“Diabesity” is Colin’s word for the modern epidemic of diet-related disease – diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, leaky gut and more – driven by the way we grow and process food, and how that food changes our gut biology.
What Is Diabesity – And Why Is It Exploding?
In just a few decades, “diabesity” has gone from rare to normal. Around one in three people in many countries now live with diabetes, obesity or other chronic, diet-linked diseases – and the trend is still rising.
Colin uses “diabesity” as an umbrella term for all those conditions connected with modern diets: type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, irritable and leaky gut, Crohn’s, lupus, coeliac disease and more. It’s a miserable cluster of problems that causes huge suffering and costs health systems trillions of dollars.
What makes this so disturbing is not only the scale, but the timing. Fifty years ago, these diseases were rare. People worried about infectious diseases; very few had even heard of type 2 diabetes. Today, infectious diseases are under control for most of us – and chronic diseases have stepped in to take their place.
Why the Old Story About Calories Doesn’t Stack Up
For decades, the standard message has been simple: you are overweight because you eat more calories than you burn. According to this story, all calories are equal, and if you just eat less and move more, the problem will go away.
Colin argues this is pseudo-science. We don’t eat “calories”; we eat food, and our bodies handle different foods in different ways. A hundred calories of cabbage and a hundred calories of cheesecake do very different things in the body.
Calories measure how much energy is in food – not how your body chooses to burn it, store it as fat, or simply send it down the toilet.
Our bodies don’t just store all “extra calories” as fat. They decide what to do with each mouthful. Some energy is used immediately, some is stored as fat, and some is simply excreted. That decision is not made by a simple fuel gauge – it is made by a complex biological control system.
The Diet Wars: Fat vs Carbs vs Plants
Colin reviews the three big “diet tribes”:
- “Fat is bad” – the classic low-fat, high-carb model, where fat is blamed for insulin resistance and blocked blood vessels.
- “Carbs are bad” – the low-carb or keto approach, where carbs and sugar are seen as the main driver of high insulin, fat storage and weight gain.
- Vegetarian / plant-based – focusing on fibre, phytonutrients and slow-release carbs to blunt sugar spikes and lower insulin levels.
Each group can point to studies, clinics and success stories. And that is part of the problem: all three can help some people, some of the time. There is no single diet that works for everyone, all the time.
Colin’s conclusion is that we are missing the bigger picture. Focusing on macronutrients – fat vs carbs vs protein – ignores the central actor that sits between food and health: our gut biology.
What Really Changed? Not Just How Much We Eat
Looking back, humans have feasted for centuries. Traditional cultures in China, the South Pacific and Europe all enjoyed big celebratory meals without triggering a diabesity epidemic. The shift is not simply that we eat more food.
The real revolution has been in how food is grown and processed:
- Heavy use of herbicides and pesticides.
- Routine use of antibiotics in farm animals.
- Industrial processing that strips out fibre, phytonutrients and biological life.
- Cheap, highly refined carbohydrates and sugars everywhere, all the time.
Modern food is now high in fast-release energy and low in minerals, phytonutrients, fibre and microbes – exactly the opposite of the wild and traditional foods our bodies evolved to handle.
Why Two-Thirds of People Are Still OK
Here is the surprising part: even in the middle of this food environment, two-thirds of people are still not officially diabetic or obese. That raises a powerful question: what are their bodies doing differently?
Genetics play some role, but they cannot explain such a rapid shift. Colin believes the most likely explanation is that the difference lies in our gut biology – the community of microbes that live in our intestines and help decide what happens to our food.
We already know that faecal transplants can dramatically change weight and metabolic health by changing gut bacteria. You can take a fat mouse, give it the gut microbes of a lean mouse, and it becomes lean. The same principle has been observed in humans.
Change your gut biology and you change how your body decides what to burn, what to store as fat, and what to throw away.
Transplants are not a practical solution for billions of people – but they prove a crucial point: gut biology is not a side issue; it is central to diabesity.
Pharma, Diets, or Gut Biology? The Three Options
Colin frames our choices like this:
Option 1 – Rely on Pharmaceuticals
Current diabetes drugs and insulin manage blood sugar; they do not reverse the disease. For some people this is enough to avoid immediate crisis, but many still end up facing blindness, amputations and early death. It is a costly, lifelong management strategy, not a cure.
Option 2 – Change Diet Alone
Low-fat, low-carb and vegetarian diets all have evidence behind them. Many honest doctors have reversed diabetes in their clinics using one of these approaches. But:
- The “right” diet seems to vary from person to person.
- Most versions are restrictive and hard to sustain in normal social life.
- The success rates in studies are often modest – 10–20% improvements, not 99%.
That suggests we are missing a major piece of the puzzle.
Option 3 – Change Gut Bacteria
This is where Colin believes the real leverage lies. Our gut microbes act as an intelligent system that helps decide:
- Whether food is burned as energy, stored as fat, or excreted.
- How hungry we feel and what we crave.
- How sensitive or resistant we are to insulin.
We may not fully understand the “software” in this gut computer yet – but we know one powerful way to reprogram it: through the food we grow and eat.
The Role of the Gbiota Project
The Gbiota project is not just about clever garden beds. It is about using biologically active soil and mineral-rich plants to support a healthier gut biome and, through that, to help people dodge diabesity.
The aim is to:
- Grow food in living, microbe-rich soil, rather than in dead or chemically dominated soil.
- Increase the “refurbishing” side of food – minerals, phytonutrients, fibres and beneficial microbes – not just the fuel side.
- Make this practical for both home gardeners and commercial growers, so it can reach large numbers of people.
Colin’s view is that we cannot afford to wait for perfect science before we act. In real innovation, practice and research move together. Engineers try something that looks promising; if it works in the real world, scientists come later to explain and refine it.
The Gbiota beds are that practical starting point – a way for ordinary people to grow food that supports gut biology and then see, in their own bodies, what changes.
Decision Time
Dodging diabesity is not about finding the one magic diet, or the one perfect pill. It is about changing the way we grow and eat food so that:
- Our gut biology works with us, not against us.
- Our hormones steer us away from junk and overeating, instead of towards it.
- We can enjoy food and social life without accepting a future of pills, amputations and early decline.
The Gbiota project is Colin’s proposal for how we begin that shift – from the soil, to the plant, to the gut, to the brain.
