How The Sprouting Company Is Turning Countertops Into Farms With Minimal Tools and Maximum Nutrition
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In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Doug Evans, CEO of The Sprouting Company, about his mission to revolutionize food access through sprouting. Doug shares how anyone can grow powerful, protein-rich microgreens at home with no soil or sunlight—and how this simple habit can transform personal health and global sustainability. Recorded live at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
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About Doug Evans
As an Entrepreneur and Book Author with a rich background in new media and social media marketing, his journey has been about transforming personal passions into impactful enterprises.
US Dietary guidelines recommend 7-13 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. The average American consumes less than 1. As a result 2 out of 3 are overweight with chronic illnesses.
About The Sprouting Company
Their food is vital to our health- eating well heals, protects, and enhances our lives. However, their food system and grocery stores are packed with processed “food” with unpronounceable ingredients that harm us. Even in the produce section, where they are advised to select our ingredients from, food is often not fresh- shipped from across the world.
When their founder, Doug Evans, moved to the Mojave Desert, he quickly realized that not only was he in a desert, but he was in a food desert. Being a mostly raw vegan, this was a predicament. As a solution, he started sprouting a significant portion of his food- giving him virtually unlimited access to fresh, organic vegetables. Unsure if it was healthy to eat so many sprouts, he reached out to his network of doctors to get their opinions (they emphatically said it was perfectly safe). Doug used those conversations and other research as the basis for his first book, The Sprout Book- now a bestseller on Amazon. Doug is on a mission to bring sprouts to the rest of us. The Sprouting Company is his vehicle for this mission.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, big thanks to longevity shopping.com for sponsoring this interview series. We’re at the Newport Beach Investor Conference we couldn’t do without longevity shopping.com. If you have not, check out the website. Definitely do that. I’m here with the founder right now, Brad Turner. Hey, Brad. Big thanks for sponsoring us and bringing us out here today.
Oh, we’re so excited, Adam, and I’m so glad you’re here. Doing a great job. As usual, man, we have a. Great lineup of people that you’re interviewing, and it’s just a really great event. As always. Longevity shopping.com. Check it out. Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply.
All right, so today I’m at the Newport Beach Investor Conference, and let me tell you, I come to this conference every single year. It’s been a blast This year. There’s. I’m listening to pitches, meeting with investors. Really just having a lot of fun in Newport Beach. It’s a great excuse to come out. And my next guess is Doug.
Doug, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Alright, Doug. So have you been to one of these Newport Beach investor conferences? I have not. This is my first one. Tell, tell us how, how are you feeling? I feel the best ever. What a great audience. Great vendors. Great investors. Yeah. Well, so far what’s been one of the, the best parts of it?
Have you been listening to any pitches? Have you seen presentations? The booths? Like, I, I really like the networking. Mm. Like every person I bump into is pretty interesting. Mm. And I understand you have a business yourself. Maybe talk a little bit about that. So I am the founder and CEO of the sprouting company.
Mm-hmm. And what if I told you that you could grow the most nutrient-dense food on the planet on your countertop? What, in five days without soil, sunshine, or fertilizer? Come on. I would say. Say, I always say, what’s the catch? Oh, it’s not, it’s not a catch. It is the miracle of sprouting. So here we are, an investor conference.
Mm-hmm. And sprouting has never become mainstream because there was never any money behind sprouting. Mm-hmm. What is sprouting? Let’s, let’s go step back, basically. All seeds germinate and turn into sprouts. So most people think of alfalfa sprouts and ung bean sprouts as a gar. That’s I was talking about.
Yes. Yeah. Garnish or a suggish. Well, I lived exclusively on sprouts, but for 30 days, all of my calories, all of my nutrition was coming from Sprouts. I realized, wow, sprouts are up to a hundred times more nutrient dense than the average vegetable, and that they were the original super food. So I wrote the Sprout book to share that information with the world.
I. It became the number one bestselling plant-based book on Amazon. Wow. And thinking about, I I, I make a lot of smoothies. So is this like, how, how do we use sprouts? Like is it in cooking, is it in smoothies? Is it, ’cause I, I’ll be upfront. I’ve never, other than what you said as a garnish, I’ve never cooked or used sprouts in my day-to-day life.
Yeah. The most obvious way is to use it. As a replacement for salad. Oh, okay. Right. The average salad is traveling across the United States for 2000 miles, over a 10 day period. Wow. And if you can grow your own sprouts, they’re fresher and fresher is better. And so they’re fresher and more nutritious. So the first thing is using them as a salad replacement.
Mm-hmm. But then you can throw them into your smoothies. Yeah. So one handful of say broccoli sprouts and Yeah. Sprouted garbanzo beans is 20 grams of protein. What? So you can, why does nobody talk about this? There’s no money behind it. There’s never been an ad on television for Sprouts. Yeah. So what I realized is there were no national or international sprouting companies because there was no money behind it.
So I shifted the model upside down. I said, I’m not gonna sell sprouts. I’m gonna sell sprouting potential. So I designed a larger. Jar, better air flow, better drainage, and then we sell guaranteed to sprout seeds delivered all via e-commerce. Whoa. And so does, is this unlike an automated model like monthly where there a certain amount sent or like how does that work?
So. We wanna be very open. Mm-hmm. So we sell the sprout, we sell the seeds. You can sign up for subscription or you could keep coming back every month. And we now have tens of thousands of people Wow. That are just going like sprouting every day. Our average customer has. Two Sprouters. How big is a souter?
I don’t even know what a sprout looks. A sprout is basically, you know, people start off using a mason jar. Okay. We designed a double sided jar. So it’s basically, you know, like this big, okay. And it fits on the counter stuff. So a foot by, I would say six and a half for the people that are at home now watching the video, that are listening audio for those.
So. So they could go to the sprouting company.com and see it. Yeah. But it’s about five inches wide. Okay. And maybe 10 inches deep. Okay. And how much like gimme the, like the cycle here. I’m gonna go, I wanna go, I’m going. I’m buying some. How long did the Sprouts take? How long do they last? These are stuff, these are great questions.
You’re, you’re a great interviewer. So a quarter cup of seeds turns into. Five cups of sprouts in five days. Whoa. So you’re getting like 20 times the volume Yeah. Is increasing. Yeah. And the sprouts are edible after two or three days and you can grow them up to seven days. Mm. And that’s why people have multiple sprouters.
Yeah. So they start a crop on Monday and they start another crop on Wednesdays. Oh, it’s cool. So they always have fresh sprouts. They’re constantly, and it’s kind of fun to always be harvesting, I feel like. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that’s kind of cool. Yeah. Always be growing. Always be harvesting. Oh my friends, I love it.
How about the so I’m gonna try to incorporate this in my smoothie. So this is a specific one for me. Yes. So you mentioned it’s a salad, re, re replacement. So I’m good for at least one to two smoothies a day. I eat spinach by the ton. Yeah. So I normally am putting maybe a cup of spinach into a smoothie.
So if I was to wanna replace some of that spinach or all of it, I don’t know. Oh, I would, all of it. It. So what, what would that look like for me? Like, just throw that out there, like, help me with the recipe. So basically, what else do you put in a smoothie? I normally do, I normally have one cup of spinach.
I’ll just give you one of my simple smoothies. One cup of spinach. I might have a half a lemon or a quarter lemon depending on what I’m feeling. Like. I’ll have a cucumber, have a whole cucumber in there, a whole Persian cucumber. And that’s. The basic, maybe throwing a little ginger possibly, but that’s, that’s kind of like my core.
Yeah. For like a slimming smoothie. So you can leave, you can leave the cucumber in there. Okay. You can leave the lemon. Yeah. And you can add some broccoli sprouts, some alfalfa sprouts. Some lentil sprouts. Yeah. And, and what I like is the variety there. ’cause I’m just always doing spinach. So if I’m have.
Broccoli, lentil, all these, it’s variety too. Oh, we even, we even make a salad mix and a protein mix. Mm. So you’re also getting the microbiome diversity. Wow. And the color of every sprout represents different antioxidants. Yeah. So if you take like a lentil, for example. Yeah. And you sprout it. Mm-hmm. On day three.
You’ve increased the vitamin C by 300%. Whoa. And looking at the, and there’s a, isn’t there a benefit as well that it’s live? Like it’s live in the case of, well, it’s one of the true living foods. Yeah. ’cause you’re eating the root, the chute, the endosperm, the embryo. So it’s enzymatically, active electrically charged.
So you’re eating something that is very, very bioavailable. Mm. And when you soak a sprout, you reduce the lectins, the phytic acid, the enzyme inhibitors. And you’re making something that’s very bio available. Mm-hmm. Digestible. And it’s delicious. Yeah. We’re, we’re tuned in to fresh consciousness.
Interesting. So that, that, for the variety side of it sounds amazing. And so I wanna juxtapose, you mentioned a protein version or protein mix. You Correct. Use that word. So normally I’m throwing in maybe a, a scoop of some collagen powder unflavored or something like that. That’s a normal, yeah. That’s gross.
That’s gross. I know it’s gross. Thank you. But I’m like, it’s quick, it’s easy, but I don’t have a whole. Farm of Sprouts yet, right. So, so I would have one. So what’s the protein part of it? Talk to me about that. The protein part is basically the, the legumes. Mm. So you could have mung beans, you could have green peas.
Wow. You could have garbanzo beans. Yeah. You could have lentils. So now I have a natural, real like source of protein versus what, whoever knows how that powder’s make. Correct. Correct. And you’re also getting along with the protein. You’re getting vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C. See, oh man. And all the antioxidants, man, I’m feeling like there’s a, a sprouting experiment about to happen on YouTube.
I don’t know. I feel like that’s happening. I mean, it’s already happening. I mean, on my Instagram, no, I mean for me. For you, yeah. I think, you know, put it out there. You know, I’ve a couple hundred thousand followers on Instagram. Quarter million on TikTok. That’s awesome. And people are fascinated. It is fascinating.
And what happened is now that we are unleashing this message out there. Mm-hmm. Everyone wants to be healthier. Of course. Everyone wants longevity. Yes. Everyone wants to feel good and nothing is better than feeling good. Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting, we’re at a finance show. Mm-hmm. What I could tell you.
It is harder to have a six pack than this. To become a billionaire. Yeah, a millionaire in the us. Yeah. There are more millionaires than there are men over 40 with six packs. Facts. Facts. Facts. Processed foods, like all the things we’re putting in there. Yeah. The process is highly addictive and this is natural.
This is the ultimate food. And you know, the fact that you can buy a sprouting kit for under a hundred dollars and then add seeds, it pays for itself. You know, within weeks and you’re getting the nutrients and you feel good. Yeah. You know. I’m curious on, on this piece of it. ’cause you mentioned dense, you said it’s more dense most of the time, ly nutritionally dense.
So specifically when I hear that, and I’m hoping that the answer to this next question is yes, but if it’s not gimme, gimme the real. Is it filling? It’s very filling. I thought so. It’s dense, it’s very filling. It feels like it would be, it’s Well, what happens is. You know, like a lot of people are having challenges with their weight.
Weight management is an issue. Yeah. So what happens is, as opposed to shifting their diet and eating more fiber, they’re taking, you know, a GLP agonist. Ozempic or wegovy. Yeah. And if they were eating sprouts, sprouts are the number one weight loss food. ’cause they’re high fiber, low fat, low calorie. And that fiber will fill you up now psychologically.
People are addicted to fat, sugar, and salt. Mm-hmm. Right. So that’s where people are adding olive oil. They’re adding salt, they’re adding sweeteners. If you are eating sprouts, you will never overeat raw sprouts. Mm-hmm. Like you’ll tune in. Like an animal in nature and eat, you’ll be done. You’ll just eat until you are nutritionally stable.
Man, it’s great. I love this story. Last thing, I want you first of off, it’s been great having you on the show. Last thing I want you to do, look into the camera, tell everybody how they can follow up, how they can learn more, how they can order their sprouting machine and how they can grab some seeds.
Yeah. Yeah, so you can find me at Doug Evans on all social platforms. The company is the Sprouting Company, and go into your own AI or your search and look for the nutritional benefits of Sprouts and you’ll be sold in a minute. I’ve been, you know, on about 50 different podcasts. There was a great episode I did on the Rich Roll Podcast about sprouting or genius life, and people are very inspired about sprouting and this is a revolution.
So I’m inviting people to take control, take sovereignty. If you think about during World War ii, 40% of Americans were growing their own food. Wow. Today it’s 1%. Wow. So my mission is not to get back to 40%. I wanna get to a hundred percent families. Oh my God. Come on that I a hundred percent. And if you think about it, the, we we’re all entitled in this abundant universe.
For food. So somehow there’s enough nutrition to feed 50 billion farm animals. Yeah. But not enough nutrition to feed 8 billion humans. Yeah. Right. And sprouts are the way. Yeah. And it’s very rare. And you know, being in a finance conference that you can appreciate this, it’s very rare that something that’s so inexpensive, so accessible is also so great.
Yeah. It’s great. Everybody listening at home, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over and and grab some sprouts. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Doug, thanks again man. Appreciate you coming on. Hey, my pleasure. Thank you.
