Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart attacks are rising fast, and medical treatment alone cannot stop the epidemic. This article explains a practical prevention approach: improve “refurbishing food” (minerals, phytonutrients, and living biology) so the gut can recover, then train our habits so we naturally eat the right amount of fuel food. Gbiota beds are an evolution of wicking beds designed to grow biologically active, nutrient-rich plants at home and at larger scale.
Colin Austin — 20 January 2018 — © Creative Commons. This document may be reproduced with source acknowledgment; commercial use requires a license.
Preface: Why Gbiota Is More Than a Garden Bed
At first glance, Gbiota beds can look like something only keen home gardeners would care about. They are an extension of wicking beds, but with a stronger focus on gut biology, minerals, phytonutrients, and a pathway to larger-scale production. That is true, but it is only a fraction of the vision.
Over millions of years humans and pre-humans lived as hunter gatherers. Food came from wild plants and animals, grown in living soils. There was a natural balance between food that fuels the body and food that helps rebuild it. Life could be violent and short, but the food system itself supported strong biology.
Agriculture was a major innovation. It stabilised food supply, populations grew, and people clustered in villages and cities. Later, antibiotics, sewage systems, and clean water helped people live longer. Then came another revolution: industrial agriculture and modern food processing. We produced enough energy food for a much larger population, but the quality of that food changed.
Modern food can be high in energy, yet low in the essentials that rebuild the body: minerals, phytonutrients, and the living biology that supports a healthy gut. Most importantly, it fails to refurbish gut biology, which works with the head brain as an intelligent control system. There is also a hard truth: there is a difference between what we should eat and what our bodies want to eat, and what the body wants usually wins.
1 — Preventing Chronic Disease by Changing Food
The aim of the Gbiota project is prevention. Chronic, non-infectious diseases such as diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and dementia now dominate health systems and quality of life. Heart attacks can kill quickly. Diabetes can bring long, expensive decline with severe complications. The message is blunt: we must do more than search for cures. We need to stop these diseases happening in the first place.
Epidemics teach a useful lesson. Medical action alone cannot stop them once they are widespread. Cholera in London in 1849 was not solved by treating each sick person; it was solved by finding and eliminating the root cause. Dr John Snow identified contaminated water, shut down the pump, and the epidemic slowed. The parallel is clear: we can and must help people who already have diabetes, but that will not stop the epidemic. We need to address root causes, and for diabetes the core driver is food.
2 — The Daunting Scale: Why Prevention Must Be Practical
Humanity struggles to grasp big numbers. There are hundreds of millions of diagnosed diabetics worldwide. Add undiagnosed diabetes, pre-diabetes, and the large group that is overweight and likely to progress, and the number of people at risk becomes enormous. Health systems cannot provide full, individualised care to everyone in that pipeline. That is why prevention must be something ordinary people can do for themselves, without needing a medical lab.
Over the last century we changed how we die. Infectious diseases, accidents, and violence were once the main causes. Hygiene, clean water, sewers, and medical science lifted life expectancy, but now chronic diseases are pulling average age at death down again. Some people live longer than ever, but more people are dying younger due to chronic illness.
In these articles, diabetes is used as a proxy for the broader chronic disease problem. It is measurable. Blood sugar, weight, and waist size give simple feedback. The working idea is that the rise in diabetes is strongly linked to changes in our food system, including depleted soils, reduced minerals, and reduced soil life that should support a healthy gut.
3 — Prevention vs Cure: A Food-System Problem
Research into cures matters, and new drugs may help. But prevention is still the better target. If food is a root cause, then preventing disease means changing food production and food quality, not only medical treatment. The challenge is that prevention is harder to “prove” in everyday life. If you fix a toothache, you feel cured immediately. With food, success is measured by what does not happen over years. That is one reason prevention is often neglected.
There is also a reality check about scale. If one wealthy family can buy pristine land, grow diverse produce organically, eat wild-caught fish, and stay active, they can create a modern version of a hunter-gatherer diet. But that solution does not scale. We now have billions of people, dense cities, and lifestyles shaped by modern infrastructure. We cannot solve chronic disease by telling everyone to own a rural estate.
Food quantity is not the main issue globally. In recent decades, food production has increased faster than population, and an extraordinary share is wasted. Many people still suffer hunger, but that is often politics and distribution rather than absolute shortage. The deeper issue here is food quality: many diets are deficient in essential minerals and, more importantly, fail to support healthy gut biology.
Even if we produced healthier food, one more hurdle remains: people must actually want to eat it. It is no good repeating “eat healthy” slogans if the body’s cravings and habits pull in the opposite direction. Prevention is not only about producing better food; it is about changing what the body wants.
4 — What Is a Healthy Diet, Really?
The obvious question is: what is a healthy diet? Here the article points out the confusion. Experts argue: fat is bad, carbs are bad, sugar is bad, eat more vegetables (which contain carbs), eat more fruit (which contains fructose). This conflict makes people tune out. Meanwhile large industries promote their interests, pushing their own story.
A different way of thinking is proposed. Instead of classifying food only by chemistry (carbs, fats, proteins), classify food by what it does for the body. One part of food is fuel. The other part provides the “materials” needed to refurbish the body: proteins, minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, and living biology. This is like a car needing petrol, but also needing oil, coolant, brake pads, and replacements as parts wear out. The body can turn many foods into fuel, and modern systems supply fuel in abundance. The weakness is in refurbishing inputs.
5 — The “Fuel Gauge” Problem: Why We Overeat
The body is intelligent. If something is missing, it sends hunger signals. But there is a design fault: the signals rarely tell us precisely what is missing. Instead of “you need selenium” or “you need salts,” the message is often just “eat.” In a modern diet that is already heavy in fuel foods, that signal leads to eating more fuel when what is needed is refurbishing food. Over time this pushes high insulin demand and contributes to insulin resistance and diabetes.
The article gives a simple example. On a hot day you might feel restless cravings, drink lots of water, and still feel unsatisfied. The real need could be salts. Once salts are supplied, the craving disappears. The issue is not that the body is “weak.” The issue is that the signalling system is crude: it flags a deficit, not the exact solution. In the past, traditional diets were lower in fast fuel and higher in refurbishing foods, so this design flaw mattered less. Modern food flips that balance, so the flaw becomes dangerous.
This is where Gbiota beds fit. They are designed to increase the supply of refurbishing food: mineral-rich, phytonutrient-rich, biologically active plants that support a healthy gut. But the article stresses that growing better food is not enough on its own. We must also change why we eat what we eat.
6 — “Want” Beats “Should”: Why Willpower Messages Fail
Diet advice often assumes humans are simple machines: tell people what they should do, and they will do it. But experience shows that “eat less, move more” does not solve the problem at population scale. The focus needs to shift from what we should eat to how to make our bodies want to eat what keeps us healthy.
To explain this, the article draws an analogy to early computers and simple programming: “if this, then that.” Human behaviour includes conscious decisions (slow, effortful) and unconscious decisions (fast, automatic). Much of eating is driven by the fast system. People rarely decide consciously, “I will get diabetes.” The behaviour happens because habits and cues trigger automatic choices before conscious reasoning arrives. If we want prevention, we must train the subconscious, not just lecture the conscious mind.
The article uses the “yellow ute” story to show why the fast system exists. When danger appears, the body reacts in microseconds. Conscious logic is too slow. The brain uses shortcuts: stored patterns and pre-built responses. This protects us, but it also means food cues can trigger rapid eating before we “decide.” The prevention strategy is to build better stored patterns, so the automatic system makes better choices.
7 — Re-Programming Food Habits: A Practical Direction
The good news is that brains re-program themselves. Babies do it constantly, turning effortful actions into automatic skills. Adults still have plasticity, but changing habits can require clearing space: breaking some old programming to allow new patterns. This is not a mystical process. It is repetition, cues, and rewards, applied deliberately.
The author’s practical approach is simple: learn to distinguish hunger from cravings. Hunger is a general need for fuel. A craving can be a signal for something specific, or a learned habit triggered by context. If you can learn that difference, you can respond more accurately. When the body is given refurbishing food consistently, it is less likely to send confusing “eat more” signals.
8 — Intermittent Fasting, Listening to Signals, and Avoiding Panic Mode
The article describes experimentation with intermittent fasting. The key is not rigid schedules, but learning to use the body’s own “fuel gauge” more accurately. A strict timetable can be mechanistic and detached from real needs, similar to putting fuel in a car on fixed days regardless of the gauge. Instead, the idea is to eat when genuinely hungry, while ensuring that refurbishing needs are met so the gauge is not giving false readings.
The body tends to burn carbs first, then fat. The author wants a practical way to know when the switch happens, without lab equipment. He notes that hunger can come in waves: it rises, then passes. Over time, fasting becomes tolerable, and a person may feel more in control. The test is simple: does weight reduce and does the waist shrink? For him, the answer is yes. The point is not that everyone must do it, but that self-testing and feedback matter.
The “false gauge” issue remains important. If you are deficient in refurbishing food, you can feel hungry even when fuel is plentiful. If you are short of something specific (like salts), cravings may appear. The practical method is to supply the likely missing item and see if the craving disappears. This is presented as training sensitivity to signals, not as a perfect scientific method.
9 — A Simple Model: Treat Gut Biology Like a “Pet Doggy”
The article offers a memorable metaphor. Think of the biology in your tummy like a pet that needs training. Learn to read what it is telling you through hunger, fullness, and cravings, then train it with patterns that reduce overeating. The author uses examples that work for him: bitter fermented foods and high-cocoa dark chocolate can curb appetite and help stop “pigging out.” The claim is not that these specific foods are universal, but that people can experiment to find what calms appetite rather than inflaming it.
10 — Changing the Food System: Two Types of Agriculture
The larger goal is not only personal habits, but a broader food system change. Modern large-scale agriculture is effective at producing fuel food. We can grow enormous quantities of energy, and the limiting factors are often logistics and water efficiency rather than the sun’s energy. But we need a second type of agriculture, on smaller scale, focused on refurbishing foods: minerals, phytonutrients, and living biology.
Home gardeners already produce some of this, and many people buy organic produce, but the argument is that it is not enough to meet global needs. The Gbiota bed is proposed as a practical growing system that can scale up, producing biologically active, nutrient-rich plants at an economic price. That is a major change, and it will not happen through argument alone. It will happen when people try it, see results, and share the story.
11 — How Innovation Spreads: Proof Beats Persuasion
The article closes by reflecting on innovation. Two earlier examples are given: Moldflow simulation work that challenged conventional thinking, and wicking beds that were dismissed by experts but proven in practice. In both cases, acceptance did not come from clever persuasion. It came from other people trying the idea, seeing it work, and telling others. That is the viral pathway of real adoption.
Chronic disease is a global-scale crisis, and the author recognises the ambition is huge. But the strategy is similar: build a community of advocates who test, improve, and share. The Gbiota club is framed as the mechanism for this. It needs a range of skills, including gut microbiology expertise, and it needs people willing to try, measure, and report. Teamwork is the only way scale change happens.
Conclusion: Prevention Is Food Quality Plus Better Automatic Habits
The prevention approach described here is two-part. First, improve food quality by increasing refurbishing foods that restore gut biology and supply minerals and phytonutrients. Second, train the subconscious habits that drive eating, so “want” aligns more often with “should.” Modern food systems are excellent at producing fuel. The missing piece is widespread access to biologically active, nutrient-rich food and the practical skill of listening to signals without being trapped by cravings. Gbiota beds aim to help make that shift real, not theoretical.
To join the Gbiota club, email: colinaustin@bigpond.com
Colin Austin — © Creative Commons. Reproduction allowed with source acknowledgment; commercial use requires a license.
