Diabetes is driving a serious health crisis: unnecessary amputations, blindness, and early heart attacks. The scandal is not only medical—it is also about rights. People deserve honest information about food-based options and the freedom to choose how they are treated. Diabetes is largely driven by modern food that is high in sugar and fat but low in micronutrients and fibre, which fuels cravings and overeating. A practical solution is education through health professionals, group support, and direct access to nutrient-rich food from local growers.
The Essence
A major scandal exists in the health system when people are denied access to critical information and choice in how they are treated. The case of Garry Fettke—a surgeon trying to protect patients from unnecessary amputation—shows how badly things can go when professionals are restricted from discussing diet in a meaningful way. People are losing legs and going blind unnecessarily because they are not being told the facts about food and diabetes.
This is not just unfortunate. It is immoral. In a democratic society, people have the right to be told the truth about their health and the right to choose how they are treated. This article is an invitation to protect those rights and to make diabetes reform a serious public issue.
Diabetes is not strictly a medical problem. It is a societal problem driven by changed food. The solution is not technically difficult, and it could save thousands of people from amputations, blindness, and early death. It does, however, require confronting vested interests and challenging comfortable assumptions. The most practical pathway is to work through health professionals to educate patients about food-based strategies, form local self-support groups, and connect those groups with growers who can supply nutrient-rich, biologically active food.
From Infectious to Chronic Disease
Fifty years ago, many people died young from infectious disease. Medical progress has helped people live longer, but what matters is not only lifespan—it is healthspan: how well we live during those extra years. Chronic disease can make life miserable. In Australia, someone has a limb amputated because of diabetes roughly every twenty minutes of the working day. Diabetes is also a leading cause of blindness and contributes to early death from heart attacks.
Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases and one of the most damaging to quality of life. It is also measurable: blood sugar levels provide a clear way to test whether a treatment approach is working.
Many doctors state there is no cure for diabetes. In a narrow medical sense, that is often true—there is no single pill that “cures” it. But a cure can be societal: change the environment that causes the disease in the first place. A clear example is cholera.
The Cholera Lesson: A Societal Solution
Cholera in early London was not solved with a magic pill. It was solved by recognising it was a societal problem and fixing the cause: sewage contaminating drinking water. Doctors were overwhelmed and the strictly medical approach was failing. John Snow identified the source and society responded by building sewage systems and educating the public on hygiene.
That solution cost billions, but it happened because of public pressure. People demanded change: they did not want sewage in their drinking water. There was no radically new technology involved—sewers existed long before, including in Roman times. What changed was public insistence and government action.
The same principle applies to diabetes. Diabetes is a societal problem driven by modern food. Public pressure can force the system to change. The message is simple: a society should not accept a system where people become blind, crippled diabetics waiting to die from early heart attacks. Fix it.
What Causes the Diabetes Epidemic?
Sugar and fat are not intrinsically bad. They are primary energy sources. The real problem is that modern food is often energy-rich but micronutrient-poor. When food lacks essential trace minerals, phytonutrients, and fibre, the body experiences cravings. People overeat, not because they are weak, but because the body is searching for “something missing” and keeps sending hunger signals.
Overeating energy-dense food drives repeated high blood sugar. The body responds by releasing insulin, which pushes sugar out of the bloodstream and into storage. In the short term, this protects the body from high blood sugar. In the long term, constant high insulin drives fat storage and gradually loads fat into vital organs, especially the liver and pancreas.
When the pancreas becomes saturated with fat, insulin production and control breaks down. Blood sugar becomes unstable and diabetes becomes severe. At that point, the risks of amputation, blindness, kidney damage, infections, and heart attacks rise sharply.
Food-Based Reversal Is Real
No revolutionary new technology is required. Food is the core driver. Fifty years ago, there was no diabetes epidemic at today’s scale. Blue zone regions still exist where people live to extreme old age and remain active, working in fields into their eighties and nineties, with little or no diabetes. The common pattern is food grown in nutrient-rich, biologically active soils and eaten as part of a traditional lifestyle.
Diabetes can be reversed to a significant degree, even in long-term diabetics, and almost completely in many recently diagnosed cases, using diet-based approaches supported by careful medical supervision. This has been demonstrated through modern research methods, including imaging used to measure fat in the liver and pancreas, and through real-world clinical programs used at scale.
Reversal typically has two stages. Stage one is “rugged”: a restrictive diet that forces the body to burn excess fat, particularly in the pancreas. This stage requires support and careful monitoring, especially if medications are being reduced to prevent dangerous hypo- or hyperglycaemia. Stage two is maintenance: a long-term diet that prevents cravings by supplying the micronutrients and fibre that modern diets often lack. Without stage two, people slip back into the same craving cycle that created the disease.
Prevention is even better. The right approach can stop diabetes developing in the first place. That is cheaper, safer, and far less traumatic than treating advanced disease.
Sugar Blockers and Why Meals Matter
Modern foods can deliver sugar at densities the body is not well adapted to handle, creating rapid sugar spikes and insulin surges. This can lead to instability: blood sugar rises sharply, then falls too far, triggering more hunger and another search for quick energy. In control engineering terms, the system needs damping.
Food provides that damping. Fibre-rich greens act as “sugar blockers” by slowing digestion and spreading sugar absorption over time. What matters is not only the glycaemic index of a single food but the glycaemic load of the total meal. Adding greens to a meal can blunt the sugar spike and reduce the insulin surge.
A practical example is using fruit for taste and greens for balance. A banana alone can cause a strong sugar spike. Blended with greens, the drink can still taste good while the greens reduce the spike and provide fibre and micronutrients. This is a simple, low-cost strategy compared with long-term dependency on drugs that raise insulin.
Insulin: Friend in the Short Term, Foe in the Long Term
Insulin is essential. It keeps blood sugar under control by moving sugar into storage. Initially, that storage happens in organs and muscles that can hold more sugar than the blood. Over time, storage expands into fat cells, which can hold very large amounts of energy.
The problem arises when insulin is chronically high because the diet constantly triggers sugar spikes. Chronic insulin encourages ongoing fat storage, including in the liver and pancreas. As pancreatic fat rises, the pancreas loses capacity to regulate sugar properly. At that point, treating high blood sugar by pushing insulin even higher can reduce blood sugar today while worsening the underlying fat-storage problem tomorrow.
The Scandal: Information and Choice Are Being Blocked
If diet can reverse or significantly improve diabetes, why is this not happening widely? The simplest explanation is information. People are often not told what is possible, or they are told it is impossible. The case of Garry Fettke makes this brutally clear.
A surgeon saw too many diabetic amputations and advised patients to reduce sugar. Instead of being supported for trying to prevent harm, he was told he was not a dietitian and should not provide dietary advice. This is a demarcation dispute with real victims. It blocks common-sense prevention and condemns people to unnecessary amputations and blindness.
The absurdity becomes obvious: almost anyone else can tell someone “eat less sugar,” including a stranger at the pub, but a surgeon trying to prevent amputation can be punished for it. The system ends up policing wording instead of protecting lives. That is not acceptable.
Patient Education and Group Support
Patient education is essential. Health practitioners should have a basic working knowledge of how diet affects diabetes and should be able to run group education sessions. Group sessions scale better than one-on-one consultations, and they allow people to learn, share practical strategies, and support each other through difficult stages of dietary change.
Groups also create economic power. A group can negotiate with local market gardeners to grow food rich in micronutrients and fibre and bulk-buy at a reasonable price. This matters because healthy food is often blocked by distribution costs and supermarket systems, not by what is possible to grow.
There are not enough doctors to manage diabetes through individual appointments alone. Community education and group-based support reduce load on an overstretched system and improve outcomes.
The Silo Effect and System Failure
A Senate inquiry has recognised the “silo effect,” where departments operate in isolation without seeing the consequences in other areas. In engineering terms, it is “over the wall” thinking: one team throws a problem to the next team and walks away.
Health systems often do the same. Doctors may feel they lack authority, time, or training to address food properly, so the issue is handed to dietitians. Dietitians may have limited training in medical risks, and often little knowledge of how food is grown or processed. Food production becomes another silo. The result is fragmented responsibility and preventable harm.
The Gbiota Plan
A practical plan can be implemented through government and health systems:
- All health practitioners treating chronic disease, especially diabetes, should be familiar with modern diet-based treatment approaches, including evidence from clinical programs and lessons from societies without a diabetes epidemic. This includes a basic understanding of how food affects health from production to consumption.
- Patients should be educated on diet-based approaches, including benefits and negatives, so decisions are informed rather than default.
- Given proper information, diabetic patients should have the option to choose a diet-based approach (often challenging but potentially restorative) or a conventional drug-based approach (often symptom-focused and long-term). This must be a patient decision, not a unilateral decision imposed by the system.
- Community education should be expanded, including school curriculum content on food and health, so knowledge becomes normal and shared within families.
- Systems should be created to form local support groups that work with growers to supply appropriate food (rich in micronutrients and fibre) to help reverse diabetes and prevent new cases.
A Call to Action
Government is the only body with the power to drive these systemic changes. A functional democracy gives citizens a tool: public pressure. Make diabetes reform a serious issue. Demand an end to blocked information. Demand patient choice. Demand a health system that fixes causes, not only symptoms.
Contact election candidates. Ask them directly whether they will fix the silo effect that blocks information and leads to preventable amputations and blindness. Ask them whether they will support education, group-based programs, and direct access to healthy food through local growers. Then ask friends and social contacts to do the same. Public pressure changes policy when it becomes too loud to ignore.
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