Taste, hunger and Health Span

This document is published under the Creative Commons system which means it can be copied and reproduced without further permission but the source Colin Austin of Gbiota must be acknowledged. Colin Austin 20 Feb 25

This document addresses one of the major health issues - diet, health span and the epidemic of chronic diseases. Comments and suggestions welcome. Email me here.

 

Zonked

Eighty fifth birthday party

I have just had my eighty fifth birthday, I have a menagerie of grand kids in the young adult stage and two great grand daughters.

One of my grand daughters, Candy came up from Brisbane for my party and to stay for a few days and bring me a birthday cake.

I usually go for a walk around Baldwin Swamp in the morning so I asked her if she wanted to come along but she said I am zonked.

Zonked

I am a native English speaker but young adults like my grand kids seem to talk a different version of the English language but I did learn that Zonked is a pseudo medical term meaning exhausted from the stress on modern living.

So what happens if you are zonked? Obviously go to the doctor.

Haem iron

If you are female, the doctor will look at the blood test, see that your iron level is low, and probably won’t prescribe that you go down to the local scrap yard and munch away on a few cylinder heads but will give you a short lecture on haem iron and prescribe the appropriate pills.

Zinc

If you are male, the doctor will suspect that you have been having to much hanky panky which exhaust you supply of zinc, make some comment about lucky you and prescribe some zinc pills as one good hanky panky can exhaust your supply of zinc.

Nothing wrong with this, the doctors are just doing their job but across the globe, we are suffering from an epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

The doctors do their best to treat these illnesses but wouldn’t it be better to find a way of avoiding these illnesses in the first place?

Out numbered

In my family, I am outnumbered. My wife is a medical doctor while my two granddaughters are studying medicine in Brisbane and I am just a humble engineer.

But I think like an engineer which means I like to understand how things really work so when my wife became diabetic and her foot started to turn black and the doctors were talking about amputation I was not at all happy and wanted to understand what is the real cause.

The wrong fat in the wrong place

It turns out that the cause of all chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia is the wrong fat in the wrong place.

In the case of diabetes, it is fat in the pancreas which can no longer produce enough insulin.

So she went on a diet, largely of fresh home grown vegetables and the good news is she still has both her feet.

Motivated

But is did make me highly motivated, eight million people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes, heart attacks, often related to fat in the arteries, are the most common cause of death while dementia, fat in the brain must be one of the most heart-wrenching diseases.

Chronic diseases are the world's biggest health crisis well overtaking infectious diseases.

But I am just an engineer what could I do about it? Understand how our bodies work in the way that an engineer understand how a machine works.

Every machine has some sort of control system so I have had to understand how our body's intelligent control system works.

We have been here before

We have been here before with infectious diseases. It is not that long ago that infectious disease were the big killer, three out of five babies would die before the age of five, another in their teens while most of the adults would never reach their natural life span.

Of course medical science made a great contribution to fighting infectious diseases but the real impact came from prevention.

Engineers built sewage and clean water systems, hygiene was dramatically improved, the humble bed with clean sheets and washing machines removed the source of infections.

Modern day prevention

Now we face the new problem of chronic diseases. Medical science is making great strides but the real solution will come from prevention.

Prevention is more effective and costs far less then trying to resolve the diseases when it has become established.

So how do we prevent chronic disease? By focusing on the underlying cause.

The short, simplistic and wrong answer is to tell tell people to eat the right amount of the right food.

The slogan “eat less, exercise more” has been around for donkeys keys and has not worked because it is not addressing the fundamental cause.

We have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particular our appetite, how much and what we eat. It is called homeostasis and we have known about it for the best part of a couple of hundred years.

Let us take an example of our intelligent control system at work with a young kid riding a bike.

I am an engineer and can explain how a bike stays upright by talking about self balancing gyroscopic couples.

Is that how I taught my kids when they were three years old to ride a bike - no way.

They just got on the bike, fell of a few time but soon got the knack without knowing anything about self balancing gyroscopic couples.

That is because their intelligent control system works in the their subconscious - it is high speed, very powerful and easily overrides our slow and clunky conscious of logical brain.

If we are going to use a strategy of prevention which is the only effective way of combating the epidemic of chronic disease then we must work with our subconscious brain and not just yell at people to eat less and exercise more.

That is a waste of time and energy.

 

Abstract

We don’t get fat and sick simply because we eat too much.

Our gut and head brains form an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. If it decides we need to store more fat it will send out hormones which make us feel hungry so then we overeat and get fat and sick.

This happens when we do not feed our gut-brain the right sort of food. Our modern food system is not feeding our gut brain which has led to a global epidemic of chronic or non-infectious disease which is reducing our health span and is modern societiy’s greatest health challenge.

Before our modern food system we ate food that fed our gut-brain with beneficial microbes but we also bred many harmful microbes which led to infectious diseases and much of the population dying before their natural term.

Our modern food system has reduced the harmful microbes but also the beneficial microbes. The great technical challenge is to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes.

We need to create a new industry of growing gut-brain food, here we show how.

Success requires the successful development of technology, where as a successful innovator I have spent much of my eighty-five years but it also requires a social movement where dedicated community-minded people try it, see if their appetite and food cravings are reduced then tell their friends and contact to create a movement of public awareness.

 

The essence - Creating the new gut-brain food industry

 

Chronic disease caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place

Chronic or non-infectious diseases have now far overtaken infectious diseases and are now our major health threat.

Chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

Our bodies have an intelligent control system

Our bodies have an intelligent control system which decides and then regulates by hormones where and how much fat we store.

This intelligent control system is made up of our head and gut brains communicating and working together.

Our gut is an integrated system of trillions of cells consisting of thousands of different species. Each cell can communicate with neighbouring cells to create swarm or group intelligence.

How our gut-brain works depends on the overall integrated system rather than a few specific species.

Our gut-brain dominated by the food we eat

Our gut brain is initially populated by our mum at birth; after that, it is dominated by the food we eat, although contact with other creatures has an effect.

Our gut-brain works in our subconscious brain which is far faster and more effective than our conscious brain in determining what we eat - it is what we want to eat that matters.

Conscious and subconscious brains

It is not effective to tell our conscious brain to eat less and exercise more. We have to manage our subconscious brain so we want to eat the right amount of the right sort of food.

The combination of our gut and head brain has memory and can be trained.

The food we eat contains a spectrum of microbes which come from the soil, particularly the creatures of the soil who have guts like us.

Microbes have a short life - dynamic equilibrium

Microbes have a very short life but breed incredibly fast. Our gut is in a state of dynamic equilibrium with individual cells dying and being replaced by this rapid breeding.

To breed the cells in our gut they must be fed with gut-brain food.

Modern food - high in energy low in gut-brain food

We need to enhance our gut-brain with a steady supply of fresh microbes in our food.

Historically food was grown locally and eaten shortly after harvesting which naturally provided us with gut-brain food.

Our modern food has changed what we eat. It contains an abundance of energy food - sugars and fats - but is deficient in gut-brain food and microbes. It is largely inert and any microbes that may have been in it will have died from the extended time from harvest to eating.

We need to create a new industry of gut-brain food

We need to create a new industry of gut-brain food.

This industry will be based on the underlying principle of controlling the conditions so the beneficial microbes out-breed and out-compete the harmful microbes - the principle of Ecological balance.

Ecological balance

Beneficial microbes need a balanced combination of nutrients, water and air.

Nutrients can be provided from recycling organic waste which has the added advantage of being sustainable.

Circulate Soil Blood

This can be achieved by circulating the soil blood (the mixture of water, dissolved nutrients and microbes) in a regular flood and flush cycle so the soil and plants receive a regular supply of nutrients, water and air without the soil blood ever becoming stagnant.

Skilled growers already exist but they need a market

There are an adequate number of skilled growers who are fully capable of producing gut-brain food but they need a market to create a sustainable business.

Need for major educational program

This requires a major educational program from the relevant organisations, particularly Governments who have responsibility for their community health.

This education is challenged by the level of disinformation on the Internet and the marketing power of the current food industry, which is dominated by mega, multinational organisations that are extremely skilled in manipulative marketing.

Must make the effort

Despite all these obstacles if we are to thrive as a species we must make the effort. In the first instance, this will fall on the shoulders of a few dedicated individuals.

 

Taste, hunger and healthspan

 

Preface

Extinction

Is humanity in danger of extinction? Probably not.

Is our modern comfortable lifestyle in danger of extinction? Definitely yes and it is happening right now.

Can we do anything to avoid this? Yes - but it takes a bit of effort to understand the problem and do something about it.

What is the biggest problem? Food - there is plenty of food - that is not the problem - modern food is making us fat and sick. We need food that will lead to a long and healthy life.

Is this a technical problem? No - we know how to grow food that will make us healthy.

So what is the problem? Persuading people to eat healthy food when they are bombarded with manipulative advertising and food that is deliberately made addictive.

Will that happen? It is up to you with the power of the wallet.

 

Deciding what we eat

Modern science has given us a good understanding of what we should eat to lead a long and healthy life. We understand this at the conscious level.

That is the easy bit.

But our body has an intelligent control system which makes us want to eat too much of the wrong sorts of food - and it almost always wins.

That is the difficult bit.

Intelligent control

Without taste and hunger, we would soon be dead so it seems a pretty good idea to see how they work and how we can use this understanding to increase our health span - how long we are fit and healthy.

It starts with our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies which is formed by cooperation between our gut and head brain.

Our gut contains trillions of cells of thousands of species and we often talk about our gut as having swarm intelligence and compare it to flocks of birds, swarms of ants and bees and not to forget the wonder of slime moulds.

This analogy may not be strictly accurate as these have many identical items with each item communicating with its neighbour so the entire system has a collective intelligence.

However, our gut has thousands of species of microbes which can have very different behaviour so it might be better to talk about group intelligence.

And what animal is spectacularly successful at group intelligence? Well, what about us.

In fact, we are so good at it that we never bother to think about it and study how it works. Let us look at that at work in building a house.

Group intelligence and building a house

Our bodies are complex and difficult to understand so it may be useful to look at an everyday occurrence which we can understand - building a house.

It all seems so simple but no one single person knows everything about building a house.

It starts with a soil engineer who examines the load-bearing capacity of the soil and designs a system of foundations.

Then an earth-moving specialist may come along and drill holes for a concrete specialist to fill.

Then a framework designer will design a structure which a tradesman skilled in wood or steel builds to be later encased by a bricklayer, or other tradesmen.

Along comes further specialists to install the internal, plumbing, electricals, air conditions, internet, phone and satellite connection etc.

A project manager may coordinate all these activities but won’t understand the details of every speciality.

If he sees that the electrical work is falling behind he won’t recruit more bricklayers. Instead, he will try and recruit more electricians - which won’t be easy if the house is being built in Bundaberg. (Believe, me I know).

Combining a multitude of skills comes naturally to us humans that we never even recognise it is happening.

Group intelligence and our bodies

Our intelligent control system faces similar, but much more complex problems.

For a start we need oxygen so we need lungs to suck in air and to transfer oxygen to our blood, then we need a heart to pump it around our arteries and deliver it to our muscles.

The speed has to be controlled to match demand and the air will almost certainly contain some harmful microbes so an immune system is needed to identify and deal with these harmful intruders.

This all works automatically, controlled by our subconscious brain, and we never bother to think about it but I needed to set the scene for the big issue that I want to talk about - “Food”.

The Big Food Control Myth

We like to think that we decide what and how much we want to eat in our conscious brain.

It is true we do have the benefit of some intelligent and conscientious dietitians who will tell us we need so many calories, so many grams of carbohydrates and proteins and so many milligrams or micrograms of a whole range of minerals and vitamins.

Now let me be clear, I am not saying they are wrong they may well be perfectly correct down to the last micro-gram of B12 but it is not the way our intelligent control system (our gut-brain) works now or has worked for the last million years or so.

Our gut-brain works in our subconscious brain deciding whether we have enough of the right sort of food.

Feeling satisfied

Our subconscious gut-brain asks “Do we have the right amount of the right sort of food?”

If yes it will create hormones so we feel satisfied and not want to eat.

If no it will create hormones to make us feel hungry. But it does much more than making us feel hungry and want to eat, it knows what sorts of food we need.

It has been learning from the first suck on mum’s breasts what food makes us feel good and associate that with a particular taste.

So, depending on the learning experience, we may crave a slice of cheesecake, a giant steak or a vegetable curry.

We are not born craving cheesecake or vegetable curry and enjoying the taste, we learn over a period to time and associate the particular taste with feeling good and satisfied.

What tastes good to me could well be revolting to you, taste is learned from what makes us feel good and satisfied.

Conscious v subconscious - the battle

We may learn from our dietitian that eating a specific diet is the most healthy for us and will lead to a long and healthy life but if our subconscious brain is saying no, don’t eat that go stuff yourself with this - then we have a conflict.

Whether our conscious or subconscious brain wins that conflict depends a bit on willpower and it is possible that we will eat the dietitian-created diet for a period, but the odds are that eventually the subconscious brain will win.

Don’t believe me? Go to the local shopping centre and see the number of wobbly bums and tums.

Training our subconscious brain

But we can adopt a different strategy of training our gut-brain so it sends out signals to eat the healthier diet.

There are three steps to this.

Full spectrum of microbes

The first step is to ensure we have the right spectrum of microbes in our gut.

This is more complex than taking pro-biotics containing a few species we need a full spectrum.

Just as in building a house, it is pointless recruiting more concreters if we are short of electricians.

Feed the microbes so they breed

The second step is to feed the microbes so they breed. Microbes breed like crazy, but they need food so we need to eat food that will enable our microbes to breed inside us.

But that is not enough we also need to eat food that contains a fresh supply of microbes with a full spectrum to ensure our gut maintains a full spectrum.

Train the gut-brain

Our subconscious brain has intelligence and is continuously learning from the first such on mum’s breasts.

We have to use our conscious brain to expose it to a variety of foods so it learns.

Feeding our kids ultra-processed food is condemning them to a life of being fat and sick. They need to be exposed to what I call Gbiota food meaning plants, grown in living soil and eaten fresh.

That includes spices and herbs which add a bit of flavour to what could otherwise be a very bland food.

 

Part 2 Solutions Technology and Social

 

Technology

This is not a manual, that is separate, this is just an overview.

The aim is to grow food containing a broad spectrum of beneficial microbes.

Before I describe how to do this I need to talk about three essential concepts.

Ecological balance

Breeding microbes is more than easy, it is almost impossible to stop. Just leave anything organic, meat veggies food scraps, prunings, dead logs, grass cutting, whatever and some microbe will come along and use it as food and once fed it will breed like crazy.

The problem is that a lot of these microbes are harmful so how do we breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones?

I should add a foot-note - on a scale to feed eight billion people at an economic price.

The answer comes from nature and has existed for billions of years - Ecological balance.

It is why we have polar bears in the Arctic but no Antelopes but no polar bears but plenty of Antelopes in Africa.

It is simply a question of carefully controlling the conditions to preferentially favour the beneficial microbes.

Plants need five things - sunlight and carbon dioxide which they get from the air free of charge.

They also need a balanced ration of nutrients, water and air (technically dissolved oxygen) they get from the soil.

All we have to do is to manage the ratio of nutrients, water and air in the soil to preferentially benefit the good microbes.

The flood and flush system is a practical way of maintaining this air to water ratio.

Goldilocks moisture, not to wet and not to dry - just right.

Soil blood

A second basic concept is soil blood, a term I made up thinking about how our bodies work.

All our organs need oxygen which they get from blood which contains dissolved oxygen via our lungs.

This is how fish and soil life works.

In the Gbiota technology, we are consistently circulating water containing both nutrients and dissolved oxygen.

Dynamic equilibrium

There is another basic concept I must introduce before I describe the mechanics.

Look at the major cities of the world that have existed for thousands of years, but the characteristics of their citizens have remained relatively consistent over generations.

It is the same with microbes in the soil, plants and our gut - given stable conditions they are consistent over a long period of time. But change the conditions and the microbes will change very rapidly.

Microbes may breed like crazy but they also die very quickly, we are talking about a half-life of less than a day. When we harvest a plant we cut off the natural supply of nutrients so the microbes in the plant, which will later form our gut biota will change (from good to bad).

Plants need to be eaten while fresh, and fresh does not mean ‘not gone rotten’.

Gbiota beds

Gbiota beds are the most direct way of growing plants to enhance our gut biota.

They are generally raised beds, preferably not enclosed, to avoid the soil becoming saturated in times of heavy rain.

Ag pipes (slotted drainage pipes) are laid on the base and feed into a sump (by a leaky dam as described in the support articles).

They are filled with a mixture of organic waste, soil with a fine particle size, minerals and initially inoculants and soil creatures.

Beneficial microbes do breed in the soil but they also breed in the gut of the creatures of the soil, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc.

These creatures play a key role in breaking down the organic waste.

We need to grow a spectrum of plants as each species exudes nutrients which attract specific species of microbes.

Plants can be seeded directly into the soil and the bed irrigated using a combination of flood and flush and spraying.

The water or soil blood comes from the sump using a pump.

The drainage pipes are used as subsurface irrigation pipes to flood the base of the bed but when the pump is turned off the soil blood drains slowly (via the leaky dam) back into the sump.

As the soil blood drains it will suck fresh air into the bed.

The same pump can be used to sprinkle irrigate. This has several advantages, the soil blood contains beneficial microbes which will enter the plant via the foliage, the soil blood will absorb oxygen by sprinkling and it also helps germinate seeds.

The limitation of the Gbiota bed is that the plants need to be eaten shortly after harvesting. This is no problem for a home grower but severely limits the market for commercial growers.

This problem is resolved by Gbiota baskets.

Gbiota baskets

Gbiota baskets are any suitable container with holes - supermarket baskets work fine and are light enough to carry.

Food plants are grown in the soil in the baskets and the microbes and the creatures of the soil enter the baskets and the irrigation, both subsurface and spray are spreading the microbes.

When the plants are ready to start harvesting they can be delivered and all the consumer has to do is to water and harvest, preferably by tipping (see documentation).

As the baskets, using tipping, may be productive for a month or more this makes transport more manageable.

The baskets can be placed in a box with a swivel tube so it works similar to a wicking box and allows the use of the flood and flush system to maintain the Goldilocks moisture level.

It also save time with less frequent waterings.

The box can be partially filled with water which will wick up to the plants, but it must not lie there stagnant or the wrong microbes will breed.

It need to be circulated using the flood and flush.

Gbiota boxes

Gbiota boxes are intermediate between beds and baskets.

They use compost tubes for recycling and are fitted with swivel tubes so can operate the flood and flush system as in a Gbiota bed.

They do need the special mix we call Wickimix to set them up and they do need replenishing after a time.

They may have a longer time between swapping but they require more skill and effort to manage than a Gbiota baskets.

Social

The Gbiota system may provide a technical solution to the epidemic of chronic disease but it does require a change in the way our food system works and social changes are never easy, particularly when the main players are multi-national mega companies seemingly beyond the control of National Governments.

So how do we go about creating this social change?

 

Functions of food

We need food for energy, we are thermodynamic machines so we eat food to power our bodies. Typically that energy comes from sugar and fats and if there is one thing that our current food system is good at is providing us with sugary fatty foods, laced with flavourings which are often addictive and promoted by highly skilled manipulative marketing.

Some 80% of the food we eat is energy food and our current food system is well geared to keep on supplying energy food on a massive scale.

We also need food to replace our body parts as they wear and age.

Modern technology has dramatically increased the production of energy food but the supply of the critical nutrients for replacement food has remained static so there is an issue with trace minerals and vitamins but at this moment it is not at a critical level.

Replacement food needs to be around 15% of our food intake.

The serious issue is that our modern food is deficient in food to feed and replace our gut microbes.

In an effort to get fed our gut microbes, who are at the wheel as our intelligent control system, send out signals for us to eat more in the hope of getting gut-brain food.

This may be only 5% of our needed food intake but this deficiency is at the core of resolving the epidemic of chronic disease.

The big challenge we face is how to educate the public that they need to be eating gut-brain food.

There will be no new gut-brain food industry if there is no demand from the public.

How do we do that?

Farther Christmas

My daughter, when she was about seven accidentally taught me a very valuable lesson.

Like all seven year old’s the world is full of wonder and discovery and those rather stupid, uniformed adults need educating about these discoveries.

She has found out the way of identifying real Farther Christmases from fake ones.

All you had to do was look behind their ears. If there was elastic holding up their beard they were fakes, no elastic and they were real.

After she had explained this major discovery to me I asked in the typical clumsy way of adults if she still believed in Father Christmas.

This was a big problem for her which required a long thought but eventually, she responded with a question “If I say I have stopped believing in Father Christmas, will I still get presents?”

That was a long time ago, she is now a grandmother but in the age of the internet and disinformation and manipulative marketing, people will believe in what is best for them and the truth plays only a minor part.

How to convince the public

I don’t think I am particularly weird in wanting to live a long and healthy life so have experimented on myself with many diets.

I am a natural pig so in my older years have developed a bit of a tum so I tried a strict calorie-restricted diet. I caught sight of myself in a mirror and was horrified to see the emaciated face, like from a feature film about the concentration camps, looking back at me.

That certainly made me question the value of simple calorie restriction and led me to investigate how the body naturally controls weight.

I know that the natural system works because if we had been fat back in our period of evolution we could not have climbed trees and swung from branch to branch to escape the ferocious beast below.

I have stopped worrying about calories, but ensure that I eat food that will feed my gut-brain and also contains the essential minerals and vitamins.

I am eighty-five, fit and healthy go for a long walk or bike ride most mornings so as far as I am concerned it has worked for me.

I don’t spend hours worrying about my diet, if my body tells me I am hungry I eat and if it tells me I am not hungry I don’t eat (or only eat a little).

Statistics and an n of 1

I know enough about statistics to know that an ‘n’ or sample size of 1 is next to useless and that you need a sample size in the many thousands with complex adjustments to correct for a range of factors to be scientifically valid.

But even then the public will be confused by the technical jargon of statistics and will still be unconvinced - unless - yes wait for it

that ‘n’ happens to be you.

Strategy for the Disinformation Age

 

Step 1 - Keen, health-conscious gardeners

I think we can assume that in this disinformation age that hardly anyone is going to believe what they see on the internet - unless it is from a real person they trust.

It is also unrealistic to go head to head against the might of the modern food industry who are very good at their job - which is making as much money as possible and manipulative promotion plays a key part and is something they are very good at.

But there are people who have that magic combination of being both keen gardeners and concerned about their health. Maybe only a minority of the population but they can play a critical role.

So we start by helping these keen health-conscious gardeners to set up their own Gbiota beds, get them to eat the gut-brain food they grow and see if their appetite is reduced.

They don’t have to do what I have done, wait until they are eighty-five and see if they are still fit and healthy.

If they feel that they are satisfied, stop craving food and naturally eat less then it is virtually certain that they have extended their health span.

Then, and this is the critical bit, persuade them of their community obligation to tell their friends and contacts.

Step 2 Set up a local gut-brain food industry

 

The epidemic of chronic diseases is global involving billions of people. It will not be resolved by home growers. We need to create a global gut-brain industry. But how?

There are many entrepreneurial growers who are potential gut-brain growers. As professional growers, they already have the technical base, so with a little training they can be effective suppliers.

But professional growers have to earn a living so how can this be turned into a sound and stable business?

Technically gbiota baskets and boxes are good products but there is a transport issue. We are not shipping plants but plants growing in boxes or baskets.

In practice this means they must be local suppliers but today so many people live in cities well away from the conventional farming areas.

However, it does not take a lot of space and most cities are surrounded by growing areas. In some cities areas have already been set aside for food production.

This is a problem where local Governments need to be involved.

Central Governments also need to be involved, particularly for public education. As they bear the brunt of the cost of the epidemic there is every reason for them to be motivated.

The modern internet resolves some of the problems with consumers being able to order and pay online.

But there is still the physical problem of distribution. An ideal solution would be to have some central location where consumers visit as part of their normal routine and baskets or boxes could be delivered in bulk.

Local farmers markets, health food shops and gyms come to mind.

 

Final note

Despite all these obstacles if we are to thrive as a species we must make the effort. In the first instance, this will fall on the shoulders of a few dedicated individuals.

I cannot create the change myself, I am just one person. But a group of dedicated people, who see the importance of creating a new industry of gut-brain food so we have a healthy community, can make this essential change.

At this moment the most important job it so spread the word to create an active community.

This document is published under the creative commons which means it can be copied and republished without further approval just acknowledgement of source.

So if you appreciate the importance of this project please tell your friends and if you really want to make an impact persuade your Government that they carry the responsibility for community health.

If you are serious contact me here and I can set up a video call, one of the good things of modern technology, and we can have a chat.

Your choice

We are at a crossroads and have two options.

In option one we can live in a society dominated by marketing hype, where we buy health bars full of sugars and fats because they are promoted as healthy, where we spend a thousand dollars a month to take drugs like Ozemic in an attempt to get slim but find that after a year our bodies have acclimatised so they no longer work.

It takes little effort but costs a lot of money and we destroy the natural resources of the Earth.

In option 2 we live in a circular economy where we respect the Earth. We take advantage of creatures like a little fly that lays its eggs in mulch. The larvae that hatch out are so ugly that even their mother cannot love them and flies away.

But they excrete into the soil microbes which change our Gut Biota which controls our appetite so we don’t overeat, get fat and sick but instead live long and healthy lives.

It costs less than option 1 but it does take effort to understand how a sustainable circular economy works.

You will take this decision right now when you decide whether to skip away or make the effort to understand how a sustainable circular system works and the health and social benefits that result.

Where is the introduction?

When you write an article, give a talk or create a website it is normal to have a short introduction that tells people what is coming up.

I can tell you what I would like to talk about, how we can solve the challenge of our modern food system which is causing an epidemic of chronic diseases - overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia and how we can overcome the future challenges from climate change, degradation of our soils and running out of critical minerals - like phosphorous.

Well, I am not going to do that - at least not straight away, that will come later, for a very good reason-I need to tell you a little story to set the scene.

A long time ago

Many years ago, about fifty to be precise before I decided to devote my attention to what I consider the greatest threat to mankind - how we can sustainably grow food that will keep us healthy.  At that time plastics had not become antisocial so I wrote a computer simulation of how plastics flow into a mould.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that if a mould did not fill then make the flow channels bigger. That was simple, easy and did not work.

I went around the world giving lectures saying that the solution was to make some flow channels smaller, specifically the flow channels feeding the easy areas of the mould to fill, which would then direct the flow to the more difficult areas to fill.

Nutter from down under

And almost everyone thought I was a nutter and I was booed and heckled.

But a few entrepreneurial engineers thought I might have a point, tried it and it worked.

They then told their friends, published scientific papers and soon the whole industry accepted this apparently crazy idea.

For this, I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

Simple, obvious and does not work

We now face a similar situation with food, but this affects everyone on Earth.

The simple and obvious solution to people getting fat, (and fat in the wrong place is the root cause of the epidemic) is to eat less.

It may be simple, obvious but does not work.  We have been trying that for years and people are getter fatter and chronic diseases increase.

Every book on diet, every article you read and almost every expert you talk to will tell you ‘eat less exercise more’ but it does not work, at least long term and for a very simple reason.

Our body has intelligence

Our body is not a dumb collection of organs it has intelligence, largely in our head and gut and its tries to keep us alive by whatever means possible.

Now I ask you, if you were a brain and your job was to keep your body alive and you saw that your body was short of food what would your do?

You would probably think that the smart thing to do would be to store any and every bit of food that you could lay your hands (or teeth) on and that is exaclty what your smart body does.

We have ignored this for eighty years

This is exactly what happens and we have known this for some eighty years when people who were starved in WW2 later later became fat when food was available, we had trained out bodies to store fat.

We see it every day, rich people who have an abundant supply of healthy food tend to be slim, people struggling with excessive rent payment who can’t afford healthy food tend to get fat.

Eat more but of the right sort of food

Just as with my battle over flow channels when I said make some flow channels smaller but people heard make all flow channels smaller I am now saying forget about the old thinking of eating less I am saying eat more.

But I am not saying go out and eat a monster plate of hamburger and chips I am saying eat more of the right sort of food.

That food is gut-brain food which feeds out intellitgent control system which regualtes our bodies.

This website is all about how to eat more of the right sort of food.

Thanks for re-thinking

As expected most people hear 'your fat eat more' which is not what I am saying but all I can do is hope some entrepreneurial thinkers come along read and think about what I am saying, try it for themselves and then tell their friends and we start thinking about fat in a different, more enlightened, way.

Every year eight million people a year who have a limb amputated from diabetes and  will be very grateful to these entrepreneurial thinkers who went out on a limb to change the way we think about food.

If you are one of these please email me at colin@gbiota.com  I would love to hear from you.

Wonce a pone a tie’m

Nothing like a good yarn

Seems like my spell checker is not working too well but starting with "Once upon a time" is a way of saying story coming up - yes this web is a bit different.

We are suffering from an epidemic of chronic diseases, our food system is making us fat and sick.

We have to change the way we grow at least some of our food so we can enjoy a long and healthy life.

I think people would prefer to hear directly from a guy that is out there, living in the real world, getting his hands dirty experimenting with different ways of growing food rather than a marketing wiz kids living in a virtual world of marketing hype and Avatars.

Sorry if I offend but the truth can be nasty.

I tell this as a story because people like a good yarn and are put off by a lot of dull boring statistics.

Father Christmas and Fantasy land

The story starts many years ago when I was chatting with my seven year old daughter. When you are seven everything is new and exciting and obviously you have a duty to explain your new discover to your aging parents who may not be too enlightened.

She was explaining how to tell the difference between real Father Christmases and fake ones.

You look behind their ears. If there is elastic holding up their beard they are fake but it there is no elastic they are real.

Without really thinking I asked her if she still believed in Father Christmas.

A big deal

This was apparently a big deal for her because she thought about it for a long time and then asked “If I stop believing in Farther Christmas will I still get presents?”

This taught me a lot about human nature, what we believe is what is convenient to believe and the facts are only a very secondary issue.

Humanity faces many challenges, there is climate variability from the increasing carbon dioxide levels, the degradation of our soils, and the way we are rapidly exploiting the available resources of water and critical minerals like phosphorus.

These are a threat to humans’ ability to feed ourselves but don’t seem to be a big issue that people want to talk about.

Take climate change, I would have thought that the danger was pretty clear yet many young adolescent males totally deny there is a problem and insist on doing wheelies in giant V8’s totally denouncing any change to electric cars.

What is the driving force here (excuse the pun)​​?

The point is that doing wheelies is rutting behaviour. Humans don’t have the vocal capacity of a moose but we are the great tool makers and what better tool to make a lot of noise to show that you are ready for a bit of hanky panky, than a giant V8 at full throttle?

Don’t tangle with a rutting moose

If you learn anything from this website remember never to tangle with a rutting moose, (or rutting adolescent) they are focused on a bit of hanky-panky and any facts are irrelevant.

Unfortunately, it seems to attract more adolescent males than females but the smart males have worked out that a Harley Davidson bike is far more effective, maybe they are more noisy or maybe it is the attraction for the ladies of having a giant throbbing V twin between their legs.

We can avoid thinking about all the threats that we face but it does not make them go away. We can console ourselves that the Earth has been bobbing around the sun for the last 4.3 billion years so say happy birthday Earth.

Happy Birthday Earth

We should make a birthday cake to celebrate but it will have to be big for the 4.3 billion candles, about the size of Tasmania.

I say that to make the point that it is a really long time and in all probability, the Earth will be still bobbing around the sun for a few more billion years so we don’t have to worry about protecting the Earth, it will do fine without us.

How well we will survive is another question.

Dinosaurs lived on the earth for some 265 million years some thousand times longer than modern man.

The future is here now

But even if we put all those future concerns away as some left of centre city trendy worry about the future there is still the problem of what is happening today. Three out of four people now die from a chronic disease which is caused by our food system.

But even that is not the real issue, our health span, how long we remain healthy is declining again because of our food system.

Eight million people a year suffer a limb amputation from diabetes. We can’t pretend that is not happening, if you have a leg amputated you can’t suddenly pretend that you have a virtual leg and become a football star.

It just won’t happen.

You can take action

This website is about what action we can take to prevent chronic diseases, we know how to prevent chronic diseases, they are a modern man-made creation and man can reverse them just as easily as we created them.

The challenge is to persuade people to stop pretending and thinking that they will go away.

My daughter, when young, believed in Father Christmas and the Tooth fairy but at some point in her life she accepted that she had to stop pretending and accept the world as it is.

Stop pretending and accept the world as it is

With chronic diseases, resulting from our food system, we likewise have to stop pretending and accept the world as it is and do something about it.

That is what this web is all about so why not register and change the world?

The food industry is dominated by a small number of oligopolies who put their profits ahead of community benefit and even seem to intimidate our Governments whose job is to put the community first.

Getting fat and sick and having eight million legs chopped off every year is not the society that I or anyone wants.

It is only by a large number of people showing that the system must change that we will achieve change - so register and show you want change. It costs nothing but shows you care and it may be you that that is the person who avoids getting fat and sick and having your leg chopped off.

Welcome to my site

Welcome to my site. If you are expecting super-sophisticated marketing this is not the site for you.

Clever but manipulative marketing of fake food is not just reducing life span; worse it is reducing health span - how long we are fit and active.

Medical science has meant that our life span has steadily increased but has now plateaued and is even decreasing.

Modern food has meant that our health span, how long we are fit and healthy, has steadily declined.

The modern internet is saturated with dubious claims for magical health products.  There is no way that you can say for sure that if you take this or that product in twenty years time you will be fitter and healthier.  There is no way I can make claims about the future benefits of the technology I promote.

But there is one test that anyone can do. Just eat gut-brain food and see if your appetite is reduced. This makes it easier to eat less food and still feel satisfied which will increase the probability of a longer health span. There is no scientific proof but life is about managing risks.

But do not believe what they may tell you about the "good old days" - that is another myth, people died like flies from infection.

And don’t expect a thirty-second flash-through with three-word slogans will give you the answer - it takes time and thinking to ferret out the truth.

But if you are prepared to invest a bit of time and thinking welcome to my website.

I am an engineer and see the real world as it is - not some marketing guru who sees some fantasy world full of Avatars.

I am a real person email me and we can chat - real person to real person or better still sign up here and get the full story for free.

No water - no food. Water without flow - food that makes us sick.

Food that makes us healthy comes from understanding and controlling how water moves through the soil.

I am Colin Austin, recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work on computational fluid flow.

Let me give you a brief explanation of what Gbiota is all about.

A very brief history of the world

Some 4.3 billion years ago there was a rock spinning around the sun.

It was dead, inert with nothing living and that went on for around three billion years.

The first life

Then, we don’t know from where but we think on an asteroid some microbes appeared.

They broke down the rocks and soon soil appeared, then plants followed by an incredible array of creatures. Some like the dinosaurs lived for 165 million years.

Humanoids appear

Then about a million years ago the first humanoid appeared - a puny creatures that barely survived until about two hundred thousand years ago the most important event in human history occurred - the management of fire for cooking.

Fire, cooking and the creation of modern man

This turned the puny creature into modern man. Cooking gave us ready access to nutrients and we physically changed - our guts shrunk and our brains grew and we became the tool maker.

Brains are very greedy, they need a large amount of food but they are also hungry for stimulation - they need entertainment and while other animals may be happy to sit and ruminate we need amusement and stimulation.

Tribes - fit and healthy

At first we lived in small tribes and were relatively fit and healthy but we were curious, continuously inventing new tools and the second major event in human history was the development of agriculture to provided a more reliable food system.

Agriculture, cities and disease

Again the effects on humanity were dramatic, we became smaller and living in dense communities suffered from infectious diseases.

Disease meant that only one out of five babies born would reach mature adulthood.

Just to maintain the population with two babies reaching adulthood women had to have ten babies.

Women became very valuable and we became a highly aggressive creature not just fighting over land but fighting to steal women.

The fight against infection

But being an innovative and creative creature we understood the problem and came up with solutions, we developed technologies for managing sewage and supplying fresh water, better beds so we were better protected from biting creatures which carry infections and of course we improved our medical services with innovations like anti-biotics.

Population explosion

The result was dramatic, the global population trebled every hundred years so in a period of just two hundred years the global population increased from under a billion to over eight billion.

All those mouths had to be fed and humans, the very innovative creature developed its agricultural technology at a faster rate than the human population expanded - an incredible achievement.

The dreaded side effects

But, as often happens with new technology there was a side effect.

The food was full of energy but was deficient in critical minerals and nutrients, which we tried to correct by developing a supplement industry but our food was inert, lacking beneficial microbes which formed out gut brain.

The supercomputer that controls appetite

We had not understood that all those trillions of cells in our gut communicate with each other to from genuine intelligence - like having a super computer in our tummies.

One of the critical functions of this supercomputer was to regulate our bodies, particularly our appetite.

Faced with a surplus of tasty energy food, which we love, and lacking an effective regulator for our appetite we began to overeat and get fat.

If this fat goes to where we evolved to store it, which is our bum, there is no serious problem but if this fat goes to the wrong place the results are disastrous.

The epidemic of chronic disease

Heart attacks, the commonest cause of death are typically caused by blocked arteries, diabetes - the fastest growing disease is fat blocking the pancreas and our muscles so we have the dreaded combination of not enough insulin and being resistant to the insulin we may produce.

But perhaps the most dreaded disease is dementia, where people are still alive but with no understanding of the world around them.

The current epidemic of chronic disease which kills three out of four people but perhaps worse living a life of poor health.

The solution - breeding beneficial microbes

But we are a creative and innovative creature and the solution is obvious, we need to have a food system which contains the beneficial microbes that control our appetite without the harmful microbes which have caused infectious diseases throughout human history.

We know how to do that. This is what the Gbiota technology is all about, preferentially breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones by controlling the conditions.

Simple and inexpensive - but must be done right

This is a simple and inexpensive technology which could save millions of lives but as always there is a snag.

It has to be done right so we don’t preferentially breed the harmful microbes.

Eventually, this will change our food system but today’s issue is how to introduce this technology to the world in a controlled way.

The search for dedicate pioneers

For this we need dedicate pioneers who are prepared to commit their time to understand the technology and apply it correctly.

If this is you please contact me at colin@gbiota.com

Register to enter this site

This is a subscription site for people concerned about our modern food supply which is making us fat and sick and are prepared to help change the system so we can enjoy living a longer and healthier life.

There are several levels of membership.

We are currently creating a series of YouTube videos which are bringing a stream of potential interested people to the site just wanting to find out what it is all about.

They can access much of the site for free while they decide whether this is something they want to become involved with but they do need to register when they will receive our newsletter and notifications of the new posts which we write on a regular basis.

They may like to look at New Posts

If they decide this is not for them they do not need to do anything as membership is automatically cancelled for people who are not active on the site.

Should you decide that you want to be an active member then you have three option.

You can decide that you want to be a consumer and eat food which will enhance your gut health but don’t want to be involved in growing the food yourself in which case we will link you with a community grower.

They may like to look at articles on Food and Health

You can decide that you want to grow the food that will enhance you gut health just for you own use.

You may like to upgrade you subsciption to Private Grower and read the articles in Growing

Or you you decide that you want to set up a business to supply food that will enhance gut health by becoming a community grower in which case we will help you set up your business.  You should email me so I can explain how we can help.

 

 

Gbiota technology controls the conditions in the soil so the beneficial microbes out-breed and out-compete any harmful microbes.

These beneficial microbes move into the plants that we eat and then into our gut.

The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with each other to provide real intelligence which regulates our appetite.

Skilled growers create Gbiota baskets with growing plants, consumers simply have to water the baskets then pick and eat the plants while they are still fresh before the microbes die.

This is an effective and economical way of combating the epidemic of chronic diseases caused by overeating leading to the wrong fat in the wrong places.

 

What is Gbiota?

What is Gbiota?

My aim for Gbiota is to create a thriving, sustainable society with a food system designed for long, healthy lives, emphasizing recycling over depleting Earth's resources and prioritizes community well-being over corporate profits. In essence, it envisions a society that is equitable and enjoyable to live in—both now and for future generations.

Gbiota is a social movement to create a society that is good to live in, with a food system that leads to people leading a long and healthy life, that is sustainable by recycling rather then exploiting the earths finite resources and which has a sense of equity that ranks community benefit ahead of short term profits for mega corporations.

A society that is just a good place to live now and in the future.

This is me - a real person - send me an email and say hi.

Colin Austin

 

Thinking, very much out of fashion

Modern society is high speed, high pressure with a few people making a lot of money while the bulk of the people are suffering from a health epidemic of overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

You may have heard that we get fat and sick because we eat too much and the simple solution is to eat less and exercise more.

This is a very short and snappy slogan which suits the food industry, it means it is not their fault as much of the population has suddenly turned into little piggies.

It is just part of the fake facts that dominate our society. We know how to grow food that will lead to people living a long and healthy life but it takes time to explain what the real problem is and more important what the solution is.

Here I explain why we are getting fat and sick and more importantly what we can do about it but it takes time and effort to understand the real reasons and AI cannot do the thinking for us.

So if you are into a bit of thinking welcome aboard.

 

How being simple and obvious can be wrong

Let me tell you a little story of how an idea can be simple and obvious but wrong.

Some fifty years ago, before plastics became anti-social engineers were having problems filling moulds. I wrote up a computer simulation which involved solving coupled non-linear differential equations, not a big deal any competent mathematician could have done that.

But the simple and obvious thinking at that time was the if a mould did not fill then make the flow channels bigger - how could that possibly be wrong.

But I was not happy with that simple and obvious thinking so dug a bit deeper and realised that the problem was that some parts of the mould were easier to fill than others and the solution was to make these flow channels smaller to divert the flow to the more difficult to fill areas - and it worked.

Now imagine standing up in front of an audience of experienced engineers and telling that the way to fill a mould was to make some flow channels smaller.

I was booed and jeered and still have scars on my back but a few, actually a very few engineers heard the argument and were may be not convinced but thought it worth while trying.

And it worked and they were convinced and they told other engineers and soon this became the accepted way of thinking.

I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work.

But I realised that the biggest problem facing our species was how to feed the billions of people on earth with food that was both lead to us living a long and healthy life and be sustainable.

It was obvious there was a major health across the globe from chronic or non-infectious diseases. It was well understood that this epidemic was caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place which is correct.

The simple and obvious solution was to eat less, how can that be wrong you are getting fat so eat less. That was and still is the predominant thinking but like the thinking that to fill a mould by making the flow channels bigger did not work the thinking that we can solve the epidemic of chronic diseases by eating less, however simple and obvious does not work.

I am not a drongo, I have proved the power deep thinking and not being deluded by accepting the simple and obvious once and it is time to prove this again in an area that is much more important - food and the health of the global population.

So let us get started with a bit of deep thinking, even if it is unfashionable.

 

Three Types of Food

Think of your body as a thermodynamic machine, like your car.

Energy food

It needs fuel for energy. This comes from sugars and fats - which are abundant - our supermarkets are full of them.

They are made from simple chemicals like carbon and hydrogen which we burn with oxygen to produce energy.

Not a problem.

Replacement food

It needs a range of complex chemicals to replace parts as they age and wear. We may refer to them by the names of the elements, iron, zinc, magnesium, phosphorous etc. but those elements are useless for us, they have to be combined into complex chemicals which are bio-available.

That is done for us by plants that create phytonutrients - just eating fruit and vegetables provides all we need (but we can always buy pills if we live in Finland in winter).

Not a problem.

Gut-brain food

It needs a control system to regulate our bodies. This is done by a combination of our head and gut-brain. The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to create intelligence. It is like having a supercomputer in our gut.

One of the most important jobs is to regulate our appetite.

Microbes - the first life on earth

Since life first started on earth, over a billion years ago these microbes came from the soil, entered the plants we ate and hence into our gut-brain.

Nothing new here.

Beneficial and harmful microbes

But there were, and still are beneficial microbes which are essential for life and harmful microbes which make us sick from infectious diseases.

In the past, we mainly died from infectious diseases

For most of the time that humanoid creatures have been on earth, some million years we have died young from infectious diseases with very few of us dying a natural death from old age.

We innovated to kill the harmful microbes

But we are a smart creature so we created sewage and fresh water systems, better hygiene so we weren’t bitten by so many insects, startling medical advances like anti-biotics and above all a food system that was devoid of dangerous microbes.

But we killed the beneficial microbes as well

Sounds fantastic, and indeed it is, apart from the fact that we have killed off those beneficial microbes which control our appetite so we now tend to overeat and the majority of people now get sick or die from non-infectious diseases like overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

How can we breed beneficial microbes without breeding harmful microbes?

It was obvious what was needed, a way of breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones that kill us.

There is no problem in breeding microbes, cells will start duplicating within twenty minutes and if you double anything every twenty minutes there are soon trillions of them.

The challenge is how to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones.

Control the conditions

The answer to that is simple, it is why there are no polar bears in the Sahara desert and no Antelopes in the Arctic. It has existed since the beginning of life on earth and we now call it Eco-balance. Just create the conditions which benefit the beneficial species and they will out-breed and out-compete the harmful ones.

The term Eco-balance may sound like something from an inner city trendy but it has been the basis of life from the very beginning.

Gbiota’s aim breed beneficial microbes not harmful ones

Gbiota’s aim is to breed beneficial microbes which enhance gut health. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with each other to create genuine intelligence. It is like having a supercomputer in your gut which we call our gut-brain.

Our gut-brain controls appetite

They control, among many other things, our appetite - what and how much we want to eat.

A healthy gut sends out hormones when we have eaten enough so we feel satisfied and stop craving food.

No gut-brain food - we overeat

If we do not have a healthy gut we don’t receive these hormones so we have food cravings and overeat which is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic disease, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Microbes start in the soil

These microbes start in the soil. There are trillions of them made up of many thousands of different species. Many are beneficial and keep us fit and healthy but others will make us sick or even kill us.

Microbes breed like crazy, there is no difficulty in breeding microbes. The difficulty is breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes.

Gbiota shows growers how

Gbiota shows growers how to control the conditions so the beneficial microbes out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

Gbiota links growers and consumers

You can join the Gbiota movement as a grower - which involves learning how to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes or you can join as a consumer which is simple - all you need to do is to link up with a Gbiota grower.

Register and join the Gbiota movement

Join the Gbiota movement for gut health - register as either a grower or a consumer.

 Linking to a grower

Gbiota enhances Gut Biota, which regulates your body, by breeding beneficial microbes in Wickimix – a special soil - then growing plants in this Wickimix which will transfer these microbes to your gut.

You can join the Gbiota movement in three ways

Consumer

You can join as a consumer for free to buy Gbiota boxes but you will need to link to a local grower.

We will try and link you to a local grower in your area but you will need to complete the registration form and tick the box -

Consumer (wants to link to grower to buy Gbiota boxes)

Licensed grower

You can join as a licensed grower to supply Gbiota boxes to consumers in your area, we will provide training and support on how to produce Gbiota boxes and link you to local consumers to run a profitable, social benefit business.

You can register your interest for free while we go through the process of establishing you as a licensed grower. Tick the box -

Local grower (offer Gbiota boxes for sale)

Home grower

If you want to grow Gbiota plants for your own use you can join as a private home grower. Click the box -

Private home grower (just grow for own use)

Register here

You can express your interest for free here and click on the appropriate box.

 

 

Watch this six minute video to learn about real and fake food.

 

 

Fat or skinny

Gbiota - the new industry of sustainably breeding beneficial microbes in the soil to grow plants that will enhance our gut biota to keep us healthy.

Why are some people fat and others skinny

We have known for a long time that if we feed the pooh of a skinny mouse to a fat mouse that it will become skinny and vice versa.

Of course, humans are not in the habit of eating each other’s pooh but we can get similar results with humans by a faecal transplant.

Maybe something that we don’t want to think about but taking the pooh of a fat or skinny person and poking it up someone else bum will switch them from to being fat or skinny.

Changing our gut biota can switch us from being fat or skinny.

Newton

You have no doubt heard the conventional wisdom that we get fat and sick because we eat to much and the solutions is to eat less and exercise more - the calorie balance theory.

Similarly you will no doubt be aware that despite these words of wisdom that people across the globe are getting fatter and sicker.

The fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy were given to us by Newton some two hundred years ago - how can we reconcile what appears to be opposing approaches.

What is the mechanism?

This raises many questions -

How does changing the gut biota change people from fat to skinny or vice versa? What is the mechanism?

Does it matter and how can we take advantage of this mechanism?

Well, it matters a lot. Skinny people are more prone to infectious diseases while fat people are more prone to non-infectious or chronic diseases. This has reached epidemic proportions and would probably rank as the top global health crisis - so it matters a lot.

We can answer that. Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with each other to provide genuine intelligence, particularly in deciding what and how much food we want to eat.

These microbes need to be fed, so say before we had sugar-eating microbes and we changed the balance to more fibre-eating microbes. The remaining sugar-eating microbes would feel they are starving so would send out signals to make us feel hungry leading us to want to overeat and get fat.

See food not sea food

We can loose weight by going on a calorie restricted diet but we will suffer from food cravings. We can win for a while but eventually we will see food and eat it.

Our gut-brain almost always eventually wins so leading to the well know yo-yo eating.

To win long term we need to overcome these food cravings so we feel satisfied and that is much easier than you may think - just feed our gut-brain the right sort of gut-brain food so we have a beneficial microbes in our gut.

Will it work?

Science likes general laws which can be used to solve specific problems. Newtons laws are general laws which we all thought were universally true until Einstein came along and showed us that if we were zapping around near the speed of light that we needed a modified set of general laws.

The human body, particularly our gut and heat brains, are highly sophisticated with considerable variation between people so there bad news is that there is no law which is universally true but the good news is that it is a simple and inexpensive process to feed your gut-brain for say three months and then you will know for sure whether this will work for you.

I am sorry I can’t give you a general law, I didn’t design the universe, I just do my best to understand how it works.

 

So what goes?

So what can we do about it? We can’t just start eating each other’s pooh.

Many animals from mice to elephants will eat each others pooh to feed their gut biota but they have evolved an immune system which can cope with eating other creatures’ pooh without getting sick.

We lack that immune system so no doubt you will be pleased to hear that the recommended solution does not involve us becoming pooh eaters.

Understanding our gut biota

But we can study where our gut biota comes from and use this understanding to develop strategies to enhance our gut biota.

As a baby, mum transferred her biota to us during birth, and then after from her milk but where did mum get her gut biota from? From the food she ate.

Humanoid creatures have been on this earth for some million years and modern humans, like us for some two hundred thousand years.

Eating plants grown in living soil

Until very recently we ate plants that were grown in soil full of living creatures, some like the nematodes microscopic and others like worms and beetles large enough for us to see.

All these creatures would be busy pooping out living microbes. Also, the plants exude sugars to feed the microbes living in the soil, with each plant exuding different sugars to support specific types of microbes which would benefit that plant.

Eco-balance

This is a highly sophisticated Eco-system which would generally be in a state of balance with the beneficial microbes out-competing and out-breeding any harmful microbes.

But not always and it was not uncommon, if the conditions did not preferentially benefit the beneficial microbes, that the harmful microbes would gain the upper hand.

Historically this was not good for us humans with many, actually most, people dying young before their natural life expectancy.

The wrong technology

Humans, being technologically sophisticated, developed the use of chemicals to control any potentially dangerous microbes but the net result was that we killed off the beneficial microbes which has led to the current epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases.

That is why the Gbiota technology was developed, it is based on the principles of Eco-balance so the beneficial microbes can out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is done in the soil, so the soil is teaming with beneficial microbes which will enter the plants and then our gut.

But microbes have a very short life so the plants must be eaten while fresh - shortly after picking.

Local growers

We can solve that problem by licensing the Gbiota technology to local growers who create the Eco-balance in the soil in permanent Gbiota beds.

But open mesh baskets, like supermarket baskets, are incorporated into these beds so the beneficial microbes can readily enter the baskets and hence the plants.

When the plants are ready to be eaten the Gbiota basket is then taken from the Gbiota beds, full of the Gbiota soil we call Wickimix, and delivered to the final customer who can then pick and eat the plants while genuinely fresh and hence enhance their gut biota.

Register your interest

If this is of interest, and of course, many people are put off by the whole business of creatures pooping away in the soil, but if you can handle that idea then please register your interest here.

When there are sufficient people in an area we will seek out and train a local grower so they can provide the local community with Gbiota baskets.

A new food industry for a healthy and sustainable future

Let us be clear this is creating a new industry with local growers supplying their local community, very different to the current industry dominated by global meg-corporations.

In some ways this is not new at all, microbes were the first living creatures on the earth going back billions of years and creating soil which led to an explosion of life on earth, but it was an uncontrolled process leading to epidemics of infectious diseases.

Microbes breed very easily, there is nothing new about microbes breeding what is new it controlling the conditions to create an Eco-balance so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes.

Pioneering spirits

Preferentially breeding beneficial microbes in the soil means the creation of a new industry and new industries are not created by one person, certainly not me without help, but by a team of pioneering spirits with vision who can look into the future to see what needs to be done.

If you are such a pioneering spirit I would love to hear from you so why not email me here

 

How organic growers will save us.

The great problem solvers

Humans are successful because there is no other creature or AI machine which comes close to our ability to analyse and solve problems.

The population explosion

We all have a problem that in the last hundred years the human population trebled and in the hundred years before it trebled again.

One reason the population exploded was our success in overcoming infectious disease which killed four out of every five babies borne.

On a geological time scale, in a flash we have gone from a population of under a billion to over eight billion and we all have to eat.

Finite resources

The Earth has not got any bigger and virtually every piece of available land suitable for food production has been used.

Improved efficiency

We thought we had solved any food crisis by improving the efficiency of food production which has amazingly increased faster than the dramatic increase in population.

We produce enough food overall to feed the entire global population.

Creating technologies easier than changing society

There are people starving because we are not as good at creating equitable societies which contrast badly with our skills at developing technologies.

But progress is typically a two steps forward and one step back as we overcome snags with our new technologies.

Deficiencies in modern food

The snag with modern food is that it may be hygienic, triple wrapped in plastics, but it is inert lacking the microbes which form our gut-brain which regulates our appetite so we overeat and get fat and sick from chronic diseases - overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place stemming from overeating.

Why we overeat

Why do we overeat​? Because of the lack of beneficial microbes in our gut. That regulate our appetite.

Modern food may be hygienic but it is deficient in the essential beneficial microbes.

Beneficial microbes come from our food

As these microbes live in our food and feed our gut which controls our appetite we can call this gut-brain food.

The good news is that we know how to breed these beneficial microbes - we have the technology which we we are very good at but lack the skills in creating societies which work for the benefit of the community.

Short life and dynamic equilibrium

These beneficial microbes, in gut-brain food, have a very short life, there may appear to be a stable population but they are continuously breeding and dying, what we like to call dynamic equilibrium.

Creating a new industry

This means we need to create a new industry of local growers breeding the beneficial microbes that go into gut-brain food.

This is not a technological problem, we know how to breed beneficial microbes, it is a social problem - changing the way our society works so the technology we develop works for the benefit of the community and not just a few mega-corporations.

Local versus centralised

The amazing increase in food production has, in part, come from centralised production with just a few mega corporations managing the bulk of food production whereas breeding beneficial microbes require a decentralised local industry of small scale growers.

This is not, in itself a major problem, there are many growers both organic and regenerative farmers who can grow the plants that contain the beneficial microbes.

Local growers already exist

They exist right now, we just have to change the way the system works to take advantage of their skills and dedication.

Changing the system is the difficult challenge not developing new technologies.

These are already highly skilled and dedicated growers who would welcome the opportunity to help their local community fight the battles against this modern curse of the epidemic of chronic disease.

Dedication does not pay the bills

They may be dedicated growers but they still need to pay their bills and it costs money and time to set up gut-brain food production facilities and for that they need paying customers.

I know how to promote the benefit of eating gut-brain food to the public who would certainly be willing to pay for gut-brain food so they don’t get fat and sick and have their legs chopped of from diabetes.

The chicken and the egg

But what is the point if there is no local growers where they can buy their gut-brain food.

We have a classic chicken and egg situation, how do we break that deadlock?

The solution - show you care

Here’s how and it is pretty simple.

I have set up on my website a registration page where growers can register to say they would be willing to set up gut-brain facilities as long as they could be assured there were enough local people willing to buy gut-brain food.

Simultaneously people who are are not keen on being fat and sick, or not that anxious to have a foot amputated from diabetes, can register.

Linking consumers and growers

Then I can start the process of linking growers with consumers and us humans can get back to what we are good at analysing problems and finding solutions.

 

 

 

 

The smartest creature on the planet?

We humans think we are the smartest creatures on the planet – and we are but we are dependent on the smallest creatures.

For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren, inert rock then some billion years ago microbes appeared, we don’t know from where but we think an asteroid.

The microbes broke down the rocks to release nutrients so they are bio-available to make soil. Life exploded with the most amazing and massive creatures.

Eventually, quite recently humans appeared but they struggled and died young from diseases. But they survived and developed technologies such as medical advances that enabled them to largely overcome these diseases so they lived longer.

The soil built up to massive depths, many metres in some places so there was an abundant supply of beneficial microbes but then humans developed a concept called money which deluded humans into thinking they could borrow wealth from the future and the past for immediate benefit.

This they did on a massive scale, they changed the climate and destroyed much of the soil but the costs lay in the future so, at first it was not an immediate worry. There was always time and the possibility of some new technology which would solve any problems.

But it turned out that the microbes which came from the soil did a very important job for the humans. They entered their gut and communicated with each other to create an intelligent system which regulated their bodies keeping them fit and healthy.

But without these beneficial microbes, there was no intelligent control system for humans. Hence they got fat and sick and died from an epidemic of non-infectious diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

This was not a cost in the future this is a ‘here and now’ problem with three out of four people dying from these non-infectious diseases.

Of course, they tried all sorts of solutions from sophisticated pharmaceuticals and complicated surgery but it never resolved the root cause of the problem – a lack of the beneficial microbes in their guts.

Of course, there was a simple solution that was so simple that it was just dismissed as too simple and that was to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil, then grow plants in this soil and eat the plants.

But there were just two snags that prevented this simple solution from working.

Snag number 1 the silo dwellers

The first snag was that they needed to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil without breeding the harmful microbes which causes so many problems with infectious diseases.

Microbes breed very easily but how to breed the beneficial microbes without the harmful microbes? The solution to that is simple - just create the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This was given the name Ecological balance which while it works very well sounds a bit too much like coming from the green lunatic fringe for the specialist reductionist scientist living in the techno-silos.

But that is not so serious as if ideas work they are eventually adopted despite the initial reluctance to adopt.

Snag number 2 Microbes die fast

The second snag is more difficult to overcome. Microbes may breed like crazy but they also die fast with a very short life span.

We may see the same species of microbes but they are not the same microbes, they are the grandchildren of the microbes we saw a few days ago - a situation we call dynamic equilibrium.

It is like a big city, always teeming with people but not the same people.

But there is an easy solution to this.

Find local growers who can be trained to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil.

Take a container, like a supermarket basket with plenty of holes and drop it into a hole in the soil so the creatures of the soil can easily enter the basket.

Then grow plants in this living soil.

When ready lift out the basket and supply to a customer who just has to water and when ready pick and eat the plants while they are still fresh.

When the plants are all eaten swap for a fresh basket.

Any more snags?

Yes, we have to show that such a simple solution works. That is easy, persuade a number of people to try incorporating Gbiota plants into their diet and see if food cravings stop and they feel satisfied.

People overeat because of deficiencies in their diet, remove the deficiencies and the food cravings go away and people feel satisfied.

Then we have the problem of making people aware that this simple and inexpensive solution is available in an era of mass disinformation where no one believes anything they read on the internet.

This can be solved by the ancient process of people talking to people they trust.

Wickimix

The Gbiota technology  breeds beneficial microbes in a special soil called Wickimix. Plants are grown in Wickimix and when eaten the beneficial microbes enhance our gut biota which regulates our appetite and hence wards of chronic of non-infectious diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

This website describes how our intelligent control system works and how to prepare Wickimix.

If you want to study this process then follow the links on this site. If you just want to buy plants growing in Wickimix in Gbiota baskets all you have to do is to link up with a licensed grower who can supply you with the Gbiota baskets.

As the beneficial microbes have a short life this only works with living plants so you need a supplier who can supply living plants on a regular schedule.

To link up with a grower please complete the registration form here or below and enter ‘customer’.

If you are interested in becoming a licensed Gbiota supplier then enter ‘local grower’.

 

 

 

Why develop the Gbiota technology?

Most of us now live in towns and cities. We buy our food from the local supermarket wrapped hygienically in plastic which we throw into the bin and it dutifully disappears.

The same with our human waste which we flush away without further thought.

We live in the age of technical marvels, we can video chat with a friend from the other side of the globe, we can search the internet for any obscure piece of information we desire, we can buy almost anything on line and have it delivered to our door.

If we are sick we can expect a pharmaceutical pill or a complex operation to cure us, and without doubt the advances in medical science is one of the wonders of the world.

We have also devoted the same technical expertise to developing the technologies for killing other humans on a mass scale. Why is one of the puzzles of this complex creature?

We can even jot down a few notes and have it turned into a polished article of any style we wish using AI. But not this article, this is written with human passion by me, a fellow human – but why?

Because, despite all our sophistication we are still are an animal and dependant on the Ecosystem. We will all die at some point so we, as a species, survive by breeding, which we have been doing with great success for the last million years or so – despite the lack of medical instruction manuals.

If we are to survive as a species we have to accept that we are an animal – maybe a highly intelligent animal – and the future of our species is dependant on us accepting that simple fact and coming to terms with the need to be in balance with the Eco-system on which we depend.

As a great grand farther I want to see by great grandchildren thrive and survive and indeed my species to thrive and survive way into the future.

That is what the Gbiota technology is all about, learning to adapt to the Ecosystem which supports us.

 

Welcome to Gbiota: Revolutionising Health through Soil and Gut Microbiome Science

Developed by Colin Austin, One of Australia's Leading Innovators

At Gbiota, we’re pioneering a healthier future by reconnecting humans, plants, and soil through cutting-edge technology.

Recognized by the Institute of Engineers as a trailblazer in innovation, Colin Austin has crafted a system that enriches both the soil and your health.

How It Works

Our Wickimix soil is teeming with beneficial microbes and nutrients, developed through a sustainable process that transforms organic waste into life-giving earth. Plants grown in this nutrient-rich soil become a natural source of gut-supporting microbes.

When consumed, these beneficial microbes enhance your gut biota, a key player in your body’s intelligent control system. This helps you regulate hunger, feel satisfied naturally, and avoid unhealthy cravings.

Why It Matters

• A Different Approach: Forget restrictive diets that leave you hungry. Our method supports long-term health by tackling the root causes of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, and dementia.

• Healthy Fat Distribution: Proper gut health promotes balance, helping you achieve sustainable well-being.

Explore Two Paths to Better Living

Learn for Free: Dive into our knowledge hub, where articles about diet, gut health, and longevity are available under the Creative Commons license. Share, re-publish, and spread the word.

Grow and Thrive: For growers and entrepreneurs, learn to create Wickimix soil and produce Gbiota Boxes. These can be used for personal health or as a community-focused business. Subscriptions include technical support to ensure your success.

Be Part of the Solution

The journey to better health begins with the soil beneath our feet. Join us in creating a world where nutritious food supports thriving gut health, intelligent eating, and a long, healthy life.

Explore More

 

Our intelligent control system

Infectious and chronic or non-infectious diseases

We are living longer, thanks to major advances in medical science.

In the past people died, often when young, from infectious diseases now we die predominantly from chronic or non-infectious diseases with three out of four people dying from a chronic disease.

We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

Medical science may keep us alive for a long time but far worse is that we may live for a long time with poor health. Our life span may be increasing but our health span is not.

The mind and body are inseparable

We have a mind and a body, they are inseparable with our mind controlling our bodies, I prefer to call the part of our mind that controls our body our intelligent control system.

Chronic diseases determine whether we are fit and healthy or fat and sick. They stem from our intelligent control system not working properly.

A person may be obese because they suffer from food insecurity, this may have started in early childhood or in a war when food was scarce and is now firmly implanted in our mind or intelligent control system.

The person is obese because their intelligent control system has decided that it needs to store more fat so it sends out signals to both eat more and store the excess fat.

Going on a restrictive diet or taking appetite suppressant pills like Ozempic may appear to give some temporary benefit but is not facing the core of the problem which is food insecurity which may be hidden away in our subconscious so we are not even aware of it.

Some people are fat while others are skinny. It all depends on our intelligent control system.

If it decides we should be fat we end up fat and if it decides we should be skinny we end up skinny.

Finding out how our intelligent control system works

We need to understand how our intelligent control system works. Finding a cure once the chronic disease is well established can be very challenging.

For example, it is very difficult to cure blocked arteries which can cause death but it is relatively simple to avoid arteries becoming blocked in the first place.

Prevention is so much better than cure.

We are a communal animal, we cannot breed and thrive without our tribe. If we are suffering from a deep feeling of food insecurity we may find the solution is eating communally with sympathetic members of our tribe, often our family.

The support and understanding of our tribe which focuses on the underlying cause may be a far better solution than some restrictive diet which may make matters worse.

Fat in the wrong places

The underlying cause of these diseases is fat in the wrong place, in our tummies, pancreas, arteries and brain.

So what causes fat in the wrong place? It does not just happen.

Saying that it is because we eat more than we burn and the solution is to eat less and exercise may explain how we get fat, and has not been effective.

That is just restating the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy. It does not tell us why we get fat.

We need to understand why we get fat and the answer is because our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat.

The big question

The big question is why does our intelligent control system decide we need to store more fat?

Every single person has an intelligent control system which regulates their bodies.

This system controls our temperature, heart rate, breathing and most importantly our appetite, what and how much we want to eat and how much fat we store.

If we are going to resolve the epidemic of chronic diseases we need to understand how our intelligent control system works.

Continue reading the full article on our intelligent control system.