Modern diets often deliver plenty of energy—fats, sugars, and refined carbohydrates—yet fall short on minerals, trace elements, vitamins, omega-3, and plant-based phytochemicals. When these deficits build up, the body can drive cravings for more food, even if that food is still nutrient-poor. The answer is not “a few pills”, but fresh plants grown in mineral-rich soils with active soil biology. The Ying Yang Food system was designed to make that kind of food practical and widely available.
Introduction
Our food system has become extremely good at producing calories. Advances in agriculture, the green revolution, and market forces can create a surplus of energy-rich food that looks abundant and affordable. The problem is that this same system often produces food that is short of critical nutrients—minerals, trace elements, vitamins, and the phytochemicals that plants naturally contain.
When we eat a diet that is high in energy but low in nutrients, we can end up eating more and more, yet still not feel properly satisfied. The result is not just weight gain, but the slow build-up of chronic disease: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and strokes. This article explains the “Ying Yang food” idea and the Ying Yang Food system—why it exists, how it works, and how it connects growing methods with ethical distribution.
The Modern Diet Problem: High Energy, Low Nutrition
The core issue is simple: the modern diet can contain an excess of energy (fats, sugars, carbohydrates) while being short of the nutrients that keep the body functioning well. Many people are not getting enough key minerals and vitamins, including calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, copper, iodine, selenium, omega-3, and vitamins such as B6, B12, D, E, and F.
These deficiencies are not a small detail. They are the foundations of health. Minerals are required for the chemistry of life. Trace elements are often needed in tiny amounts, but they are still essential. Vitamins act like switches and catalysts across thousands of metabolic processes. If the diet consistently falls short, the body reacts.
The “Hungry Beast”: Why Deficiencies Can Drive Cravings
Research suggests the body has a highly developed signalling system of neurochemicals—chemical messages that sense deficiencies. When the body detects missing nutrients, it can create a kind of internal “hungry beast”. The person feels hungry and craves more food.
The trap is that people often respond by eating more of the same energy-rich food that caused the problem. So the body gets more calories, but still not enough of the missing minerals and vitamins. Over time, this mismatch can contribute to obesity and disease. It is a feedback loop: deficient food drives appetite, appetite drives overeating, and overeating often still fails to correct the deficiency.
Why “Just Take a Pill” Is the Wrong Model
A common response is: “No worries—just pop a few pills.” The logic seems practical. If the diet is short on nutrients, supplement them. But this approach can repeat the same mistake that created the problem in the first place: simplifying something that is deeply complex.
Our bodies are not simple machines. They are living systems shaped by evolution, and they respond best to food as a complex package of chemistry, structure, and biology. Trying to prop up dietary deficiencies with a few isolated chemicals can miss the wider synergy that real food provides. The aim is not to replace food with pills, but to fix the quality of the food itself.
Co-Evolution: Why Plants “Want” to Be Good Food
Animals and plants have been co-evolving over millions of years. In that time they developed sophisticated relationships based on complex chemistry. In early stages, plants formed synergistic relationships with soil biology, exchanging energy from photosynthesis for nutrients released by microbes and fungi.
Plants also had to defend themselves. They could not run away, so they became masters of chemistry. They developed toxic chemicals to protect themselves from predators, especially insects. Later, plants developed relationships with grazing animals. In these relationships, plants exchanged energy and in return benefited from nutrients and soil disturbance that helped seed propagation.
Later still, specialist plants—what we now call fruits and vegetables—developed relationships with smaller animals and early humans. It might not be obvious why a plant would evolve to be eaten, but in many cases both sides win.
Why Vegetables Help: Fibre, Waste Removal, and Seed Spreading
Plants evolved to supply a wide range of beneficial foods. These foods evolved to taste good so we would eat them. In return, humans and animals spread seeds and often provided nutrients.
Vegetables in particular act as natural laxatives. They contain a large bulk of fibrous material. This fibre can absorb toxic wastes from our bodies and help carry them out. Those wastes are then excreted near plants—returning nutrients to the system—and may even contain seeds that can pass through unharmed. Over long timeframes, this kind of loop supports both plant survival and human health.
It is no accident that people who eat a lot of vegetables are often thinner, fitter, and tend to live longer. The body has evolved around the chemistry and structure of plants.
Phytochemicals: The Chemistry We Cannot Replicate
Our bodies have evolved to eat plants that provide a wide range of complex chemicals—phytochemicals (beneficial chemicals produced by plants)—as well as fibre. These phytochemicals play crucial roles in human health.
Their complexity matters. Over a thousand different chemicals have been identified in a single tomato. Every type of vegetable provides a different mix of beneficial phytochemicals, far beyond the capacity of man-made chemistry to reproduce reliably.
This is why the goal is not merely “more food” or even “more supplements”, but better food: fresh plants grown in mineral-rich soils with active soil biology to release minerals and support plant chemistry.
The Ying Yang Food System: The Technology
The Ying Yang Food system was developed to make fresh, nutrient-rich food—with the needed phytochemicals—available to anyone concerned about their health.
The Ying Yang team continuously looks for plant varieties that can provide critical phytochemicals. These plants are grown in soil enriched with the needed minerals in a wicking bed. In this system, the wicking bed is essentially a closed container that maintains a steady moisture level, allowing soil biology to thrive. The search for improved plant varieties, mineral sources, and soil biology is ongoing so plants can optimise their output of these critical phytochemicals.
Minerals, Soil Biology, and Recycling Food Waste
Minerals are brought in from outside, but many mineral sources are insoluble rocks. They are not directly available to plants in that form. The conversion happens through biology: fungi, bacteria, and worms can convert mineral sources into soluble chemicals that plants can take up.
But soil biology needs to be fed. One practical way to do that is recycling food waste. When food waste is returned to the growing system, it feeds microbes and soil organisms, helping build nutrient-rich soil. In that soil, selected edible plants can be grown and, when eaten fresh, provide the minerals and nutrients we need.
More Than Growing: An Ethical Food Distribution System
The Ying Yang Food system is not only a growing method. It is also designed as an ethical way of distributing healthy food.
To see why, consider the conventional food distribution chain. A farmer grows crops. Those crops may be bought by a supermarket chain or a commodity trader. They may then be sold to a food processor, then to a retail outlet, and finally to the customer.
In this conventional chain, the farmer has little financial incentive to add the required minerals to the soil. At the other end, the customer has no real assurance that the food contains the minerals, vitamins, and phytochemicals needed for health. The system rewards volume and shelf life, not nutrient density and verified quality.
How the Ying Yang System Solves the Incentive Problem
The Ying Yang system addresses these intrinsic weaknesses by bringing grower and customer together through a simple structure: an association of people who believe in the importance of healthy food.
People in this system naturally expect to be paid for their services, but there is no large intermediate company focused mainly on extracting profits. Instead, the system relies on trained and skilled people who can help both growers and customers. These people are called coaches.
Coaches are central because they hold the knowledge of which plants provide which health benefits, and they help ensure growing standards are met so the customer can trust what they are receiving.
The Coach Model: How It Works in Practice
A customer contacts a coach. The coach has a list of plant types and their health benefits. If the customer wishes, she (or he) may visit growers, see farms, and discuss which plants might best suit her needs. The customer chooses plants and places an order (typically through the coach) and makes a first payment.
Once the order is placed, the grower is under contract to grow the plants using the methods agreed with the coach and the customer. The coach has responsibility to ensure the grower follows those agreed methods.
The coach also arranges for the soil to be tested at an independent laboratory. Based on the results, the coach supplies the grower with required minerals and nutrients. The customer receives an independent certificate confirming soil nutrient levels, giving real assurance of quality rather than vague claims.
Living Food: Removable Baskets and “Chop and Chew”
One beauty of the Ying Yang Food system is how plants are delivered. Plants are grown in removable baskets that sit in the soil, not directly in the soil. This means the customer receives living, growing plants in the basket.
This is not like a supermarket where the plant has already been harvested. With living plants, fruit or leaves can be harvested and eaten totally fresh. The recommended approach is the “chop and chew” method: take some leaves from the living plant and consume them. The plant regrows new leaves, giving a continuous supply of fresh food.
Flexible Delivery: Soil and Seeds to Fully Grown Plants
The basket system offers another practical advantage: the customer can take delivery at any time during the growing process.
Delivery might be at the end of the growing cycle when plants are ready for eating—virtually no work required. Or delivery could be when plants are seedlings, so the customer grows the plants herself. Or the customer can receive soil and seeds and look after the entire growing process.
This flexibility depends on the customer’s available space, time, and skills, often with advice from the coach. Naturally, the level of service is reflected in the price.
Some customers may find they can get higher quality food at lower cost than supermarket food if they do more of the growing themselves (and it is fun anyway). Others may prefer to leave the growing to professionals and pay a little more. The system is designed to support both approaches.
Widely Reported Deficits in a Modern Diet
The table below summarises two linked realities: (1) the elements plants need to grow well, and (2) the minerals, trace elements, and vitamins humans are commonly short of. Some minerals (like iron and zinc) are needed by plants in small quantities, but humans may need higher doses. Others (like selenium and iodine) are not needed by plants but are essential for human health.
Selenium is needed for DNA to reproduce accurately, while iodine is essential for brain function. Over years of continuous farming, these trace elements can become denuded from soils.
Bio-essential trace elements are critical to life. These include iron, cobalt, selenium, copper, zinc, molybdenum, vanadium, and cadmium. These elements are linked into the chemical structure of cells and become natural nutrients for survival. Cobalt is a central atom in the structure of vitamin B12. Zinc is essential for growth. Magnesium guards against heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and prostate cancer.
Summary Table: Plant Needs and Human Deficits
| Elements needed by plants | Widely reported dietary deficits |
|---|---|
| Elements available from the air or water: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen |
Elements needed by plants but we may need higher doses: Ca, Mg, Zn, Fe, Cu |
| Primary elements from the soil: N, P, K |
Essential extra elements needed for health: Selenium, Iodine, Vanadium, Chromium |
| Secondary elements: Ca, Mg, S |
Vitamins humans are generally short of: Omega 3, B12, B6, E, K |
| Trace elements: Mn, Fe, B, Zn, Cu, Mo, Cl, Co |
Why this matters: Long-term farming can strip trace elements from soils, reducing nutrient density in food. |
Conclusion
The Ying Yang Food idea is built on a practical observation: you can eat plenty of calories and still be nutritionally short-changed. When diets are low in minerals, trace elements, vitamins, omega-3, and phytochemicals, the body can drive cravings that lead to more overeating without real nourishment.
The solution is not to reduce food to a handful of pills, but to restore food to what it evolved to be: fresh plants grown in mineral-rich soils with active soil biology. The Ying Yang Food system combines the growing method (mineral-enriched soil, wicking bed moisture stability, biological conversion of minerals, recycling food waste) with an ethical distribution method that links grower and customer, uses coaches, and provides independent soil testing and certification.
In short: this is a system designed to grow and deliver living food—fresh, verified, and biologically complete—so people can eat in a way that supports long-term health.
Colin Austin — © Creative Commons. Reproduction allowed with source acknowledgment; commercial use requires a license.
