Diabesity is an umbrella term for the chronic diseases linked to diet, including diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and a range of gut problems. This article explains why the epidemic keeps growing even with massive medical spending. It reviews the main diet “camps” (low fat, low carb, and vegetarian/slow carb), then looks for a more useful way to think about food and energy. It finishes with practical options and an action-focused conclusion: change outcomes, not arguments.
Part 1 — Diabesity: The Global Epidemic
“Diabesity” is a useful word because it bundles together the diseases that commonly travel as a pack. It includes diabetes and obesity, but also heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and a range of gut-related conditions such as irritable and leaky gut, Crohn’s, lupus, and coeliac disease. It is a miserable collection, and it has reached epidemic levels, causing personal suffering and costing trillions globally.
The scale is bad enough, but what is worse is the trend: despite huge research effort, the epidemic keeps expanding. A typical scenario is now routine. In Australia, every couple of minutes someone goes to the doctor for what they think is a normal check-up and is told they have Type 2 diabetes. They are warned about high blood sugar, complications like blindness and amputations, and an increased risk of early death. Then the patient is reassured: “Don’t worry, pills will control blood sugar.” And finally comes the familiar add-on: “Watch your diet and cut down on calories.”
The article challenges the idea that Type 2 diabetes must always be a one-way road. Many qualified doctors argue that diabetes can often be reversed. The practical problem is that most people are offered symptom control first, while the discussion about cause and reversal is either missing or too confusing to act on.
Part 2 — The Current Dietary Theories
Diet debates usually fall into three broad camps. The oldest and most widely accepted is “fat is bad.” The opposite camp argues “carbs are bad” and often leads to keto-style eating. Sitting in the middle are various versions of vegetarian or plant-heavy diets, sometimes framed as “slow carb” eating.
Fat Is Bad
The low-fat view argues that high blood sugar is a symptom. The deeper cause is insulin resistance: fat in muscles and organs blocks insulin so sugar cannot enter cells properly. This raises blood sugar and creates damage over time. It is widely accepted that excess insulin plays a major role in obesity. Some doctors (such as Jason Fung) argue that high insulin can drive increasing insulin resistance, becoming a compounding problem.
Carbs Are Bad
The low-carb camp argues the “fat is bad” story is built on weak science. They claim people do not get fat simply because they eat too much fat. Instead, something inside the body decides to store energy as fat. When that happens, food is stored rather than made available as energy, leaving people hungry, so they eat more. In this view, people do not get fat because they eat too much; they eat too much because they are getting fat. This logic has helped drive adoption of keto diets, which minimise sugars and most carbs. Both camps generally agree that carbs quickly become sugars in the body, and sugars can become fat.
The Low-Fatters Strike Back
Critics of strict low-carb diets often accept that keto can work in the short term: weight drops and blood sugars improve. Their warning is that a high-fat diet may increase fat in muscles and organs, increasing insulin resistance “under the surface.” While carbs stay very low, blood sugar looks better. But when people eventually return to eating carbs (as many do), the increased insulin resistance becomes obvious: weight and blood sugar rise again. In short, they argue the benefits can be temporary and hard to sustain.
The Vegetarians and “Sugar Blockers”
Plant-based advocates make two key points. First, fruit and vegetables contain minerals and phytonutrients essential for health. Many people accept this, but the article notes research suggesting modern produce can be less nutrient dense than it once was, and not enough people pay attention to how food is grown. Second, some in the plant-based camp argue the damaging factor is the blood sugar spike after meals. They suggest that certain plant components can block or slow sugar absorption. That can reduce the sugar spike and also reduce the insulin spike, which may matter even more. Fibres, both soluble and insoluble, are presented as key “sugar blockers.”
Life Should Be Fun
A common problem across all three diet philosophies is that they usually require giving up a major food group or living with strict rules. Even if a diet “works,” it can feel miserable. The author makes this personal: he is part of a Chinese family and community, visits China often, and describes Chinese food culture as superb. The question becomes real and practical: should he sit in the corner and watch others enjoy feasts, or join in? If people have been feasting for centuries without obvious harm, it may be more sensible to ask what made that possible rather than accept that a joyless diet is the only path.
Key Points So Far
The “street reality” is that many doctors default to pill-based management. Diet-based reversal is supported by some qualified doctors, but those doctors do not agree on a single best diet. That disagreement discourages many people from acting. Even when people want to try diet, the diets presented can seem boring compared with real food cultures that appear to thrive. The article frames this section as review, not conclusion, and moves on to search for a more reliable way to decide what to do.
Part 3 — Searching for the Real Truth
The internet makes it dangerously easy to “prove” almost anything. If you like chocolate and red wine, you can search and find papers supporting benefits. If you like pork crackling and pomegranate, you can do the same. This is not real truth-finding; it is preference-finding. A better approach is closer to a court method: search for both benefits and hazards, read what the papers actually say, and then form an informed opinion.
The article offers a simple common-sense filter: if a food has been eaten for centuries (like rice in China or cheese in France), it is unlikely to be the core cause of a modern epidemic that surged rapidly. Unless something major changed in the 1980s (unlikely), blaming those traditional foods is probably missing the real driver. The author also adds a “being old” advantage: he remembers life before the epidemic, when infectious diseases were common, but diabetes was rarely discussed. That memory supports the view that diabesity is modern and linked to modern changes.
History, Feasts, and the Limits of “Eat Less, Move More”
Overweight people have existed for centuries. The article uses colourful examples like King Henry VIII, Friar Tuck, and Buddha statues. But today’s scale is different: one in three globally, and even one in two in some regions. The author dismisses simplistic folk explanations and asks what truly changed.
The “over-eating and under-exercising” theory is tested as a plausible idea. People are less physically active, but society has been car-based for more than fifty years, which predates much of the current spike. The author also points out the common sense that “you cannot walk off a bad diet.” The question becomes: are we simply eating more? His observations from cultures with feasting traditions suggest total intake alone is not the key. Eating patterns may have shifted, but the real revolution is in how we grow and prepare food, including herbicides, insecticides, and antibiotics used in agriculture and animal production.
Energy: Quantity and Quality
The article then turns sharply against what it sees as sloppy “calorie balance” thinking. We do not eat calories floating in space; we eat food (matter) that contains chemical energy. Energy has quantity (calories or joules), but also quality (how usable it is). In engineering terms, energy quality links to entropy. A small amount of energy at high quality can do work; the same amount spread thinly at low quality is far less useful.
This matters because different foods with the same “calorie count” can behave very differently in the body. The article uses a blunt comparison: cabbage versus cheesecake. A cabbage releases energy slowly and steadily, which suits the way humans evolved to handle food. Cheesecake is “high octane” and hits hard and fast, and the body may not know what to do with the surge, so it stores it. The point is not that cheesecake is evil. The point is that treating all calories as equal is too simplistic to be useful.
A Simple Personal Experiment
The article proposes a practical test to challenge simplistic calorie ideas. After a normal week, look at what happens after a massive feast. The next day, you may notice a lot more “output.” That output contains energy; manure can be used as fuel in some communities. The body can decide it does not need the extra matter and simply gets rid of it. This is used to argue that the story “you gain fat just because you ate extra calories” is incomplete and can lead to faulty conclusions.
The conclusion of this section is presented as a working hypothesis: diabesity is driven by changes in the type of food we eat, and those changes are strongly linked to how food is grown and processed. The author notes that it is easy to blame “evil barons,” but reality is more complex. Modern food systems have achieved astounding productivity, but also waste around 30% of food to landfill, and the health impact is not being managed.
Part 4 — The Wonders and Hazards of Innovation
The author states clearly: he is not anti-progress. His career was built on innovation, including computer-aided engineering and building a successful technology company. He supports innovation because it can create wealth and improve life. The warning is that innovation has a dark side. The benefits of an innovation are not always spread evenly.
History provides many examples. The plough increased productivity but changed land ownership and social structure. Military innovations gave some groups devastating advantage. The steam engine increased output but also amplified class divides. In modern times, productivity has exploded, but wealth distribution has become extreme, and multinational corporations can be beyond the control of individual governments. The author says he cannot fix the entire political-economic system, but he can focus on a narrower target: how the food system contributes to diabesity.
The article includes a moral line: “evil flourishes when good people stand idly by.” Applied here, the argument is that modern food production increased volume but often reduced fibre, key minerals, phytonutrients, and biological life that sustains health. Small farmers were squeezed, large farms became tied to multinational supply chains, and the incentives shifted away from long-term health.
TV Science and the 2/3 Question
The article criticises “TV science” explanations of insulin as too tidy. They may illustrate a mechanism, but they do not answer the most important question: why can about two-thirds of people eat what looks like a terrible diet and remain healthy, while one-third develop diabesity? This “two-thirds still OK” question is described as the key puzzle we need to solve if we want real progress.
Genetics may play a role for some, and epigenetics may influence how genes are turned on or off. But the author’s working hypothesis is that gut biology dominates susceptibility. If one-third are affected, two-thirds are resistant. How? The article “puts money” on gut biology as the control system that decides whether food becomes energy, fat storage, or waste.
Part 6 — Options and Action Plans to Combat Diabesity
The article presents three broad options. Option 1 is to rely on pharmaceuticals. Pills can control blood sugar, which makes life tolerable, but they do not reverse diabetes on their own. Many people still fail to manage the system well, leading to blindness, amputations, and early death. Governments try to provide support, but the scale makes it difficult. This is described as not the preferred option.
Option 2 is to change diet. Low fat, low carb, and vegetarian approaches all have evidence that they can reverse diabesity for some people. The problem is that none appears to be a universal solution, because people are different. A “self-selection” effect occurs: people tend to gravitate to the clinic or diet that suits their body, then success is reported, but that does not mean the method fits everyone. The article suggests a practical mindset: we may not fully understand the body, but we can still “manage our ignorance” and search for what works.
Option 3 is to change gut bacteria. Unhealthy food is widespread and hard to avoid, especially when travelling. Yet two-thirds of people stay healthy, implying some internal control system is protecting them. The article points to gut biology again. A striking fact is used: faecal transplants can reliably turn a fat person thin, even though we do not fully understand the mechanism. This supports the gut-control hypothesis. The author jokes that there will not be a bulk “commodity market” for poo, but stresses the practical point: diet can change gut bacteria and therefore change decisions made inside the body.
Diet Data, Engineering Standards, and Why 15% Is Not Good Enough
The article contrasts engineering standards with diet statistics. In manufacturing, engineers aim for processes “in control,” where error rates are tiny. In diet research, small trends like 15% are sometimes treated as meaningful, but from an engineering lens that suggests the process is out of control and an unknown factor is dominating outcomes. The argument is not anti-medicine; the author notes that in surgery, high success rates are expected and reassuring. The problem is that diet outcomes vary widely, meaning individual differences (especially gut biology) may be a huge missing factor.
No One Diet for Everyone
The article returns to a practical conclusion: people handle foods differently. Genes vary and epigenetics may matter, but the largest variation may be gut biology, which is good news because gut biology can be influenced. The implication is simple: rather than endless arguing over a single “best” diet, people may need tailored diets, or better still, better guts.
Old Cars: You Don’t Need to Understand Everything to Drive
The author uses a personal metaphor. When he was young, he drove old cars and understood them because he had to rebuild them. Modern cars are full of microcomputers and he does not understand them, but he can still drive easily because the systems assist and correct. He then applies that to the gut: we may not understand the “computer” inside us yet, but we can still let it do its job if we restore the conditions that allow it to function well.
Part 7 — Decision Time
The point of the Gbiota project is not just to grow food in a novel way. The goal is to show that eating plants grown in mineral-rich, biologically active soil improves health and becomes a practical tool against diabesity. The author argues that waiting for perfect science may be backwards: often an engineering breakthrough proves something matters first, then science explains it and improves it. This is how innovation has worked for centuries. The task now is to demonstrate that how food is grown matters for health, and to use that evidence to drive broader change.
Download ‘Dodging Diabesity: Practical Steps to Reverse Diet-Driven Disease’ (full PDF)
