Feed our brains, our head brain and our gut brain and they will look after us.
“Health starts in the soil—and in the gut.”
We share an intelligent control system that manages how much and what sort of food we want to eat, and how much and where we store fat.
It has three main components: our DNA (which changes throughout life), our subconscious head brain, and our gut biology which acts as a second brain.
DNA
Babies are generally born chubby so they have a reserve of fat. As kids they become skinny as food goes into growth and energy for new muscles.
As young adults, males develop muscle and store fat around their bums so they can go out hunting, while women put on fat here, there and everywhere to feed babies.
As we get older we tend to put on more fat as it becomes harder to catch our own food. That’s how we evolved—there is not much we can do about that part.
Our head brain
Our head brain, unconsciously, stores information about the food we eat and how our bodies react to it. We may not remember it, but it sits firmly in the subconscious.
If we ate an overripe tomato as a kid that tasted horrible, that memory is stored and we “just know” we don’t like tomatoes. We can overwrite these memories by choosing fresh, tasty tomatoes and retraining our head brain.
Our gut brain
Our gut brain (gut biota, or Gbiota) is made up of trillions of microbes that communicate to form effective intelligence.
There are good bugs and bad bugs. The good bugs digest food, ward off pathogens, help decide whether we are hungry, and influence how much and where we store fat. We couldn’t live without them.
Bad bugs make us sick and can slowly kill us—just to have time to breed. Humans have been effective at killing bad bugs, but we’ve also neglected our friends, the good bugs.
That neglect has helped drive an epidemic of “fat in the wrong places”—diabetes, dementia and obesity. We need to look after our mates by feeding them food they like and by avoiding toxic chemicals.
Our gut biota consists of trillions of cells communicating as an intelligent system—our gut brain. We must eat to feed our own bodies and also to feed those microbes.
Modern food has excess energy (fats, sugars, carbohydrates) and is becoming deficient in key minerals and vitamins. It is chronically short of food for our gut brain.
Growing gut food
The focus of this site is how to grow food that feeds the gut brain. Gbiota™ beds were developed specifically to grow gut food. They are simple for home gardeners, and this site explains how to set them up.
Many people don’t have land, time or skills for home gardening. For them, we show how to incorporate gut foods by buying directly from specialist “gut food” growers.
Why this matters
I’m promoting the proposition that humans have an intelligent control system that regulates appetite and fat storage, and that our gut biota forms a critical part of it. The modern food system fails to feed our gut biota, leading to cravings and “fat in the wrong places” diseases—diabetes, obesity and dementia.
My aim has been to develop a system for growing food that feeds our gut biota—hence Gbiota beds.
