EP 14: Sprouts, Accessible Health, and a Path to Passion With Spouting Superhero Doug Evans

Welcome to Episode 14 of Supersede! 

In this episode, Madeleine is joined by sprouting champion Doug Evans. Doug shares his continued passion for health and the ways he hopes to make healthy living and eating accessible in a rapidly changing world. Doug and Madeleine touch on the ways that commercialization, industrial agriculture, and focus on profit rather than quality harm both planetary and personal health. Doug also shares his journey towards consciousness around the reality of the global food system and his steps to make food a more personal, sustainable, and healthy process. 

With an enthusiasm that is simply contagious, Doug reminds us that we can all find a connection to the earth in some way – even a tiny sprout can remind us of all that is possible in the world! Doug’s commitment to hands-on health has lasted for decades, and his journey reminds us that even through the bumps along the road, it is possible to stay committed to a calling across career changes, location changes, and lifestyle changes.   

Doug Evans is  a visionary figure in the world of plant-based living and healthy eating. Doug's journey in the realm of health and wellness began when he co-founded Organic Avenue in 2002, a pioneering venture that laid the foundation for plant-based retail chains and inspired countless individuals to embrace healthier dietary choices. Later, Doug founded Juicero, introducing the world to the first automatic cold-press juicer, transforming the way we access fresh produce at home. Today, Doug resides at the serene Wonder Valley Hot Springs near Joshua Tree, California, where he has authored "The Sprout Book," a testament to his passion for promoting the incredible benefits of sprouts and advocating for affordable kitchen gardening. Doug's life's mission is clear: to teach people about the art of growing and consuming nutritious sprouts. His dedication to this mission led him to co-create "The Sprouting Company," a lifestyle company that makes it easy for everyone to grow and enjoy the healthiest food on the planet—sprouts.

Doug's Socials:
Instagram: @dougevans, @thesproutingcompany
X: @iamdougevans
Book: The Sprout Book

Seeding Sovereignty's Socials
Instagram/TikTok/Twitter/YouTube: @seedingsovereignty
Website: www.seedingsovereignty.org

Madeleine's Socials
Instagram/TikTok: @madeleinemacgillivray
Website: www.madeleinemacgillivray.com

Transcript

Madeleine (00:01.006)
Hello, Doug. Welcome to Super Seed. Yes, I'm so excited. You know, I was so excited to get your message asking to be on the podcast because first of all, being transparent, we've started this podcast. We've only had, you know, 12 guests, your 13th episode. And so to see the podcast start to reach more people is very exciting. And also I have to say,

Doug Evans (00:03.67)
Hello, Madeline. Thank you so much for having me.

Madeleine (00:30.986)
I have been following your work for years at this point. So I first listened to you on the Rich Roll podcast several years ago. And I just got completely into this concept from Sprouts, your story is so interesting. And it's just really exciting to get to talk to you. So thank you.

Doug Evans (00:53.578)
Yeah, well, I saw your post. I think you tagged me in something, and that got my attention. And I looked, I went a little bit down your rabbit hole, and I was like, wow, this is really, this is interesting. And for me, I wanna talk to everybody, right? So I treat everybody as equal. So obviously you go on a big podcast like Rich Roll.

Madeleine (01:01.29)
Amazing.

Doug Evans (01:20.178)
it helps connect me with people like you, but like I'm not like a podcast snob. Like if someone wants me on the podcast, you know, and I could squeeze it in, you know, I'll talk to them the same way I'll talk to someone in the farmer's market. So I'm happy with a mano a mano conversation and I'm happy with, you know, talking to large audiences.

Madeleine (01:28.75)
Yeah.

Madeleine (01:37.806)
Yeah.

Madeleine (01:41.218)
Yes, absolutely. And I mean, that is like what we need more of, I feel. And to be able to reach as many people as possible, that is the mentality that is so wonderful. So again, thank you. Thank you for being on. Yeah.

Doug Evans (01:55.034)
Yeah, well this message, like I obviously did not discover sprouts and sprouting, right? So they've been around since the beginning of time and seeds are one of the most powerful, magical, super powers that we have access to. And I always loved nature, right? I remember being in

Madeleine (02:02.139)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (02:23.73)
eating sprouts and wheatgrass before I was even plant-based. So we're going back 30 years now. And there was something like intrinsically conscious about freshness, about something that was alive, that was vibrant. And, you know, for 25 years, my life has been around fresh, right? I eat fresh, ripe, raw, organic.

fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, seaweeds, sprouts, and grasses, right? That's what I eat. And you cannot fake the funk with that, right? Like, you know, like I can look at a plant and they're really good at like fabricating like fake plants, right? But you could see like a fake plant, you know, can trick some of the people like a scarecrow, you know, for a crow.

Madeleine (03:04.942)
Yeah.

Madeleine (03:12.727)
Yeah, yes.

Doug Evans (03:22.146)
But you go into the supermarket, you can easily discern produce that's not ripe, overripe, rotten, right? With the colors, with the smell, with the texture. And so I eat fresh. So when I go into a supermarket and like you go into Whole Foods, they have 30,000 items.

Madeleine (03:34.839)
Right.

Doug Evans (03:50.886)
maybe there's a hundred items in there that are fresh raw organic items that I would eat, right? And, you know, the obvious things I'm trying to avoid, avoiding plastic, avoiding GMOs, avoiding things that are, you know, imported from the other side of the world. So I'm looking to see what's local, what's in season. And so that had been my...

my ethos for decades. And then for the first time, and you could see, I don't know if you could see, but I'm living in the desert, right? I live in the Mojave Desert at Wonder Valley Hot Springs. And being here, when I moved here, it was, wow, not only am I in the desert, I'm in a food desert, right? And there's no access to

Madeleine (04:30.496)
Right. Yeah.

Madeleine (04:43.873)
Great.

Doug Evans (04:48.466)
There's no farmers market. There's no grocery store in the town that I live in. The town I live in is 100 square miles, 10 by 10 miles by 10 miles, and there's no grocery stores. There's no farmers market. We're way out there. Now, the benefits of being way out there were during COVID, I never even thought about wearing a mask. I was in rural nature. And I can hear...

Madeleine (05:02.458)
Wow.

Madeleine (05:13.552)
Hmm

Doug Evans (05:16.106)
I haven't heard a horn honking ever out here, right? So.

Madeleine (05:21.258)
Must be nice from New York City. It's a very different situation. Yeah.

Doug Evans (05:25.03)
Oh my God, like I, no one can drive in New York. I don't think it's possible to be on the road in any of the five boroughs for under a minute, for over a minute without hearing a horn.

Madeleine (05:36.982)
Yeah, no, totally. There's definitely going to be sirens coming into our recording at some point during this podcast. So yeah.

Doug Evans (05:45.918)
So that's the thing that I'm very interested in. So when I discovered like sprouting, right? I started to eat sprouts. And I always thought of them as a garnish, as a super food, as a snack, right? And it was great. And then here, when I moved to the desert and I realized that if I wanted to continue, which was a non-negotiable,

right, eating whole food plant-based diet raw, then I would have to grow my own food. And it could take weeks or months or years to learn how to grow food period, but you're growing in the desert, you're really handicapping yourself in a adverse way. So I decided, okay, well, what am I gonna do? Maybe I'll get some food delivered or something else, no one delivered here.

Madeleine (06:18.436)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (06:43.714)
You could even get Domino's delivered here. Like that's how far out we are, right? But then I had this like hunch, this download, this epiphany that, oh, what if I ate sprouts for my food, not as a garnish. What if the sprouts went from the side of the plate to the center of the plate? And what if I just...

Madeleine (06:47.659)
Yeah, wow.

Doug Evans (07:13.262)
grew copious amounts of sprouts. And so I just started to grow, and I was originally on alfalfa and mung bean, right? The two traditional sprouts. And then I went to...

Madeleine (07:22.218)
Okay. You're gonna not to interrupt you, but you're gonna have to at some point break down for people because like I feel like I'm very familiar right with like hearing about all these different kinds of sprouts because I have your book and I listen you know listen to talk about sprouts but at some point we're gonna break down or you can at some point even right now break down like the different types of sprouts and like your favorites and you know the easiest ones to grow and all that but we'll get into that not to jump ahead.

Doug Evans (07:50.846)
Yeah, I mean, I want to go all in on that, right? So for me, alfalfa sprouts had been on sandwiches for the last century in America, right? I don't know who started it, but alfalfa sprouts were round. They were fluffy, they were crunchy, they were tasty, nutritious, and I didn't think much of them. And mung bean sprouts were part of

Madeleine (07:54.016)
Yeah, we will.

Doug Evans (08:20.85)
almost any Asian food that I had, miso soup, like mung bean sprouts were there. So I started to grow those. And then being curious, I was like, well, what other sprouting seeds are available? And then I saw, oh, broccoli, radish, clover, chia, lentils, flax, fenugreek, peas, and not just peas, all sorts of peas from.

black-eyed peas to green peas, that garbanzo, chickpeas, right? So there are all these items. So I just, you know, and it's relatively inexpensive, right? So I just bought everything, and I started to sprout. And within 30 days, in one cubic foot, I'm growing all of my own food.

I'm living exclusively on sprouts. And when I used my chronometer to do the analysis, turns out I was eating thousands of calories a day from sprouts that I was growing in one cubic foot, without soil, without fertilizer, without sunshine. And I was like, wow, this is...

This is incredible. Maybe it's a mirage. Maybe I'm hallucinating, right? Maybe I'm living in a simulation and someone is just messing with my head. And so I reached out to some people, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Oz, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Joel Furman, Dr. Josh Axe, Dr. Joel Kahn. And some of these doctors are pescatarian, some are functional medicine.

Madeleine (09:55.086)
Right. Yeah.

Doug Evans (10:18.686)
Some are keto. But the thing that they all had in common, and I'm getting goosebumps when I say this, they all loved sprouts. Like they all loved sprouts. And to me, that was like all the stars, just like a lining, whoa, whoa. And it inspired me to write this sprout book, right? Because...

Madeleine (10:27.084)
Yeah.

Madeleine (10:31.559)
Yeah.

Madeleine (10:46.271)
Yes.

Doug Evans (10:48.046)
there hadn't been in the history of America, you know, Amazon has 4 million books. There was never a book on sprouts, written, published by a major publisher that had massive distribution, that had any sort of contemporary alignment with the current zeitgeist. And I felt that I had eaten enough sprouts.

that they took over my microbiome, that my cells in my body were constructed from the enzymatic beings inside of these sprouts. And they talked to me, like they talked to me and they said, you gotta get this message out to the world. And I was like, sprouts, like that's gonna be my path? Like, you know, like I'm not gonna be putting more...

Madeleine (11:37.129)
Wow.

Madeleine (11:41.646)
Hahaha

Doug Evans (11:45.47)
a rockets on Mars, I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna do, you know, I'm not gonna do like crypto or AI, like, I do sprouts. And I was like, yeah, okay, this is what this is what's happening. And so I take what's happening very seriously. So I went deep.

Madeleine (11:47.346)
Hahaha

Madeleine (11:57.644)
Right.

Madeleine (12:06.203)
Yeah.

Madeleine (12:12.548)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (12:15.17)
down the rabbit hole, right? And I started to eat sprouts, study sprouts, research sprouts, contact people that were reaching sprouts. So I chased down Dr. Jed Fahey at Johns Hopkins University, who's the father of broccoli sprouts. And I convinced him to join my scientific advisory. I had some money and...

Madeleine (12:17.506)
Yeah.

Madeleine (12:40.621)
Wow.

Doug Evans (12:44.406)
I was very curious about sprouts and mold and food safety. And so I funded through my company, a research project with University of California, at Santa Cruz with Dr. Greg Gilbert, who's like their botanist and PhD and at a lab that could sequence genes and like foremost expert in the world.

Madeleine (12:51.416)
Yeah.

Madeleine (13:14.645)
Wow. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Doug Evans (13:14.698)
right on seeds and sprouts and microbiology. And I wanted to understand. And then I had never written anything other than my book. And then I published the book, but I said, I wanna do a white paper. I wanna do research. I wanna understand about food safety and food science around outbreaks, illnesses.

Madeleine (13:22.282)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (13:43.842)
hospitalizations, deaths. So I partnered with a data scientist and Dr. Jit Fahey, and we published our first peer-reviewed white paper, which was another big accomplishment, all labor of love to get that message out there. And now I could sit back, and I've been in this sprouting journey for five and a half years. And I can tell you, sprouts literally can save the world.

Madeleine (13:45.824)
Yeah, right.

Madeleine (14:06.81)
Wow.

Doug Evans (14:13.718)
like say the world, when people are eating plant-based, they're less aggressive. You know, you look at, you know, a deer, you know, deer's not messing with anybody, right? You know, you feed someone some raw meat, you know, they go nuts. You know, they go nuts. That's why they say never let a dog, you know, taste, you know, human blood because it triggers this aggression. So,

There's something about, you know, being not like passive, because as you can tell, I'm not passive, but I'm not aggressive, right? I want the best for everybody, right? And that goes with the animals.

Madeleine (14:55.759)
Yeah.

Madeleine (14:59.402)
Mm, yeah, it seems like you're really lucid. Yeah, you're lucid, you're in the moment. You are, you're discerning, you're sensing all. There's not so much distraction. You are, you're grounded.

Doug Evans (15:14.438)
Yeah, well, I'm present, right? I'm present. What's going on? And so with that, you know, the things that drive me are on one hand, you know, we have 10,000 people a day dying of starvation, right? And everyone who's listening to this podcast probably knows what they think they feel like when they're hungry.

Madeleine (15:16.238)
Yeah, you're present.

Doug Evans (15:42.914)
But most likely they're not even really hungry. They just are feeling sensations in their body, you know, that might've been, I'm just closing windows, that they might be feeling sensations in their body that are just sensations, and they're associating that with hunger. True hunger, and I've been truly hungry because I've gone on extended water fasts, and my diet,

Madeleine (16:08.207)
Mmm.

Doug Evans (16:10.786)
precludes many food items. So I've had to travel around the world, you know, on long trips, you know, barely drinking water, right? Because they, like, if the food doesn't meet my criteria for quality and nutrition, I won't eat it. Like, it's not like, oh, this is all that's available. Like, I won't eat it. But there are people that have no food

Madeleine (16:13.903)
Yes.

Madeleine (16:37.489)
Mm.

Doug Evans (16:41.414)
and that they ultimately are dying from starvation. And then there's a whole greater part of people that have food scarcity issues, food security issues, no access to these high quality foods or any food, like they're just in a state where they're, you know, tremendously at risk. And those people, a significant portion of those people will die.

And they're dying under our watch. Like they're dying under our watch, right? So that's, I think, a problem with society, because I believe there's more than enough food to go around. There's more than enough plants growing, but it's the distribution, it's getting it to the right people, it's the politics. And as you know, probably as well as anybody,

Madeleine (17:14.444)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Doug Evans (17:39.726)
plants that are grown for food end up feeding animal agriculture, right? And they go down this whole, like, dark path, very dark path. So that's one thing. But on the other hand, that we have people, and you could figure out the numbers, but that are dying of chronic illnesses

Madeleine (17:46.262)
Yes, yes.

Madeleine (17:51.358)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (18:09.454)
preventable. Right? We have 266 million people in America that are overweight or obese. Like, they're now talking about prescribing Ozempic to six-year-old kids. Right? Destroying the microbiome. Right? Just categorically blowing it up. Right? But so 266 million people overweight or obese.

Madeleine (18:10.968)
Yes.

Doug Evans (18:39.638)
Right? Close to 100 million people that are diabetic or pre-diabetic and half of those people don't even know that they are at risk for diabetes. They don't even know what diabetes is. They don't even know what regulating insulin levels are. And they go in like a dummy, like a mannequin and they go like a robot, oh.

Oh, you have this, here's some pills, take some pills, take some shots, and they're on that forever. And so one of the things that I've seen, which is really, really beautiful, is when people start to grow their own food, their neuroplasticity of their brain expands, their imagination grows, they get curious, and

they get to see results. And so it's planting seeds, eating seeds, growing sprouts is something that can become transformative for an everyday person. And that's what I'm excited about.

Madeleine (19:53.526)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is a great, you know, this conversation is within the context of, you know, it's November right now. We're in Native American Heritage Month. And so Seeding Sovereignty as an organization is doing programming around food sovereignty. And we have a wonderful episode coming out with two other.

wonderful women who I had interviewed, indigenous women talking about, you know, body sovereignty, land sovereignty, and food sovereignty and the connection. And I'm hearing you talk and there's kind of multiple directions that I want to go in because there's so much information. I want to hear you also give our audience a little bit more context on why you are so passionate about this because your own personal story and your family's story is really powerful.

But right now I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the connection between sprouts and food sovereignty. So you started getting into it a little bit, but like talking about, first of all, how can we actually make it easier for people across the board to get the nutrition that they need via sprouts? And how do sprouts, like more of the science, more of the nutrition, how do sprouts actually fill nutritional needs?

in ways that we might not immediately kind of think about, like the magic of sprouts. Yeah.

Doug Evans (21:19.378)
Yeah, well, think about this. Every single sprout contains every single micronutrient, phytonutrient, polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, prebiotic, every amino acid to form complete proteins like they're in sprouts. And people will say, well, what about sprouts versus mature vegetables? And I was like, that's a great question.

Madeleine (21:39.534)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (21:48.49)
So mature vegetables are good. Sprouts are great. And sprouts are like tiny stem cells that are biologically metabolically active and growing. And scientifically, they can have 20 to 100 times the nutrient density of the mature vegetable. So logically, as the vegetable gets bigger, obviously it's taking on more water content.

right, and it's growing more fiber. But other aspects of it are actually getting diluted. So one of the anti-cancer compounds, sulforaphane, which is the reaction of glucoraphanin and the enzyme morosinase, every seed has a finite amount of glucoraphanin. And as the sprout gets bigger, there's no more of it. So that's where, you know, the seeds actually have the most glucoraphanin.

But the seeds have enzyme inhibitors on it. So they're protecting the seed, which allows the seed to last for a long time. So when you soak the seed and you germinate the seed, you're actually, the water is being absorbed into the testa and you're triggering the germination. And so then the shoot pops out and the root pops out.

and then the whole or the test of moves to the side. So when you're sprouting, you're reducing the enzyme inhibitors, the trypsins, the lectins, the phytic acid, and you're getting this core, very active, energetically rich, a vegetable. So that's super, super powerful to be able to have that. And the fact that normally, if something is cheap or less expensive.

Madeleine (23:25.514)
Right.

Doug Evans (23:44.222)
it's perceived to be low quality, less nutritious and a substitute. But here it's the inverse, right? Here the sprouts are the better choice. So that's like one little vector. The second is most salad, salad greens in America are coming from Salinas Valley, right? Which means they get harvested, they get packed, they get shipped.

Madeleine (23:53.323)
Right.

Madeleine (23:56.899)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (24:13.494)
refrigerated trucks and trailers and trains, huge carbon footprint, you're shipping around mostly water, right? And by the time it gets to the consumer, it could be weeks old, right? So the idea that you could have something that's fresher, that when you're growing your own sprouts, you're getting a fresh harvest, like,

Madeleine (24:42.466)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Doug Evans (24:43.158)
fresh harvest and we're shipping around seeds that are dry and that are shelf stable as opposed to fresh produce that requires refrigeration, packaging, transportation. There's no question that it's so much better. The other thing is if you're eating almost any market stage

Doug Evans (25:13.154)
cut off from the root structure in the system. So you're eating a part of the plant. When you're eating a sprout, right, you're eating the entire plant organism, the root, the shoot, the endosperm, the embryo, the sexual organs, the testa. You get to eat the entire plant while it's alive.

Madeleine (25:17.604)
Right.

Doug Evans (25:42.07)
Like I'm getting goosebumps. Like it's so wild. Like we have the opportunity to do that. And it's at a fraction of the cost of traditional food.

Madeleine (25:48.162)
Yeah.

Madeleine (25:52.262)
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, totally. And hearing you talk about it for the first time a few years ago, it was like this kind of light bulb moment for me where I was like, oh yeah, of course, you take a seed and then you soak it and you'll talk about sort of the how to for folks. You soak it for X amount of time, small, relatively very short amount of time.

in water and then it's like the baby version of the vegetable but it has all the nutrients and the enzymes and all the minerals and everything that the vegetable has so when I thought about that right it's basically just thinking about a sprout as the most highly concentrated part like nutrients that you can access um on earth and so I'm like thinking about like is that true like it really is actually the highest concentration of nutrition

that one could possibly ingest. Like.

Doug Evans (26:50.094)
I mean, I think so in a non-synthetic form, a non-abstract form. If you think about an acorn is the potential of an oak tree. And when you sprout that acorn, yeah, all that intelligence is there. If you want to believe in genius, in nature, in science, like,

Madeleine (26:54.451)
Right.

Madeleine (27:05.346)
It's just in the egg corn.

Doug Evans (27:17.858)
seeds are like, and I mean, look, it's in your name, right? Seeds of sovereignty. Like I'm not having to convince you of the magic of seeds. So, so the idea that seeds are edible, but they're hard to digest, right? Sprouts are edible and easy to digest. And it turns out like when you soak a lentil and you begin the germination process, you double the antioxidant levels.

Madeleine (27:22.187)
Yeah, yeah.

Madeleine (27:26.052)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (27:47.806)
you triple the vitamin C, right? You quadruple the soluble and insoluble fiber and you make it more bioavailable. So this is a irrefutable value proposition. And what I could see is, and what I've been seeing, since I've been up on my sprout box, right? I walk around on a...

Madeleine (28:14.551)
Yes.

Doug Evans (28:15.734)
on a box and I get up and I just talk to people, free speech, and I talk about sprouts to anyone that will listen, right? When I do that.

Madeleine (28:24.921)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (28:28.486)
it takes some people take that red pill and they go, you know, into the awareness. And I'm seeing like this incredible human transformation. Like just think about it, sprouts are the number one food for weight loss, right? Because they're high fiber, low calorie, low fat. So if someone is overweight or obese,

The more sprouts they eat, the more weight they will lose. Right? Furthermore, they will be replenishing their cellular structure with this amazing food that will help circulation with blood flow, with their anti-inflammatory, they open up the NRF2 pathways. You know, they're just...

this something that I've proven, you can live on sprouts. For most people, my hallucination would be to add sprouts to their diet, right? US dietary guidelines used to recommend seven to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables. Serving being like a fistful. So if someone is actually having a day, a day, a day.

Madeleine (29:31.983)
Yeah.

Madeleine (29:51.274)
A day or a week? A day. Wow.

Doug Evans (29:56.19)
So if someone's actually even eating the minimum seven servings of all that fiber, all that part, they don't have a lot of room for other stuff. Now on the other side, if you're eating food that's cooked, processed, refined, that has added salt, oil and sugar, you're going into this like metabolic mind game where

it's really hard to resist what's happening with the foods to be able to consume these various items on any sort of level. Like, and they almost play with it. Like, I'm sure you've seen the commercial for the Lay's potato chips. You can eat just one.

Madeleine (30:53.416)
Right.

Doug Evans (30:53.878)
Well, why? They're taking a carbohydrate. They're frying it in an oil. They're dousing it with salt. Like, this is like taking a drug, right? It's taking a drug. And people, you know, it's easy to blame people and say, oh, they're weak. But the reality is they don't have a shot, right? The asymmetry of

Madeleine (31:05.562)
Totally. Yeah.

Madeleine (31:21.285)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (31:22.542)
power and manipulation, you know, it's like, you know, they're, they're probably, um, joking where it's as easy to get them addicted to the food as it is like taking, you know, candy away from the baby, right? What's a baby going to do? Like you put this junk in front of people, they're going to eat it. They're going to get addicted. And I can personally tell you, I know what it's like because I would be the person that would not only eat.

Madeleine (31:36.347)
Mmm.

Madeleine (31:44.387)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (31:52.386)
the entire pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and be full and feel like throwing up, and go get another one, right? And probably eat my way halfway through another one, even though I wasn't feeling good, it's sick, because there was part of my brain that was firing on the dopamine that felt good, just felt good, felt good.

Madeleine (32:03.403)
Yeah.

Madeleine (32:16.517)
Right.

Doug Evans (32:16.594)
And so, it's a matter of like knowing like, wow, you can go down a different path, right? And I'm 57 right now, and I'm in the best physical, mental, spiritual shape of my life. And I now had to shift, like literally shift the sensations formally identified and known as being hungry.

Madeleine (32:25.206)
Yeah, totally.

Madeleine (32:45.744)
Right.

Doug Evans (32:46.07)
to those sensations mean healthy. Oh my God, I'm feeling healthy. Oh my God, that's the healthy feeling. Wow, well, I did it. I got to the point of feeling healthy, not hungry, not hangry. Oh, I'm feeling healthy. That, those sensations are telling me I'm healthy. And how can you reward that? Right? What can you do? Reward, oh, you deserve a glass of water.

Madeleine (33:03.654)
Hmm.

Madeleine (33:08.882)
Hmm. Yeah.

Doug Evans (33:13.994)
You've gotten healthy, you can go get some water, go do some pushups. Now that you're feeling healthy, go walk around the block, right? Do something.

Madeleine (33:21.294)
Yeah, I see. I'm hearing what you're saying and knowing your background, it's easy for me to be like, yes, of course, kind of reframing, as you just said, hungry to healthy. But I want to also, of course, make sure that there are listeners who understand what you're saying, right? Is that we're not actually saying that you shouldn't eat when you're hungry, right? So just kind of thinking about who...

what's really accessible for people. And I think, for me, when I'm hungry, of course, I'm going to eat. But I think what you're saying is, you're not addicted. You're not in a gerbil wheel, right? Eating when you're actually not in fact hungry, using food as a drug.

Doug Evans (34:04.968)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, well, I think, you know, Madeline, thank you for bringing me back. Right. Because I'm out there. So bring me back. It's important to determine. Your your overall health, right? Clearly, if you are underweight, you should be eating more and more healthy food. If you are the right weight.

Madeleine (34:13.722)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Madeleine (34:25.527)
Yeah, right.

Doug Evans (34:35.466)
you can raise the standards of the quality of food that you're consuming. If you're like most people that are overweight or obese and you have weight to lose, then you need a strategy of how to get back to homeostasis. How do you get back to your target weight? And...

Madeleine (34:40.006)
Totally.

Madeleine (34:58.39)
Right, and so if you're somebody listening to this, and you're, you know, even somebody who is just really interested in getting involved in sprouting and this concept of, okay, you know, we're not telling everybody that they have to go vegan. There's really important cultural and dietary kind of needs and it's specific to everybody, but we do also, you know, I'm vegan, so I love talking about the climate and, you know, other kind of social and.

cultural, you know, physical benefits of veganism, but I also respect, you know, certain cultural and, you know, values and access to certain nutrients, what have you. But if you're somebody who's interested in adding sprouts to your diet, and you're listening to this podcast, and you're also interested in like, oh, you know, I want to start getting more in touch with, like soil.

and growing my own food. I don't have access to that though, because I don't have the time or I don't have the resources or what have you. And we've done wonderful episode with our community care organizer, Serpentina, who is in so-called New Mexico, who actually has, we have a community farm where we're helping folks, empower folks to actually grow and distribute their food. But if you're somebody who's like, okay,

like literally starting point and you just want to get dip a toe into sprouts and you want to start adding sprouts to your diet. What do you recommend for people? What is like step one?

Doug Evans (36:35.57)
I mean, I wrote the Sprout Book to help people get started, right? I looked at all sprouting equipment available around the world and found it to be like antiquated, kind of the equivalent of a sledgehammer for anesthesia, right? So I worked on designing a new sprouting kit.

Madeleine (36:38.698)
Right, right, right. Yeah.

Madeleine (36:55.854)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (37:02.074)
available at thesproutingcompany.com. And in the kit, there's instructions, there's guides, you could buy seeds, and just a great way to get started. And it was really priced affordably, like under $50, I think it's $39.99. And it has everything you need, the jar, the filter, the stand, the drip tray, all in one. And...

in a compostable box, like no styrene, all the box. And anything that touches the seeds or the sprouts is glass or stainless steel, right? So high quality items. If there's plastic, it's recycled plastic. And so I think that's the easiest way. I've been posting a lot of content. I've probably gone on 50 podcasts. So...

Madeleine (37:35.266)
Amazing.

Madeleine (37:42.174)
Amazing. Yeah.

Madeleine (37:58.178)
Wow, yes, everybody definitely follow Doug. It's wonderful to see you just, like, you just kind of say, hey, everybody, I'm making lunch, and you pile a pile of sprouts onto some nori with an avocado, and you're like, this is my nutrition. And it's always a little bit for me like, wow, maybe one day I will get to the point where I don't have to like, you know, I don't know. For me, I douse sprouts in like balsamic vinegar.

and you know, mustard and like flavors because it's a little bit for me still like the palette, you know, is a little bit earthy, shall we say, but like there's, yeah, but we can just, they basically are sponges for flavor. So, yeah. Yeah.

Doug Evans (38:35.914)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (38:40.85)
Exactly. But then they have texture. And if you literally detoxify your addiction to salt, oil, and sugar, every sprout has incredible flavor, texture, aroma to them. So it's just a matter of if you're used to dressing something up and dousing it in all these other things, if it wasn't ethically

Madeleine (38:58.394)
Hmm.

Doug Evans (39:09.906)
improper. I would love to just take my recycled corrugated boxes that come from Amazon and deep fry them and hand them out at the farmer's market just watching people eat cardboard. Because I think if you tempura anything, people will eat it. It just is. But that's just the brain.

Madeleine (39:26.006)
Yeah.

Madeleine (39:31.383)
Mm-hmm.

Doug Evans (39:36.634)
If you think about how we are wired for survival, right? And like we have to eat things and we get rewarded. The pleasure sensors in our brain get rewarded when we eat fat because the calorically dense food is rare to find. So if you find it, you eat it. But if you think about where we are today, it's all about coming up with

Madeleine (39:40.738)
Yeah, right.

Madeleine (39:54.252)
Right.

Doug Evans (40:06.042)
a strategy that will work for you. Right, so it's very strategic.

Madeleine (40:11.503)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a process, something I'm also kind of extrapolating from what you've talked about with your own journey, too. It's a process of curiosity and of also acknowledging that, look, we live in a country and an economic system that, unfortunately, does not incentivize health-seeking behavior and longevity.

And that if you're somebody who lives in a food desert, you don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, this is something that is a resource for you. It is sad, very sad that the onus is on you. It's also, we can view it in many different ways. We can say, look, we wanna try to change the system and we have to change the system many different ways. One of those ways is that individually we can start having a relationship.

with food sovereignty and one of those, a fantastic place to start is routing.

Doug Evans (41:12.686)
Yeah, well, Madeline, you're doing phenomenal work. And I'm so grateful that you agreed to have me on your podcast and to share this message. And I'm very open to doing it again. And I answer most messages on my Doug Evans Instagram. So I'm happy to share more as this information starts to sprout in your mind.

Madeleine (41:18.947)
Thank you, Doug.

Madeleine (41:23.194)
Thank you.

Madeleine (41:34.31)
Great.

Yeah.

Madeleine (41:42.27)
Yes, amazing. I mean, there's a lot of analogies. Of course, there's a lot of puns we could have with seating sovereignty. Before you go, I want, if you have the time, we didn't really get to you giving sort of more of your personal history. I think people listening to this are probably like, wow, this guy is on one end of the extreme of, okay, he travels and if he doesn't have a viable food option, he goes without.

So kind of giving people a little more context as to your family and your relationship with your health.

Doug Evans (42:13.444)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (42:17.63)
Yeah, so I grew up in a lower middle class family in New York City. I went to high school in Harlem. We had food most of the time. When I saw food, I over ate it. And when I was 17, I joined the US Army and you can get a lot of food in the Army. The price you have to pay is your freedom.

right, but I ate a lot in the army. And then when I got out of the army, I just worked like I was a workaholic, working two or three jobs all the time, like wanting to kind of rise, you know, out of, you know, unfortunate circumstances. And when I finally like hit a certain plateau of success, I could afford to eat whatever I want. And I was eating, but I became overweight, but not

grossly or morbidly overweight. I was like 35 pounds, maximum 40 pounds overweight. But then my aunt became overweight, obese, diabetic, and they performed a double amputation on her and took off both of her feet below her ankles. And then my uncle died of heart disease, and my father died of heart disease, and my mother, we thought she had an ulcer, she went to the hospital and she never came out.

We think it was lung, stomach cancer, and she died. And then my brother became overweight, obese, diabetic, and then had the first of three strokes and a heart attack. And that was my kind of come to cucumber moment. Like, whoa, like, is it genetics or is it lifestyle? And I had received information, you know,

Madeleine (44:07.705)
Right.

Doug Evans (44:13.658)
a person and then other people and then a community that, you know, it's strange because even today it's really hard to find a community of raw vegans or fruitarians or things. It's just hard. But I was fortunate, you know, to find my tribe. And when I was convinced that not only was it doable,

Madeleine (44:26.945)
Right.

Madeleine (44:32.814)
Hmm.

Doug Evans (44:42.338)
but that it was preferred, I never looked back. Never went back, yeah. So now I've been helping hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people around the world just kind of get into the groove and I see the successes and it makes me feel really, really complete. So.

Madeleine (44:45.974)
You never went back. Yeah, you never went back. Right.

Madeleine (45:05.334)
Hmm, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's important context. And I think it's a wonderful kind of note to wrap up thinking about the folks that you're helping and, and the fact that you are so like you are like, you know, sort of, it's very aligned like you are the person who's helping. Well, as you said, you're not the person, you've been around for a while, but you're using your background.

your passions, your experience and your lived experience to help people and empower people through sprouts. And as you said, you're like, oh, this is my thing. And it seemed like maybe an unexpected route, but it is so aligned. And with all of that context, I think just giving our listeners kind of coming back to, you know,

supersede and this idea of finding your superpowers and living them and this kind of journey to, you know, climate justice work, but in general, just work that you love. What would you sort of just as an ending note like to say as a piece of advice for folks who are maybe not have not found yet there or they're on the journeys to finding their, their version of the Sprout, the Sprout book.

Doug Evans (46:28.338)
I mean, I think that you have to go into nature and get rid of your TV, see if you can go for a week without your phone, like sign up for a 10 day Vipassana meditation course, it's free, free room, free board, free curriculum, 10 days. And look inside and find out what's really important to you.

Right? Like there's a lot of opportunity to do important things. And some things you can do without sacrifice and some things require grave sacrifice. Right? So, you know, we end up, you know, the term golden handcuffs, you know, if someone is working in corporate and they can't leave because they're, they're trapped. So if you want sovereignty,

You have to be really aware of how you use the resources you have and what are the trappings that could hold you back. Because if I hadn't been extremely frugal and judicious in how I managed my finances for decades, when this sprouting opportunity presented itself, I wouldn't have been able to go all in.

Right. So a lot of it is, you know, people have aspirations, but, you know, they're comfortable and they don't want to take risks. So, you know, the idea that, you know, you don't want to jump off a bridge, right, that people have died from for the sake of jumping off the bridge. But you want to just analyze the risk and then see, is there a path? Right.

Madeleine (48:22.554)
Hmm.

Doug Evans (48:23.642)
And is there an NGO? Is there a company? Is there a startup? Is there a big company? And how can you develop, you know, a level of depth and knowledge? Right. You know, one of the people like who I consider an expander for me is Paul Stamets, right. Who is like in the lumber trade, like he was a forest guy. And, you know, he's an autodidactic.

Madeleine (48:42.796)
Yeah.

Doug Evans (48:52.53)
mycelium expert. And now he is the foremost voice of mushrooms and mycelium in the world. And he's self-taught. Self-taught. Curiosity and action and action.

Madeleine (49:04.922)
Hmm. Yeah, yeah. So curiosity and action. Yeah, totally. Thank you, Doug. So wonderful, so wonderful talking to you. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you would like to share? And as you said, it would be great to keep in touch and keep this going, for sure. I'm sure we're going to have a lot of questions from people.

Doug Evans (49:30.906)
I mean, I feel complete in this moment.

Madeleine (49:33.974)
Great, me too. Okay, awesome. Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on.

Doug Evans (49:41.314)
Well, thank you for taking the initiative and for having a podcast and doing what you do to get the messages out. Like I feel your authenticity and your sincerity and your passion for what you're doing. So thank you.

Madeleine (49:56.634)
Thank you, Doug. That's so sweet. That means a lot. OK, amazing. So I'll stop the recording, and I'll let you know.