#310: Doug Evans - Why Sprouts Might Be the Most Powerful Food on The Planet
Learn more about Doug and The Sprouting Company
Doug Evans is back on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast—and he’s sprouting with wisdom! It’s been over four years since Doug’s first appearance, and his passion for sprouts has only intensified.
Rip and Doug dig deep into the nutritional superpowers of sprouts, the simplicity of growing them at home, and the transformational impact they can have on your health, your plate, and your life.
Doug shares his deeply personal journey, the origins of his obsession with sprouts, and why they are one of the most sustainable, accessible, and under-appreciated foods in the plant-based world.
Whether you’re a sprouting newbie or a seasoned plant-strong pro, this conversation will inspire you to see sprouts in a whole new light.
You’ll learn:
Sprouts as Superfoods: Discover how sprouting seeds dramatically increases their nutrient density, making them living, functional foods.
Home Sprouting Made Simple: Doug explains how anyone—even in a tiny kitchen—can grow nutrient-rich sprouts with minimal effort and space.
Health Benefits Galore: Learn how sprouts are packed with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and compounds that support detoxification, immunity, and overall vitality.
Sprouting as a Lifestyle: Doug shares how this practice transformed his physical, emotional, and spiritual health—and how it can do the same for you.
A Sustainable Solution: Growing sprouts at home is not only cost-effective, but also environmentally friendly and empowering.
Exciting Research Ahead: Get a preview of Doug’s upcoming collaboration with Dr. Alan Goldhamer at True North to clinically study the healing power of sprouts.
The Sprout Book is available now
Episode Resources
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The Sprouting Company – Your At-Home Sprout Kit
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Full Episode Transcription via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the Plant Strong Podcast.
Introduction to Sprouts
[0:04] If you think sprouts are just a garnish, think again. Today, I'm joined once again by the sprout wizard himself, Doug Evans. He's here to open your eyes to the incredible power packed into these tiny living foods. Doug shares why sprouts might just be the simplest, most affordable way to take control of your health, and we'll have all those details right after these words from PLANTSTRONG We'll be right back.
[0:59] Doug Evans, he's back on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, and as usual, he is sprouting with wisdom and enthusiasm. It's been almost four years since Doug first appeared on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, and his passion for sprouts has only intensified as if that was even possible as you're going to hear about today. We're going to dive deep into the nutritional superpowers of sprouts, the simplicity of growing them at home, and the transformational impact that they can have on your health, your plate, and your life. Doug also shares his own personal, very poignant journey. the origins of his obsession with sprouting, and why they truly are one of the most sustainable,
Doug's Sprout Passion
[1:50] accessible, and underappreciated foods on the planet. Whether you're a sprouting newbie or a seasoned PLANTSTRONG pro, this conversation will inspire you to grab a couple of jars, get some seeds, and start sprouting.
The Austin Connection
[2:11] Doug Evans, welcome to Austin, Texas. Oh my God, I love Austin. Wow, I could live here. Well, Austin wouldn't be the same if you were living here. So that would be wonderful. So Doug, the last time I had you on the podcast was, believe it or not, I'm going to make you try and guess. Guess how many years ago you came on the PLANTSTRONG podcast? Four. Five. You were 54. I was 57. it was um i could be wrong about that i think i'm i think i am wrong about that what i am right about is your first your The Sprout Book yes came out in april of 2020 that's right right and so that was literally five years ago yeah and so you're right you came on the podcast about a year after that um it was episode for people that want to check it out it was episode 60 and it was called the Sprout Wizard.
[3:11] Would you consider yourself a Sprout Wizard? I mean, I think that everybody's a Sprout Wizard now. So, I mean, I've learned more since I wrote the book than the research up to the book. Would you ever consider writing another book? I'm contemplating it. There's so much demand. People are so hungry for this information that the book, when it came out during COVID, my book launch was canceled. All book signings were canceled. I had 3,000 people on social media, all that was following me. And then I had to put myself into the uncomfortable position of going on social media. So TikTok and Instagram, and I went on your podcast and Rich Roll's podcast and a bunch of others. And then all of a sudden now I have 480,000 followers on social media. You have 480K? Yeah. That's awesome. So between, you know, TikTok and Meta and the like. So, but the important part is that I am talking about sprouts.
[4:31] And like, let's just get right into it. Sprouts have been around since the beginning of time, right? They just, they've just been here. Like what came first, the chicken or the egg? What came first, you know, the tree or the acorn, right? So what came first? So it's all part of this mystery. Like life is filled with mystery. And sprouts and seeds are mystery. But what we do know is...
[5:02] Is that a seed is a complete living organism in a dormant state.
[5:11] And I have researched seeds that are over a thousand years old that still germinate. And so inside of the seed are the mineral, trace minerals from the soil of the plant that grew that seed. And the endosperm and the embryo and the stem cells of the plants, the rapidly growing enzymatically active component of this organism. So when you take a seed and you soak it, you reduce the phytic acid, you reduce the enzyme inhibitors, you reduce the lectins. And you've heard some garbage around lectins. I think a guy, yeah, yeah. We don't need to throw anybody under the bus. No, no, no. Right, but we can take the garbage out of the bus, right? And people, you know, some people are like demonizing lectins. But when you soak and sprout a seed, you reduce the lectins, the phytic acid, the enzyme inhibitors, and you unleash the potential of that seed.
[6:30] And it turns into a vegetable. And it's a similar process like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. You look at a seed, it could be mistaken for a rock. You bite on it, you could break your tooth.
[6:45] But you add some water, you soak it, you put it into a sprouting kit, and, you get vegetables. And why the vegetables, like you're a plant strong guy, so you're all into vegetables. The world began as everything fresh. And then as it matured, people tried to figure out innovative ways to process, whether it was salting or drying or cooking, but they basically want to kill it so it can have a long shelf life. And if you look at the 25,000 SKUs that are in, say Whole Foods, 98% of them, 98% are cooked, processed, refined, pasteurized.
[7:45] Baked, air fried, dehydrated, frozen, refrigerated. There's almost nothing fresh in the store. Because fresh is best, but it is also the most perishable, the highest waste factor, and the lowest margin, right? Because fresh is mostly what? Fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables, but water weight. So you're moving water and the water is carrying the phytonutrients, the enzymes, and the minerals. So the average produce, the average vegetable is traveling 2,000 miles across the country over a 10-day period and is arriving barely alive. It's just barely alive. So sprouts change everything because everybody could be growing sprouts. Just period, end of story. Yeah.
[8:53] Do you know have you ever encountered anybody that is as fascinated curious and passionate about sprouts as yourself i mean this is a funny thing to say i haven't found anyone who's this passionate about anything yeah well wait wait till you're playing pickleball this weekend at sports weekend i think you'll see some passionate pickleball players yeah but you know what i don't think they they obsess 24 7 24 8 I'm only obsessed of this maybe 16 hours a day yeah well and and tell me like.
[9:30] At the root foundation, what is your obsession? Is it to get more people sprouting? Because, and if so, like, what is it? I mean, my obsession is that I'm an underdog, right? I grew up in the streets of New York. My father, may he rest in peace, was an untreated combat, World War II combat veteran. Yeah. Just untreated. So at the time, we didn't have the terms PTSD. They didn't medicate him. So we used the term shell-shocked because at one time, he was the sweetest man. And then in a second, he could flip over anything. And then it was just unsafe. And now being a father myself, my goal is to make sure my daughter is safe, but that she can explore, she can, you know, she can learn, she can, you know, have a lot of freedom, but it's safety. And I didn't have that. So I left the house at 13 years old. And so I'm running around the streets of New York with degenerates, with graffiti writers, with criminals, with drug dealers. Did you ever cross paths with John Joseph?
[10:50] Not at that time. You're a little younger than he is yeah not not that time but we know a lot of the same the same people and i know i know john yeah you know he's a wild man he's a wild man yeah and you know and so for me you know when i turned 17 all of my friends like literally all of them were people that i would consider.
[11:19] Unsavory, degenerative, you know, or lost. And I had a feeling that my purpose was greater than that. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was greater than that. So I made one of the most difficult decisions. I went from being a free man to practically being incarcerated, which is this one, one degree different than your choice. You chose to be a fireman, right? To run into fire, right? I chose to jump out of planes, you know, as a paratrooper in the 82nd airborne. Wow. Yeah. And which is also, you know, like I did not do it for in my patriotism. Like I did it for me. I saw the advertisements on TV. Be all you can be. I saw the Army College Fund. I saw them running around in fatigues and swinging on ropes and obstacle courses. And I was like, if I can do that.
[12:30] Then I'll become a man. I'll develop discipline. I can change the trajectory of my life if I go into the army. And the army kicked my butt. Did you make it? Oh, I got an honorable discharge. I got an army achievement medal. I did airborne training, infantry training, combat engineer training, special forces, explosives and demolitions training, unit armor training, training, training, training. And then when I got out, like I was trained, I was trained right now, the practical use of many of those skills somehow come up to me. Like we went camping the other day, you know, in Joshua Tree National Park, and I knew how to pitch a tent in the dark. Without waking up the baby. So things can be practical. You learn some MacGyver skills. And without getting into a major argument with your wife?
[13:33] No, no. We still argue. We still scream. We lose. That is the true test. Going camping and putting up a tent in the pitch black with your partner. It's a good test. Yeah. Better do it by myself. Go nurse behind that boulder. Okay. But when I got out of the army, I had discipline and I knew the lines. I knew what lines not to cross. So there was an inherent curiosity, adventure part. And that's what I really love about business is that in sports, there's a clock. The game has a beginning and an end. And when the clock ends, you know, timeout, game's over, right? Or it goes into overtime. But eventually, there are rules that you have to follow. The rules of business...
[14:31] Are much more flexible. Now, you have to pay taxes, you have to do workers comp, unemployment, disability, you've got to file all these things and things.
The Underdog Story
[14:44] But in general, you can make up your own rules. You can make up your own product. You can have your own vision. you can choose to do something that no one has ever done before right so so just to kind of put put the pieces together here yes so i love the fact that you consider yourself you consider yourself an underdog right yeah yeah would you consider sprouts an underdog Yeah. Well, Sprouts are definitively an underdog. And I'm going to tell you a story
Personal Struggles and Transformation
[15:27] about Sprouts. I'm going to just close the chapter. Okay, okay. So I got out of the military and I became an addict. Of what? Work. Okay. I was a workaholic. So I was working. What drove that?
[15:44] That growing up poor, growing up from a broken family, and not having any money. Made me think that if I actually had money, I could have a family, I could have a car, I could have a house, I could have an American dream, you know, so there was that. And if you didn't have that, then, you know, you would be homeless, you'd be poor, you'd be destitute, and you would die alone.
[16:16] So I said, I don't want that. Like, I want to be able to have freedom, right? I want freedom. And my path to freedom was there was a limit. Like, if you got a job, anyone gets a job. And you see this all the time, right? Like, taxi drivers working 12 hours a day because they lease the vehicle, right? They lease it. And they get a 12-hour shift, right? So the ambitious ones will drive that for 12 hours the entire time. They'll pee in a bottle, you know, because they want to maximize the time. I didn't drive a taxi. I worked in a supermarket.
The Call to Change
[17:07] And so I would work as many hours as they would give me. But then when there was no more hours and I couldn't get more than 40 hours there I got a second job and then I got a third job and I was saving and hoarding all my money um because I wanted to be able to have the American dream I wanted a house I wanted a car I wanted a family so I worked worked worked but turns out if you work work work you don't have a family you don't have any balance but i was just working working working and then at age 33 26 plus years ago yeah from today i get the call and my aunt is in the hospital and she has diabetes she's overweight she has no feelings in her toes neuropathy yeah and they're cutting off both of her feet double amputation and i i was in shock like i just couldn't imagine what it was like not to have the faculty of your feet, the movement, the freedom. It seemed like, you know, a curse, right?
[18:32] And it almost didn't even matter because she died soon after the operation. And then my mother went into the hospital. They thought she had an ulcer and it turned out to be stomach cancer. And within 90 days of going into the hospital, she died.
[18:55] Before I could. How soon after your aunt passing away did your mother. This all kind of happened in a very short period of time. I don't know the exact. But what I'll tell you is after my mother died of stomach cancer, my father went into the hospital, heart disease, heart attack, died in the same hospital before I could even finish grieving the loss of my mother. And my brother was following in the footsteps. He became overweight obese diabetic and had the first of three strokes and two heart attacks, he's older or younger older brother two years older so um so he's only 35 or 36 yeah yeah he's 35 and he's already had heart attacks yeah he had a stroke he had diabetes he was overweight and like I these these were foreign terms I never heard of diabetes I didn't know what cancer was you know you hear about heart attacks and so I thought that I was genetically cursed.
Lifestyle Changes and Awakening
[20:10] And then I met a woman and she told me looked me in the eyes and said you're not genetically You're living a diabetic, carcinogenic, heart disease laden lifestyle. And if you change your lifestyle, if you change what you eat.
[20:35] You could change your jeans. And to me, I didn't know what jeans were. I wore Levi's. I wore Wranglers. I didn't know anything. Because remember, I had no education. I never went to college. I wasn't well-read. I didn't know any of these things.
[20:55] But if this woman would have told me to drink the Kool-Aid, I would have drank the Kool-Aid. Right? So I joined the cult. I drank the Kool-Aid, which in this case was wheatgrass. Okay. I drank the wheatgrass. I ate the sprouts. And in a two-week window, I gave up eating all this cooked food, processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, animal products. I started getting my education on vocabulary by reading labels, which is now coming into the Vogue. Right now, everyone's reading labels. Everyone's looking at red dye and glyphosate and these food additives and maltodextrin and MSG. They're looking at it now. I began that 26 years ago. So what I saw, the safest, cleanest things to eat were organic fruits, organic vegetables, right? Seaweed, organic, from clean oceans, raw seeds, raw nuts, and sprouts.
A Journey to Clean Eating
[22:20] And so I started to sprout back then but I it was always like a garnish or a side dish but everything else on my plate was curated and I would go to great lengths to find things that fit into that profile of clean eating so before I ever heard about you know your father you know Essie, Dr. Caldwell, Esselstyn, before I ever heard of him, or Alan Goldhammer and Doug Lyle and Colin Campbell, I was doing no salt, no oil, no sugar, no added sugar. So I was eating fruits and vegetables and my life just like just changed like all of a sudden this anxiety about you know scarcity shift into abundance i remember doing a day in new york city where i fasted off of the vegetation in new york city hmm.
[23:36] So I literally was just eating mulberries from a sacred tree. And there were these sacred trees all over New York City, mulberry trees. Mulberries are quite the little glorified raspberries. I love mulberries. But just imagine eating a day where I had like eight pounds of mulberries harvested from New York City's tree. Yeah, yeah. And I literally, now that I'm thinking about this, I'm planning on going back to New York in July to go to this same tree. Because this tree is so far in the park. No one knows where it is. No one goes.
[24:20] Only the birds go. So I'll leave some for the birds. What were some of the things that happened after you embraced this?
Defining the Raw Vegan Diet
[24:30] How would you classify, name this diet that you're on right now? I mean, it's interesting. Is it a raw vegan? I would say it's raw vegan. It's raw vegan. And vegan is such a charged word right now because the industry is so anti-vegan. But the way I look at the plant-based and vegan movement right now, it's like the stock market. It's going to increase over time, but there's going to be some dips. There's going to be some crashes. There's going to be a bear market.
[25:07] It will come up. And the reason why it will come up and why it's the true north and the guiding light is because it's profound truth. That environmentally, plant-based makes 100%. Nutrition-wise, 100%. So from a taste-wise, 100%. From a drug-like feeling of euphoria, meat is a drug. Meat is the drug of choice for most of America today. It's a drug of choice. When you bite into a piece of meat, it is like a drug.
[25:50] It changes your hormones, your cortisol levels, your drive. Like it triggers the reptilian snake-like brain of the concentrated density of the fat in meat, the heme iron, the blood when you bite into meat. It's why they say, you know, I would never put down a dog, but if a dog tastes human flesh, it's unsafe around kids if it tastes the blood of a human. And so when humans eat the blood of animals, it's highly addictive, unless you have this awakening, unless you understand that we're not living in scarcity, that we have autonomy. We can make choices that are better than... Like, look, if you were to take...
[27:05] A healthy animal, human, and you put them in a room with heroin or fruit, if the heroin gets into their system, they're going to ignore the fruit. If you put a human who has no cognition and you take the animal flesh and you put it in a box with bright yellow and red letters and you call it a happy meal and you roast it and salt it and saute it and season it and you totally bifurcate it from its source, and you give it to someone and they take a bite, it's going to taste good to them. And when the fat and the oil and the salt hits the brain, they're going to want more of it. So, you know, people think like, oh, you know, when someone is overweight, they have no control.
[28:07] No, it's not that they have no control. They've been set up, you know, in a system to be poisoned. It's just a setup. So if you want to be a free thinker, right, you have to just step back and get a greater perspective and ask questions. And listen to the Plant Strong podcast, read some books. So what happened to me was I shifted from total scarcity into total abundance.
From Scarcity to Abundance
[28:44] And I knew...
[28:46] That I would never be hungry again, that I could always find grass, I could find rice and beans, I could find sprouts, I could, there was always food, peasant food. There was always peasant food or scraps, but I knew I would never be hungry again. And then it all became a shift that my workaholism shifted from making money to making contribution to making impact to take the, like, I really don't like bullshit. I don't like to be lied to. I don't like to be manipulated. I don't like to be controlled. And I just felt that, you know, as you took a noble cause to go be a firefighter, I decided to be a bullshit fighter. I would fight the bullshit. I'd fight the system. And so I gave up all of my other work and I decided that I would do things and make it easier for people to eat plants, try to make it as cool as possible, try to make it as tasty as possible, trying to make it as accessible as possible, and then to help inform and share what I learned in an easily approachable mechanism. Yeah.
Shifting from Workaholism
[30:12] And what were some of the, and I want to come back to...
[30:17] What you've started recently and where you're pouring all your time and energy right now but what like what can you remember at the age of maybe 30 1999 ish like what were some of the things that did you lose weight do you feel better were you already lean no no i was 36 pounds heavier. I literally, I almost had surgery for my nose, because I couldn't breathe through my nose, right? Right. So I went, I mean, this is the stories in my book, but I went to the New York eye, ear, nose, throat hospital, because I wanted to have my septum removed. They said I had a deviated septum because i couldn't breathe through my nose so by boring a hole and surgically you know adjusting it and what saved me from that was when the the doctor came out with a photo album, and says what do you want your nose to look like and i said what are you what are you talking about.
[31:27] He's like oh no no i i know you want a nose job and he goes since we're cutting it open anyway we He can change his shape and do it. And like, I walked out and then, you know, I made literally 25 phone calls and people said, oh, you're probably lactose intolerant. Yeah. And you probably have mucus in your nose that's preventing it. So stop all dairy, all dairy. And now, it wasn't a deviated septum. It wasn't. Yeah, it was just bullshit. So I had made that move. Yeah. And then I saw firsthand a direct effect of a dietary change. And then I had, when I was in the 82nd Airborne, I had a six pack because we were lean, food scarcity, doing hundreds of push-ups a day, running, you know, five miles, 10 miles, 20 miles, like just push, push, push. And then, you know, a mere 15 years later, I had a pot belly.
[32:44] You know, my waist size went from 30 to 36. And I was just sloppy. I was just sloppy. I needed in the afternoon to drink at least a liter of Coca-Cola and have a chocolate bar snack at 3 o'clock.
[33:05] And or, notice the and or, take a nap. Like I needed like an afternoon siesta if I was going to go. And then, so all of that just changed. My energy became clear. I shed all of this extra fat.
[33:27] And this wasn't about vanity. It wasn't about like a six pack. This was about shedding things that were holding me back or theoretically protecting me. And I was eating for comfort. Like, you know, I can totally relate. To people who overeat. Like, I get it. Like, my addictive personality, like, I know my brother said, Doug, if you weren't raw vegan, you'd weigh 500 pounds because I see the way you eat. Like, when Bing cherries and Rainier cherries come into season, I'll eat two pounds of them, right? My wife will go to the, we live in the desert, and dates grow in the desert. I can eat 25 medjool dates. In one sitting? In one sitting. Just pound them down. I'll eat a whole watermelon in one sitting. No problem. And so now what I understand, and the shift. So my skin, which I used to have dandruff, and I used to have pus, mucus in my eyes. Like I'd wake up in the morning and my eyes were almost stuck shut.
[34:46] Right and now like clear like i don't even i don't even get a like i don't even get a trace amount of like mucus in my eyes and my skin i'm 58 i'm gonna be 59 in like six weeks um my skin feels good my energy you know last year i did a hundred thousand push-ups wow hundred thousand push-ups how many were you doing a day i was doing between 274 and 350 and sometimes i'd peak to 400 500 just if i missed the day before i'd overcompensate why 274 i can't that's 100 000 divide by 365 got it got it that's a you know you could be conservative and so it just changed all of a sudden. But the other shift that really mattered the most was my heart opened up. My heart opened up. I started to... How were you before? I was just focused on work. I was just focused on work. I needed to work. I needed to make money. Had to do everything. Had to push. Do you feel like you're a happy person?
[36:07] No. so not much joy no I don't think I've had joy since I had my daughter, like I have my daughter you've met my daughter she's the joy in my life before that I don't think I had joy, okay so you feel like your heart opened up and, I couldn't work for money anymore.
[36:37] There were so many things that I was doing for money, and I just couldn't do any of those things. My work had to become part of doing good. So I burdened myself with having to work. I still was working. But I was doing things that were theoretically like a setback from what someone would normally do. So enormous pay cut. It was like going into the Peace Corps. It's like getting a CEO of an airline and next thing goes, hey, I don't want to run the airline anymore. I want to go be a farmer and I want to go get an acre of land and farm it.
[37:27] I said, okay, I no longer want to work in graphic design and computer graphics at the time. I don't want to, I can't do that anymore. I want to make organic cold press juice and, you know, put in little soup cups and deliver it. And like, I didn't make money for 10 years, 10 years, literally, you know, I was living on savings. I was living in the store, above the store, below the store, making juice and just hustling. And only now, I've never talked about this, but I literally was only eating off of what we were making and just covering expenses. But I wasn't saving money. I was living on savings because this was important to me. And so I did that. And that was turned like literally a little lemonade stand making green juice in New York City, turned into 12 stores doing a million dollars a month in revenue. And then we sold it to a private equity company. But I didn't want to sell it. We just got ourselves into a pickle that we were growing.
[38:49] And New York, it was a crazy place to operate. You know, rent for a small store was $25,000 a month. Labor was super high. Insurance was super high. Produce costs were super high. We were the largest independent buyer of organic produce in New York City. Wow. What was the name of that company? Organic Avenue. So for those in the New York area between like 2002 and 2012, knew it really well.
Sprouts as Nutritional Superstars
[39:23] And then, you know, fast forward, we'll jump to Sprouts. So you're about to ask me about the demonization or repression or underdog status of Sprouts. Exactly, exactly.
[39:38] I mean, they definitely have that stigma attached to them, and you think completely unnecessarily so. Well, there would be no life on this planet as we know it if there weren't seeds that germinated into sprouts and grew into trees and plants and vegetables. Yeah. So so sprouts are the beginning of life. It's it's when the seed springs forth life. Yeah. And why do you think they're so underappreciated? Well, you have a friend, John Mackey, that I had dinner with. And John, who ran Whole Foods for 44 years, said to me, sprouts are a terrible business. And I said, do you like sprouts? He goes, oh, yeah, I love sprouts. Super nutritious. I love sprouts. Terrible business. And I said, why? Short shelf life, low margins.
[40:42] Plastic packaging, shipping mostly water weight, that there are no national or international sprouting companies. Like just not a business, Doug. Sprouts aren't a business. You know and i said well but they've been around the nutrition he goes yeah people should be sprouting their own but people are lazy and when sprouts crossed over into commercial applications and people were using them in sandwich bars and the like and was so much more efficient than getting lettuce and other parts. They just became demonized. And it was so rare. Like, if you look at foodborne illness over the last quarter century, and I published a white paper on this, but if you looked at the foodborne illness and you rationalized the data to say how many cases of illness per million servings, right? Because there's obviously more servings of chicken than there are sprouts.
[41:56] But if you rationalize it, you'll find that sprouts are maybe 10 per million of commercially grown sprouts. Maybe some people might get sick. 20 people get sick from lettuce.
[42:14] 80 people get sick from meat or fish, and 150 get sick from chicken, right? So the numbers are crazy like that.
[42:31] But there's people getting sick every single day from the chicken, like just every day around. You know, every day someone is getting sick. So it's not newsworthy anymore. more. But if something is different, it's like a purple cow. Someone eats a sprout 10 years ago. But I gave a keynote in Las Vegas at the International Sprout Growers Association, an indoor controlled agriculture conference.
The Science of Sprouting
[43:01] And I'm so ecstatic to say that if on Google today, sprouts are no longer on the list of the top 10 most dangerous foods so that's a big win and and this is another big win when you type in sprouts it says the nutrient-dense superfood nutrient-dense food so we've shifted the dialogue organically yeah over this seven-year period since I started work on them. So just to kind of educate everybody on the, how sprouts are such nutritional powerhouses. Yeah. Like you explain it better than anybody. Like walk me through some of the things that are present in sprouts that make them so just alive and wonderful and nutritious. So sprouts are vegetables and vegetables are healthy for you.
[44:03] The smaller the vegetable, the more concentrated the phytonutrients are. So sprouts contain 20 to 100 times the nutrient density of the mature vegetable. So as the vegetable is getting bigger, it's getting more fiber, it's getting more vitamin C, but the nutrient phytonutrient density is being diluted. So there are compounds in the cruciferous family of vegetables called glucosinolates. Every single...
[44:42] Every single seed contains a finite amount of, say, broccoli, glucoraphanin, finite amount. And as it grows, it's getting diluted at every stage until it's ready to fruit. And then the plant buds in the flower stage aggressively pull the minerals from the soil, go through a rapid replication of the cells as it's birthing the new seeds.
[45:17] And then it's reallocating, reformulating the part. But everything from the beginning to end in this circle of life, it's being diluted along the way. So when you're consuming the sprouts, you get 20 to 100 times the nutrient density. You also are eating things that are alive. We talk about whole foods all the time, right? When you're eating a piece of broccoli or a piece of cauliflower or even a string bean, you're eating what we call whole foods, but it's actually part of the plant. The sprout is the complete living organism. It is the root, the chute, the endosperm, the embryo, the testa. You're eating the entire living organism that's enzymatically active.
[46:15] So this is something that no one can even fathom, the concept of eating truly living foods that are structured water. Like everything is within them. I'm actually working on a study with Dr. Alan Goldhammer from True North Health, who is legendary, one of the most published authors, you know, in this healing. And little known fact, Dr. Goldhammer put himself through college selling sprouts. Oh, really? So we're like, you know, two peas in a pod. Yeah. So we're going to be taking a building at True North Health, and people are going to come in. They're going to register. They're going to pay normal rates, right, plus or minus a little bit. They're going to grow their own sprouts. They're going to eat their own sprouts, and they're going to reverse their chronic illnesses, their hypertension, their diabetes, their obesity. In a controlled medical environment where they'll take all the vitals, all the blood tests. Someone has insurance. The insurance will cover a lot of the lab work and the like. And, you know, because water fasting, highly effective, really difficult.
[47:42] Really difficult. Consuming sprouts, really easy, really effective. And so I want... So is this going to be essentially a water fast where you're supplementing with sprouts? Yeah, this is going to be a sprout fast where you'll supplement with water. Okay. But basically, we're going to show the transformation that someone could have to reverse chronic illness with Sprouts. Now, this will do it really fast. And the reason why it has to be done in a medical setting is because if someone is on drugs and they're taking metformin and they're taking statins and they're taking blood thinners and they'll need less of these drugs as they lose the weight and as their brain wakes up. So I can safely recommend anyone doing this without direct medical supervision. So we discussed, okay, let's take one of your buildings. Let's have people fill in a form, apply.
[48:54] And then, you know, you could still work. They've got internet there. And you could still be fully functioning. But you'll get as many calories as the doctor recommends. someone could be on 600 calories or they could have 1,200 calories. Of just sprouts? Of sprouts. I was eating 3,000 calories a day of sprouts for 30 days. Wow. And so...
[49:19] When do you anticipate this going online?
Medical Research and Sprouting
[49:24] I'd say probably next quarter. Oh, really? Yeah, this is not going to be an ongoing part. The goal is to do published, peer-reviewed research. Yeah.
[49:36] And so what kind of sprouts? Tell me, for those of us that are really ignorant, how many different types of sprouts are there? Are there hundreds? Oh, there's probably millions. Millions. Millions. And so what we're going to be focused on is the readily available seeds that are grown for sprouting purposes. So they're like the top shelf, alfalfa, radish, clover, broccoli.
[50:05] Lentils, green peas, mung beans, like that's probably the chick garbanzo beans. Yeah. And there's many varieties of these, but that's the core group. Because those are the safest, they grow the fastest, they're the most nutrient-dense. So when you say they grow the fastest, give me an idea from when you put them in your container to when you actually retrieve them, how many days on average? So lentils and garbanzo beans and mung beans, they could be consumed in two and a half to three days and the alfalfa radish clover those are five to seven days and if you want to have broccoli for medicinal purposes um day three or you know you can have them up to day seven if you're eating them up to day seven you're going to get more fiber yeah but you're going to get less of the sulforaphane um.
[51:11] Give me an idea. So when you were eating 3,000 calories of sprouts a day, how much did that cost you? Under $10 a day. So per serving, it's almost like pennies. Yeah, 50 cents a serving. Wow.
[51:32] So what is there not to like about sprouting? Anything? Well, I mean. Absolutely nothing. Well, if you're addicted to pornography, right, what's not to like about, you know, courting a normal person, right? So what's not to like about sprouts is if you're addicted to salt, oil, sugar, meat, you know, if you're living to eat, right? If you're living to eat and you're fantasizing about the euphoria you get when you bite into processed food, then you eat the sprouts, it may be perceived as bland. If you go through a several-day transition of not eating any added salt, any added oil, any added sweetener, then all of a sudden a leaf of lettuce. Has a lot of taste, has a lot of flavor. So what's not to like about it, like it all depends what your priorities are. If you love life.
[52:47] Then sprouts are fantastic. If you want to feed your addiction, like sprouts are not going to do it for you. They're just not going to do it for you. It's like if someone loves smoking and you say, oh, don't smoke, just do pranayama, just do your breathing exercises. And you're going to say, well, what are you not going to like about pranayama? Well, you're not going to get that rush of nicotine and that happens when you smoke a cigarette do you do breath work I do how often, every day for how long, it's a process so I'll do I meditate every night.
[53:37] Before I go to sleep in the morning the meditation is determined whether or not I get up before or after my baby. So if I get up before her, then with the mouth tape on, I'm in the bed and I'm meditating until she wakes up. And then we have this cute routine where she'll wake me up, but I don't wake up right away. But I'll know she's up and then she pulls off my mouth tape and then she kisses me and then we play and then we go into a routine. So there's no meditation in the morning if she's waking me up. But if I'm up before her, I meditate and I'm doing the breath work. My breath work is more observing the breath, which is the indication for me of what's real, like what's alive, like this...
[54:38] Breath going in, breath going out. It's like that's the life going in and going out. It's a mystery. I don't even understand it. I just got back from a retreat, six-day Plan Strong retreat, and we had a woman doing breath work there. It's really the first time I've done. Did you do like a holotropic breath work? I don't know what that means. so tell me what that is holotropic is another like the the more known in our society is like the um wim hof breath work breath of fire yeah yeah we definitely so it was basically you'd breathe in on a count of four breathe out on a count of four breathe in and you do that for about a minute or two and then you breathe in for two out for two for about a minute or two then you breathe in for one out for one for a minute or two and then you do breath of fire, and then at the end of breath of fire you would actually hold your breath and then you did four rounds of that right and at the end of four rounds it was i mean you felt like you would just, i mean you're uh you were on cloud nine yeah it was it was wild yeah so um i don't want to get too far away from the sprouts yeah it's back so let's let's let's pedal backwards to sprouts and.
Launching the Sprouting Company
[55:58] You have done something remarkable in that you've actually started the Sprouting Company. Yes. And so tell me a little bit about the Sprouting Company. What initiated that? Where are you right now? What can people do if they want to make Sprouting part of their daily routine? What have you done to accelerate and make that process easy? So I wrote the Sprout book, became a national bestseller, 50,000 plus copies. It's in the 10th edition. Fabulous. So really proud of that. In the course of writing the book, I was using everything possible to sprout, from window screens and pantyhose to glass jars to socks to five-gallon buckets from Home Depot. And what I ultimately realized was the two materials that were optimum for sprouting were glass and stainless steel.
[57:02] And that sprouting required certain angles for drainage and certain levels of airflow, air exchange. And so I created a lab. And I'm using all the equipment. There's actually a chapter in the sprout book called Junkyard Dog, where I, you know, share how people could sprout with anything. Like, I remember watching seeds go into a sponge in my kitchen sink, and I got back from a weekend, and the sprouts were growing out of the sponge, and they're growing out of the sink. Like, they want to grow. Yeah. And so, the idea... You know what that reminds me of? Tell me. It reminds me...
[57:49] I am, sometimes I'll be biking or walking or running and I'll be on asphalt. And in the middle of the asphalt, you sometimes will see a beautiful little mushroom that has somehow made its way through the asphalt and wants to live. That's right. Sounds like the sprouts. Sprouts. So what I did was originally, I was just going to be, you know, do advocacy work, write the book and go on with my life. And the Sprouts literally took over my life. And they said, Doug, there were people before you that loved Sprouts, right? Dr. Anne Wigmore, Victoria Skavinskas, Steve Meyerowitz, the Sprout Man, Gabriel Cousins, David Wolf. Like people loved Sprouts, but no one decided to dedicate their professional career, their life to sprouts today. Like there's no one advocating them. And when I saw sprouts, I didn't just see this little garnish.
[58:58] I saw sprouts as vegetables, as vitamins and minerals, and as medicine. And when you think about like sprouting a lentil, like lentils are already a staple of the plant-based diet around the world. When you sprout a lentil, you increase the vitamin C by 300%. You quadruple the antioxidant levels.
[59:23] So all of a sudden, you know, it involves like looking more down that path, sprouted chickpeas, enzymatically active, one cup, like a fistful.
[59:39] 20 grams of protein. If you add a fistful of alfalfa sprouts or broccoli sprouts to the garbanzo bean sprouts, you get every essential amino acid in full levels to get full protein.
[59:58] So where do I get my protein from? Sprouts. Sprouts. As you should. Right? So in the notion of vitamin supplementation, like I've been saying this for 25 years, but now even consumer reports and the zeitgeist are saying, beware of proteins and beware of buying supplements on Amazon or coming from here because they could have fillers that certain other parts of the world are using lead as a filler because it's heavy. and it weighs it down. So the idea of visibility and transparency in your eating, it's like, what am I eating? I'm eating an alpha sprout, alfalfa sprout, a broccoli sprout, a lentil sprouts. You don't need to read the label when you can identify with your eyes 100% of what's going in the food. And look, I love the Plant Strong products. And the reason I invested in your company is because you have the transparency and the standard of having food that I would feed my family, right? And most things are not. Like you worked in the Whole Foods organization, right? Out of their 25,000 products, how many would Rip eat? Right.
[1:01:28] Well, obviously, a lot of the produce. The produce. And then when it comes in the middle of the aisle, yeah, you got to be very selective.
[1:01:36] Maybe, you know, one to 2%. Yeah. But even the produce, people don't even realize that a lot of the produce is covered with beeswax, with synthetic petroleum-based coatings. Like, there's a lot of dubious stuff that's going on in the produce. And people, like, that's where I feel like this advocacy work has to come out because, you know, it really is David versus Goliath. And the other thing on the sprouts and what you're going to see with Dr. Alan Goldhammer and True North is that there are more than 2,000 peer-reviewed published studies on sulforaphane, the compound in broccoli sprouts, and how they detoxify benzene and air pollutants from the lungs. So one thing I'd love to work with you on is like, there's a million firefighters in the United States, right? A million. And they've all been exposed to burning chemicals, you know, whether it's burning carcasses, burning feces, burning asbestos and benzene. That the broccoli sprouts are a proven way of detoxifying those air pollutants from the lungs.
[1:03:01] So very, very key. So we have to help them and figure out and look, you're in the firehouse, right? They have time to sprout. Where they have the desire to sprout is another part, but that's an audience that I really want to do some advocacy work because they're first responders you know and they should they should be healthy and we should help them every every firehouse needs a sprouting kit yeah at least or every fire feet every firefighter needs a sprouting so do you want to do you want to show the audience we could do that i i think for this i'll grab one right over there okay i'll go grab the i'll go grab the kit i want to finish one other point yeah so broccoli sprouts um can help with regulating insulin levels and diabetics sprouts can help reduce oxidative stress right and scavenge free radicals broccoli sprouts can actually help with weight management because they are high in fiber, low in fat, low in calories, and when you eat them.
[1:04:20] You know, like 100 grams, you know, of broccoli sprouts or alfalfa sprouts are virtually no calories. So you can eat sprouts until you're no longer hungry or full. So in your charts, and I'll let you talk about caloric density and how many calories are in eight ounces of oil versus how many calories are in eight ounces of sprouts yeah right you're talking about a hundred calories versus four thousand eight thousand and if in a cup it'd be a thousand a thousand yeah so so you can you can eat a lot of sprouts and get full and this is a little known fact that I'm happy to share that sprouts actually help secrete GLP-1. So you can get an ozempic-like effect without the ozempic side effects. That's powerful.
[1:05:23] It's really powerful. Yeah, it's nature's natural ozempic. Yeah. So I'll go get the sprouting kit. And why don't you talk about foods that have the highest level of caloric density? Sure, absolutely. High and low, while I get that. Yeah, good. So it's funny. I mean, I don't actually know what sprouts are, but I can tell you leafy greens are at the bottom. They're about 60 calories a pound. And then up at the top, you've got your oils that are right around 4,000 calories a pound. So that's almost a 45-fold difference, which is just kind of absolutely crazy to think about between green leafies at the bottom and oil at the top.
[1:06:15] Here comes Doug. And this is your invention.
Designing the Perfect Sprouter
[1:06:21] Yes. Look, I think this was invented. you know, this is my design, right? But basically, you know, this, our sprouter contains a stand, a drip tray.
[1:06:38] A stainless steel filter, and a glass jar. And what makes this is if you think about the normal shape of a mason jar, and I can go grab one, it has a bell shape. So when it's at the angle, it actually collects water there. And standing water is not good. You want to get full drainage so i designed this jar to be big enough to put your whole hand in and with straight edges so all the water drains out the other thing is you know my wife once broke one of the big jars so i i made the handle ergonomically friendly ergonomically friendly so that like literally you know the goal is like a 10 year old and nice sprouting company on that and then you know one of the key elements is this filter a lot of people were using plastic which is leaching microplastics which we don't need um so i want to have something that was stainless steel other people were using a window mesh like from a window screen which may have been stainless steel but because of the way it was woven was collecting um bacteria and.
[1:08:03] Exudate and biofilm from the plants so i wanted to get something that was dishwasher safe that you could scrub that was sanitary and then this goes on and then the way the collar was designed was that all the water would drain out and you could even like stand it upside down fully inverted and the castellation underneath would allow the the airflow to go through and then this was just more aesthetic i'll be really clear the aesthetic design of this was to be able to.
[1:08:41] Look pretty on the countertop. And then this is a quarter cup of seeds, right? A quarter cup of seeds put into the jar will fill up the entire jar in five days. No soil, no sunshine, no fertilizer that is taking the water and inside of the seeds is this mystery of life. Like the entire secrets of the universe are contained within these seeds. And you get to grow this fresh living food. And so I made this literally, and we started the company, just because the equipment that was there was antiquated.
[1:09:24] And, you know, not to be judging, but it was like using a sledgehammer for anesthesia. It was so old that it didn't get the results that I wanted. So I decided to put my money where my mouth was and invest and create something that I loved. And now, we just sold last month our 10,000th jar, our 10,000th kit. And people are now growing. And what we're seeing is they're adding their second kit and their third kit. And now people are having their sprout gardens, their gardening. And my vision is that all produce should be grown locally and consumed locally. And that we have an opportunity for everyone to be their own gardener, their own farmer, and growing their own food.
[1:10:25] Do you also sell the seeds? Yeah, we sell the seeds. We sell alfalfa, radish, clover, broccoli, lentils, green pea, mung beans, garbanzos. We have a protein mix and a salad mix. And our seeds are certified organic, tested for pathogens, and.
[1:10:51] Tested for germination rate. So every aspect that was important for the growing was something. So you can go buy lentils in the bulk bin of your co-op, but they probably weren't grown and tested for the purpose of sprouting. So if you're in Africa, and I'm supporting people in Africa, I say, use the best that you can get. But if you're an American, you
Growing Your Own Food
[1:11:21] have access, you want to get the best seeds because you're consuming this. And even the most expensive seeds are the best value relative to any other food you could buy or you could grow.
[1:11:35] You mentioned you've got a protein blend. What are the different seeds that are in that? Yeah. Mung beans, lentils, garbanzo beans, fava. We're constantly rotating the protein blend because we are also huge proponents of gut microbiome diversity. So all of our blends are subject to switch. So check the current ingredients on the website. And fortunately, you know and also this is you know seeds aren't produce yet but they're the result of produce so there's all sorts of you know challenges in consistently getting the seeds for sprouting.
[1:12:32] Tell me, What, what, what tips would you have for somebody that is getting a lot of slack for, for, uh, for sprouting or like, is there peer pressure involved in sprouting at all? No, I don't think there's any sprout shaming going on. I think the big thing is what I would say is that eat them, add your favorite seasonings and sauces, use them, you know, instead of as a garnish, experiment with making them the center of your salad. Like sprouts as a salad is a thing. And then you can use sprouts as an alternative to rice in making sushi. You can actually take marinara sauce or bolognese sauce or pesto sauce and pour it on a bowl of sprouts instead of pasta.
[1:13:33] So you can add sprouts to your smoothies, right? So you can juice the same way you juice wheatgrass juice. You could juice broccoli juice, broccoli sprout juice.
Creative Uses for Sprouts
[1:13:47] So I think there's about 12 to 15 occasions in the course of a day. Like we make a sprouted, for our baby, we make a sprouted garbanzo bean popcorn. So we take the the garbanzo beans we sprout them for we put a little nutritional yeast on them and like she baby leaf will eat them like popcorn yeah so so your your um your girl's name is leaf yeah how appropriate yeah has she ever had a piece of uh birthday cake or ice cream no.
[1:14:29] I mean, I literally, you know, my job as a father is to protect her. We use our freeze dryer at enormous expense so that when she's going to a party, we're bringing so many freeze dried treats that all the kids love more than the junk. What's a freeze dried treat? Give me a slice of banana, a slice of berry. we actually take sprouted garbanzo beans, tahini, and frozen blueberries and make these little treats. And I say it's an enormous expense. I have to do all this stuff manually.
[1:15:13] We're putting solar panels in and the engineer is scoping out the system. He goes, what happened to you in November? I said, what do you mean? He goes, your electric bill went up 50%. I said, oh, we run the freeze dryer every day so we have to get more solar panels uh to accommodate that what do you personally do for your sweet tooth is it just is it just fruit yeah fruit if i want if i really want like i love right now um jujubes fried jujubes the asian date you can get those I love regular dates. Yeah.
[1:15:52] I love... Do you do chocolate anymore? No. Yeah. No. I love figs. Figs? Yeah. Like, I love watermelon in season. Like, I do right now, my diet's 50% fruit, 50% sprouts. So you're still going strong with the raw... Oh, I love raw. Raw, whole food, plant-based. Yeah. uh protocol yeah now um i i love a steamed artichoke if you have a good artichoke i'll i'll eat that it's hard to eat a raw artichoke yeah well you know there's not too many people i know that are doing the the raw vegan i mean robbie barbero is kind of there for the most part, cyrus is there um.
Doug's Vision for Sprouting
[1:16:43] Um yeah i mean why why would you like yeah why would you why of course um type one diabetics are going to be raw vegan eating 800 grams of carbohydrates a day of course yeah right right right it's well you and i know it makes sense a lot of people out there are like what that's crazy yeah it's crazy talk um all right so what's is there anything right now that's rattling around in Doug Evans' brain that has you super, super jazzed.
[1:17:18] I mean, like what I'm seeing is the normalization and the possibility that people can grow their own food. I love right now sprouting is going to schools, teachers are getting it. And what happens is when a child, you know, as young as three or four years old, can see a something growing they want to eat it so i i i we homestead you know we homeschool we homestead like i think the fact that sprouting is opening up the possibility to every home in america like i'm seeing you know people on the road living in their rvs and their camper vans spouting. I'm seeing like spouts. If you've got a kid going away to college, give them a spouting kit.
[1:18:14] It's so interesting watching this happen. And what I realized, and I would implore you and everyone to think about things that you can do, whether you initially believe them or not, but that you think is a good idea and pursue your good ideas.
[1:18:41] And know that if you're going to pursue something that's new, like from a business perspective, people are like, oh, there's no business in Sprouts. And I go, oh, you want me to be in the coffee business and the water business, now in the electric car business? So I don't care what the naysayers said.
[1:19:03] If you have a vision, and I have a vision, that everybody in the world will start to sprout in all countries, all over. Like I see it happening. And it may happen long after I pass, right? Like I'm 58. I probably got another 100 years left. But this has got to continue. you but the point is it's like am i doing the best i can today like am i doing what i can today yeah and you know so what i want to share with with with you with everyone is like you know follow your heart and also think about you know is this are you doing this for your ego are you doing this for your heart are you doing it for humanity are you doing it for your environment. And what I've found is when I have a cause greater than myself, it drives me to do more. And I actually get a better sense of satisfaction from that. Yeah. Well, we first met probably four years ago.
[1:20:20] And I'm trying to think. Was the first time that we met in person actually? At PlantSort. At PlantSort? Yeah, at Plantstock. This summer of 2024. Wow. Well, you are a rare breed, absolutely, as far as obviously your energy, your passion, but also your willingness to connect with people I can remember. I mean, you would try and call me, FaceTime with me at least once a month just to check in and say, I just got a vibe that I wanted to check in with you. That's right. So you really do have a wonderful, beautiful nature and spirit about you that...
[1:21:10] It's very much, it's so perfect that you are the, you know, the sprout wizard, however you want to refer to yourself. And you're pursuing this path head on, full force with a mission to get everybody to sprout. It's awesome. Yeah. I mean, everyone's got to find their thing, right?
Connecting with Doug Evans
[1:21:30] Find your passion, follow your heart. Yeah. So if people want to find out more about you sprouting the book, get one of these wonderful containers, Instagram, where's all your information? Yeah. So I'm Doug Evans, you know, on all social platforms, the sprouting company, you know, dot com sprouting company on Instagram. And, you know, I think there is a plant strong discount code. So just plant strong.
[1:22:02] So that that's available. And, you know, we we send out newsletters two times a week. I'm doing live webinars at least once or twice a month, sharing information. So there's a free masterclass on oneonecommune.com slash Doug. So you can take a free masterclass on sprouting. So there's different ways that we're doing. I'm doing Running Man this year. Again, third annual Running Man. So last year at Running Man, you know, people were doing between one mile runs and 50K runs. I personally gave out 500 servings of sprouts. I was like an obstacle on the course, handing out sprouts with tongs as people were doing their laps.
[1:22:59] The, the, the fuel for runners. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Make it happen. Um, well, I am looking forward to spending this weekend with you, hanging out along with 200, 280 other incredible human beings. And, um, you know, this was very fortuitous that we got to, yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for double hosting me. Yeah. I literally slept here last night. Like, you know, just you opened up, you said, do you have a place to sleep? And I said, nope. And so just the abundance. I mean, what a privilege to be in this condemned house that you with your own sweat and toil, turned into this beautiful place. Thanks. This is the Plant Strong World Headquarters now. Now, this is where we had all three kids, where we lived until 2014 when we were busting at the seams, and then we turned it into the office. Wow. Well, it was a privilege staying here. I love it. Yeah. Well, Doug, give me a big Plant Strong fist bump on the way out. Yes, let's go. Go Plant Strong and go Sprouts. Let's go. Let's go, baby.
[1:24:16] I hope that Doug inspired you as he always inspires me to take another simple, powerful step towards better health. Remember, sprouts aren't just some trendy health food. They're nutrient rich, they're affordable, and they're accessible to absolutely everyone. As Doug reminds us, growing your own food, even in a jar on your kitchen counter, can be a radical act of self-care and sustainability. If you're curious to try sprouting or you want to learn more, be sure to check out Doug's resources at The Sprouting Company. I'll link that up in our show notes for today, along with a discount code. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave us a review. It helps more people discover the power of plants. Until next week, grab a jar, grab some seeds, and always, always keep it plant strong.
[1:25:18] The Plant Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
