out of the hot springs, I just like stayed there. You were by yourself. I was by myself. And so the next day I went online and I go sprouts as medicine research papers on Sprouts. And there were more than 2000 peer reviewed, published white papers Wow. On the medicinal properties of sprouts. How they had chemoprotective properties that killed cancer cells. Mm. That they had the ability to detoxify benzene and air pollutants from the lungs. How they could regulate insulin levels in diabetics. And that, you know, we have an, an issue with obesity, right. Overweight and obese obesity and that sprouts are super high in fiber, but very low fat and calories. So it would be the perfect food for someone who wanted to achieve their lose weight. Optum lose weight or achieve their optimum weight through eating <laugh>. So the more sprout you eat O

Kimberly: 31:54 Autoimmune, Doug, like all these things that are happening, people are eating all these inflammatory foods. Yeah. It’s just everything. Right. There’s a whole section in your book where you go through like how it’s helped people with autism when it’s helped people with just focus issues. Like there’s just so many physical, emotional, mental, spiritual conditions and it’s, it’s, it comes full loop. Right.

Doug: 32:14 And it’s there, it’s accessible, it’s obvious, it’s so obvious. It,

Kimberly: 32:19 It’s a solution that’s right here. And you know what I think Doug, and I’m getting goosebumps, is we’re at a time now, you and I talked about this before the podcast. We’re sitting on the floor, we’re like, oh my gosh, we need to shoot because we could just talk all day. We’re at a time where we’re being called to wake up, to come together to say, how can we support each other? We’re all in this, we’re equal, we’re all brothers and sisters. What can we do? So we get these messages, right? So you’re getting this message about Sprouts and then you’re embodying it. You’re this ball of energy. You and I connected because it was just this magnetism and you figured out the solution. Like think about all the, you know, the, the things people say about plant-based, where do I get protein? Oh, it’s so expensive. Oh, I don’t like the fake meat. Right. Sprouts cuts through all of that. Especially when you learn to sprout yourself, which you talk about in this Sprout book. So you’re embodying it, there’s this solution and then you’re bringing it forth to the masses. You’re sharing it.

Doug: 33:13 Yeah. I mean, and it’s so interesting because this was not my intention, like my intention, like I, I wanted to be like a recluse. I wanted to just like be, be this. But what happened is the sprouts took over my microbiome. Yes. They uplifted me. Like literally there are anti depressive qualities and properties Yes. Of the food. And what happens when you’re doing something that feels good that you fire on all cylinders, then all of a sudden you could have the energy. It’s like, let, like, um, two days ago, um, your, your team reached out to me and said, okay, Kimberly’s ready to do the podcast. Here’s the dates, <laugh>. And so I picked like the first date available, which was this morning. And then like, I had a full day yesterday that ended at nine o’clock. At nine 30 I got in the car and I drove three a three and a half hours, you know, to Topanga. And I rested a little bit. I got up this morning, I did my meditation, I did my breath work. Incredible. And then I’m, I’m here.

Kimberly: 34:22 Well, you know, it’s, it’s funny because um, all the books get sent to this PO box. Right. And so it’s like, you know, um, you know, my helper comes and gets them every so often. So I got this whole like, it’d been a little while cuz she got a little sick. I get this whole thing of books and your book was on top. I was like, oh man. I remember meeting Doug and I started going through it and it was like, whoa. And then I <laugh> said to Nicole, my assistant, I was like, we gotta get Doug on, you know, when’s he gonna be here? It just was this flow. She reached out. You were coming. This message is so powerful, Doug, and I feel like it’s, um, it’s really needed now. Right? We’re coming at a time. You and I talk about the power of nature and just coming back to the true self, right?

35:00 All the spiritual messages that are coming right now and the body embodying that means we need to eat in alignment with that. We need to take care of our bodies. There’s this confusion, it almost feels like this heavy blanket that’s also coming, this message is also rising. That’s separating us from nature. Right. And, you know, not criticism, I’m just saying there’s this way of, you know, plants are bad right now. There’s a message out there, a carnivore diet or people are only eating meat and saying don’t eat vegetables. They’ve got the oxalates and they’ve got have you

Doug: 35:30 Plants. Yeah. Oh my God. I just, I just did a, I’ve been doing a lot of research. Yes.

Kimberly: 35:34 You know, it’s out there. Doug,

Doug: 35:35 The well here, here, my, my response to the plant defense mechanism. Yes. The plants are defending themselves against fungus and they’re defending against, um, insects and that the poison is in the dose. Right. Right. So there is not enough of the plant defense mechanisms in the plants that are vetted for us to eat. Um, so it is just totally nonsensical like what they’re talking about. It’s,

Kimberly: 36:12 It’s, it’s wor it’s ta you know what it is? It just feels like it’s having people focus on the wrong thing. You know, it’s like my, my friend, um, you know, I’ll, I’ll just say her name is Sarah cuz they listen to this and she’s dating somebody who has a, has a child. And so she’s like cooking broccoli and or she’s making sweet whatever. She’s making vegetables and she’s offering it to the child. And he was like, getting angry. Don’t give my child vegetables. My child only eats eggs, meat, and dairy. I’m like, whoa. Yeah. This, this is happening. This is happening. Doug. We’re people are moving that far away from nature and plants. We’re suspicious of vegetables now. Yeah.

Doug: 36:50 Well, I I will say that, um, the history and all of the, the research and all the meta-analysis of all the research combined unequivocally says that at and even the very conservative US government Yes. Which is, you know, influenced heavily by the meat, dairy, chicken, fish, egg industries has come out and said that the plant-based diet, vegan diet is good for all stages of, of parenting, motherhood, pregnancy, every, it’s good for everybody. Yes. So they have no concern. Like, you know, there was a concern like, oh, if you’re not feeding your kids meat, chicken or fish, they can come, CPS can come take your kids away. But now they’ve, they’ve, they’ve said that, and what happens is if someone was eating like McDonald’s and processed food and Taco Bell and Chips and Ben and Jerry’s, et cetera, and they went to pure grass fed carnivore diet. Right. Yeah. They will probably get a, a little bit of a benefit. But the long-term effects have never been studied in humans. Oh. There’s no research on, there’s

Kimberly: 38:17 No fiber dog, there’s no antioxidants. Again, you know, my dear friend Dan Buettner, you, you look at the Blue zones. Yes. You look at hundreds of years of studying human populations past all these double blind placebo controlled studies, lap humans living actual humans hundreds of years all around the world. The through line is that they’re at least 90 to 100% plant-based. They’re eating a plant centric diet. Yeah. Right. Well, it’s just there. You can read about it. Well,

Doug: 38:48 The, the, the interesting thing, like back to Sprouts for for a a second. Yes. Um, I, when I was writing the book, since I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, like I’m just a simple, you know, New York City street kid. Right. With no college education. But I love people and I connect with people. Yes. So when I got the Sprout download, I was saying, oh, I need to get this message out to the world. But because I wanted to be responsible, I reached out to Dr. Joel Furman, Dr. Josh Ax, Dr. Um,

Kimberly: 39:25 Mark Hyman.

Doug: 39:26 Mark Hyman. Dean Ornish. Yes. Joel Kahn and

Kimberly: 39:31 Neil Bernard. Neil.

Doug: 39:32 Well, uh, and, and I don’t think, I actually didn’t talk to Neil on that. Okay. But, but I love Neil

Kimberly: 39:37 Yes. In the network,

Doug: 39:39 Um, Dr. Michael Gregor. Right. And some of these people were plant-based. Right. But some were keto, some were functional medicine. Yes. Some were pescatarian and like no judgment. Like I, I really, you know, resist the, the judgment, the temptation to judge. But when I spoke to all of them, the thing that they had in common, they all saw the miracle of sprouts. Yes. They all loved sprouts.

Kimberly: 40:09 I love that.

Doug: 40:10 And so that’s why when I went to like Ben Greenfield, who’s like shooting a bow and arrow, like very like healthy guy in his own

Kimberly: 40:19 Way. He’s liver a lot of the time. <laugh>. Right. He’s a friend of my husband’s. Yes.

Doug: 40:23 Right. But I told him about Sprouts. I sent in my book, he started to post on my book. He started to, we did a podcast together. Mm. So he invited me into his world. Mm. And he started adopting and adding on sprouts into, um, his Diif li lifestyle and diet. And I just went on Max Luga Vere’s podcast, who’s another guy who’s pro meat, pro eggs.

Kimberly: 40:51 Very, very anti vegan, unfortunately

Doug: 40:54 Anti vegan. And, you know, he loves Sprouts now. That’s great. So I think the Sprouts will

Kimberly: 41:02 Cut through. Yes.

Doug: 41:03 Yeah. We’ll just take over their microbiome because it makes sense. So

Kimberly: 41:08 It it’s only the very, like, there, there’s one class, the carnivores that won’t accept any vegetables or plants. They’re the only ones that would be closed off. As you mentioned. People that can eat though a lot of meat and they’re open to some vegetables, they’ll let the sprouts in. Well,

How to set an example by attraction

Doug: 41:22 I, I will tell you like, you know, I believe in attraction, not promotion. Mm. Right. So we just need to set an example and set a standard. Yes. And just live our best life and invite people to participate. But we don’t have to sell this.

Kimberly: 41:44 No.

Doug: 41:45 This is so obvious that people will start. Well we need to make it accessible. But, um, what we’re gonna see, and look, I am sitting like in the middle of nowhere, right in the middle of the Mojave Desert and now hundreds of thousands of people have started to sprout around the world. Sprouting has come into the collective consciousness. The Sprout book is now in the 10th edition. Right. There’s over 4 million books on Amazon. The Sprout book peaked at number one best selling vegetarian book. Mm. Vegan book, low budget cooking book. And this is with $0 promotion. I mean, it’s a simple, uh, trade paperback black and white book. But the message is taking, you know, on the, like my information came from Anne Wigmore and Victoria Kavinski. Yes. And Steve Meyerowitz and the people who started sprouting and getting the message of living foods out there. Yes. And then, you know, they passed and they transition.

Kimberly: 42:58 Yes. From the past. They passed on so much to us.

Doug: 43:01 So, so all I did was I consumed that and then I did my own primary research. Like I set up a lab, I kept my journals, I kept my experience. And, and now we are at the beginning of the sprouting revolution.

Kimberly: 43:21 And you are a huge part of that. Doug, well, last quick, practical question before we wrap, I could really talk to you all day is, let’s say people here are amped up. They wanna have more sprouts. What is the most affordable way to have bigger mass amounts of sprouts versus buying the little containers at Whole Foods? Which unfortunately it’s a lot of plastic. How do we get bigger amounts into our family’s lives? So

Affordable way to grow sprouts versus buying

Doug: 43:45 I, I would say, um, sign up for my newsletter@thesproutbook.com. Okay. Right. I’m constantly publishing and posting information on my Instagram, Doug Evans or on my TikTok. Cuz people have said, you gotta be on TikTok. So now I have a few hundred, a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok and I’m posting there every single day. Mm. Uh, and it’s sprout wiz on, on TikTok, but the way to get started is organic sprouting seeds.

Kimberly: 44:18 Just buy ’em anywhere.

Doug: 44:19 Buy ’em anywhere. And like a mason jar. And you could either use cheesecloth in a rubber band and they make these lids that are stainless steel or plastic and it’s so simple. The seeds wanna germinate and there’s so much information. So I would say

Kimberly: 44:37 Just simple mason jars. So, cause sometimes they sell these like complicated kits, they’re kind of expensive.

Doug: 44:43 I, I, my, I, after now 24 years of sprouting, my recommendation is a, um, glass jar with a lid and a stand and a drip tray and organic seeds, organic sprouting seeds.

Kimberly: 45:00 So just a bunch of, a bunch of jars if you want to eat a lot every

Doug: 45:03 Day. Yeah. And like I have, you know, at any time, I have six to 12 jars going right now in my kitchen. I’ve got fava beans, I’ve got fenugreek, I’ve got alpha, alpha broccoli, black beans, um, garbanzo beans and green peas, sprouting.

Kimberly: 45:21 Wow. So inspiring. Well, thank you so much Doug. And I can’t recommend this book AG Enough again. It’s called the Sprout Book. And what I like about it is that there’s information, useful information, practical information. A lot of it is sort of a question answer format with some of these experts and some of these doctors. There’s actual information about each type of sprout and then there’s, you know, what do we do with the Sprouts information about how to grow them and then some recipes. So it’s a very comprehensive, it’s very, um, digestible. No, no pun intended. But I enjoyed the book very much. It really, you can feel the passion, you can feel the aliveness coming through of, hey, this is an amazing solution for energy, for personal health, as AR says, as is the micro, as is the macro for personal health, for the collective health of the community to solve a lot of these nutritional gaps, which lead then to mental health and spiritual issues. Right. It’s, it’s so powerful, Doug. So thank you so much for being with us, for sharing your energy, for sharing this incredibly important message out in the world today.

Doug: 46:28 Well, thank you for creating this space and the, the platform to have me, I’m like emotional, just <laugh>, just, just being here in, in your, in your beautiful home with the crystals and your children, you know, and, and in your library. This is just so you know, special for me. So I’m so grateful that you invited me in.

Kimberly: 46:49 Oh my gosh. Well it feels like it was really meant to be Doug and I’m so happy we got to connect.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Doug as much as I loved just connecting with Doug. Once again, please be sure to check out the show notes at mysolluna.com where we will directly link to the Sprout book, which is of course available wherever books are sold, as well as more information on Doug and other podcasts. I think you would enjoy articles. Kim Corner, Kim’s corner blog. If you didn’t know, I’m back to my very raw, real blogging and our practical enlightenment, heart-based guided meditations. We have a whole free library for you over there, food, recipes, and so much. We will be back here Thursday for our next Q&A show. So I look forward to seeing you then. Until then, also on social media at underscore Kimberly Snyder sending you so much love, so much light. Namaste.