There are many problems with our modern food system — mineral deficiencies, poor nutrition, and degraded soil — but nothing is more important than feeding our control system: the gut brain that regulates the entire body.
Traditional Communities Hold the Clues
In isolated mountain regions of rural China, diabetes is virtually nonexistent. Families have been farming the same land sustainably for thousands of years. Their methods are simple but shockingly effective — and very different from modern industrial agriculture.
One major difference is their attitude toward waste. What we politely call “shit,” they call fertiliser. Old women walk fields gathering animal and human manure, placing it carefully around each plant. Every cabbage in a field may have a small radial fan of manure around it — a nutrient-rich micro-ecosystem feeding living soil biology.
Now compare that to modern Chinese cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, where vegetables are grown hydroponically or in sterile soil, transported long distances, and purchased in supermarkets. The vegetables look perfect — but their living microbial content is nearly zero.
Genetically, the city people and the mountain villagers are the same. They eat similar vegetables. The difference is the microbial content of the food they grow and eat.
It becomes impossible to ignore the obvious — how we grow our food shapes our health far more than we realise.
Modern "Diabetic Plants" vs. Living Soil Plants
There is a long list of plants promoted for helping diabetes — Fenugreek, bitter melon, Emla, Ginseng, Goji berries, and many more. Many people buy these as extracts or pills. But were they grown in living soil? Were they harvested and eaten while the microbes were still alive?
A plant grown hydroponically or in dead soil, shipped for days, then processed into a pill does not contain the living microbiome of a plant grown in nutrient-dense soil that is alive with beneficial microbes.
Microbes Matter — More Than We Realise
Scientific research shows that gut microbes strongly influence weight and metabolic health. Transplant the microbes from a fat mouse into a skinny mouse and the skinny mouse becomes fat — and vice versa.
Growing microbe-rich plants is easy. Even people in apartments can grow plants in living soil, and it costs far less than supermarket vegetables. The only downside? Our current food and pharmaceutical industries earn far more money keeping the system as it is.
We Can’t Use Yaks in City Apartments — So We Need New Methods
Rural communities fertilise their fields using Yak dung, but urban environments obviously cannot. That is why Gbiota technology exists — to recreate the ecological function of living soil in a clean, modern, simple system anyone can use.
It really is not difficult to fix the problem. The biggest barrier is awareness. As the saying goes (often attributed to Lincoln):
"Bad things happen when good men stand by and do nothing."
If you know someone with diabetes, please tell them about this work. Encourage them to grow a few microbe-rich plants at home and measure their blood sugar before and after. The results speak for themselves.
We may live in the misinformation age, but people still trust people they know. That is how real change begins.
Gbiota is a practical way to grow “gut food” at home—plants rich in beneficial microbes and key minerals like zinc that support our immune system and help prevent chronic, non-infectious diseases.
I have written a lot about the theoretical aspect of growing gut food—now it is time to get down to the nitty-gritties of setting up a Gbiota system.
But just bear with me for a couple of paragraphs while I set the scene.
Be pragmatic
In developing the Gbiota growing system I have had to consider ease of use and strike a balance between what is technically best and what people are actually willing to do in today’s high-pressure lifestyle.
Let us be clear on what we are trying to do: prevent non-infectious diseases.
To do that we must:
Breed the beneficial microbes that will end up in our gut, and
Ensure there is a good supply of minerals—like zinc, which powers our immune system.
The heart of Gbiota is simple: grow food that carries living microbes and minerals our body has evolved to depend on.
Randy lot
There is no problem about breeding microbes—they are a randy lot and breed within about 20 minutes of creation, growing exponentially.
There are just two problems.
If I can demonstrate my knowledge of microbiology—there are just three sorts of bugs:
Good bugs – keep us healthy
Dozy bugs – hang out and don’t do much
Bad bugs – make us sick and can even kill us
Now, being equally knowledgeable on microbiology, you will have worked out that what we want is the good bugs and not the bad bugs.
There is no real way of killing off the bad bugs without killing off the good bugs, so we come to the real essence of the Gbiota system:
Create conditions where the good bugs outcompete the bad bugs so the bad bugs never become a serious hazard.
The second problem is that the good bugs, which we so carefully breed like a prize pet, not only breed very rapidly but also die very rapidly—so the plants must be eaten shortly after harvesting.
Right now the only way you can do this is to grow gut food yourself. In the future I would like to see a local gut-brain food industry, but for now it is up to you.
The basics
I see three levels of Gbiota growing:
Gbiota pots – regular flower pots stacked to create separate zones, light enough to be easily handled.
Gbiota boxes – really wicking beds in box form, too heavy to manhandle.
Gbiota beds – raised beds which require a proper system for managing the water.
All Gbiota systems work on the same principle, but there are many ways this can be applied in practice.
In this article I focus on the simplest system I can imagine—Gbiota pots—to illustrate the core principles. I plan to cover the alternative systems in later posts.
The three zones of a Gbiota pot
They all have three zones:
1. Growing zone
The top zone is where the plants grow. It contains soil loaded with mature organic compost, teaming with microbes, nutrients and minerals.
In my example I use a regular flower pot, which I load with mature Gbiota mix.
Apart from having some of the best soil in the business, this is just regular growing.
I do put some organic waste at the very bottom of the pot, but this is well away from the early root zone and will have pretty much decomposed by the time the roots reach it.
2. Breeding zone
The breeding zone is exactly what it says—the zone where we breed the beneficial microbes that will end up powering our gut-brain.
I use a second flower pot below the growing pot and load it with a combination of kitchen waste and any other organic waste I can lay my hands on—typically a mix of grass clippings and chicken manure.
One practical problem is how to collect and store kitchen waste, which is produced daily and, if left lying about, attracts the blowies and other flies.
I keep a bag of Gbiota soil mix to sprinkle on the surface so it gives a nice, clean cover.
In my locality we have soldier flies which lay eggs that produce soldier fly larvae—excellent decomposers.
We also need worms, which we can easily add as worm eggs; they soon breed up.
I have compost bins in my garden, but people in flats may not have that luxury. Using two pots, it is simple: just lift up the top pot and load today’s kitchen waste into the breeding pot.
It is important to get the nitrogen levels up, so I use fresh chicken manure. That may not be so attractive for flat dwellers, so another trick is to put today’s kitchen waste on a tray with some waste bread or bird seed. Local birds will happily visit and provide a free manure delivery service—no credit card needed.
It is also important to add minerals. I use:
Crushed rock (cracker dust) used for driveways which, in my area, is largely Bauxite—cheap and rich in magnesium, one of our commonly deficient minerals.
Biomin, which contains a spectrum of trace elements (including some zinc) but is more expensive.
Blood and bone is good for zinc, which is critical for a healthy immune system (I bet you have forgotten about Covid, but the flu is still here) and it satisfies my obsession with recycling.
This breeding zone will need topping up with fresh organic waste. Using separate pots means all you have to do is lift off the growing pot, make a small hole, and add extra kitchen or organic waste as needed.
3. Catching the run-off
We need to catch the run-off, so we use a third container—a $2 bucket is fine.
Fluid drains down from the top pot, through the second pot, and is caught in the bucket.
Soil blood
You may be tempted to dismiss the water you catch as just dirty water. But look at it under a microscope and you will see it is full of weird and wonderful creatures wriggling away.
Healthy soil is full of life—from the larger creatures we can easily see, like worms and soldier fly maggots, to smaller creatures we need a microscope for, right down to the most minute—the viruses.
These creatures have guts like us, doing the same job our guts do.
This life is what turns dirt into soil, forming aggregates, giving soil its structure and, ultimately, keeping us healthy.
Technically, I suppose I should call this “compost tea”, but that does not do this magic liquid justice, so I call it soil blood.
In our bodies we have blood carrying sugars for energy, minerals and complex nutrients, as well as the cells that make up our immune system, keeping the baddies at bay.
Plants also have an immune system and a system of making complex chemicals we call phyto-chemicals. This yukky-looking brown fluid is just as valuable to the plant world as blood is to us.
So we want to catch it and reuse it.
We can even boost it by adding blood and bone or Biomin minerals to make it even more potent.
Breathe the soil
The key to getting air into the soil (and avoiding a pongy mess) is to let the soil breathe. We achieve this with flood and drain.
We flood the soil, which expels toxic gases like methane that accumulate during decomposition and act as growth inhibitors. Then we let the soil drain, and as the water drains away it automatically sucks fresh air back into the soil.
Dunk or flush
With a small flower pot, like I am using in this example, it is easy to lift the pot out, dunk it into a container, and let it saturate. It is best to do this slowly so the air has time to escape—if you do it quickly, you will see air bubbling to the surface.
But when you are using bigger boxes, like the basket I will write about shortly, they can get really heavy to lift.
I am a great believer in the phrase “perfection is the enemy of progress”, and I want people to use the Gbiota system, so I must make it as easy to use as possible.
So I have tried simply catching this soil blood, putting it into a watering can (without the rose) and flooding the soil surface so a wave of water flows down through the soil and ends up in the catchment bucket.
This may not be as good technically as the dunk-and-drain method, but it works. And it is easy.
The key is to have a big enough slug of soil blood and apply it fast enough so it totally saturates the surface and reaches the catchment bucket below.
What to grow
Now let us get real here—one bucket is not going to feed an entire family. (The basket, being rectangular, is more productive—see the next post.)
But we are not trying to grow all our food. Despite the howls of protest from dietitians, there is really not that much wrong with supplying our energy needs from Hungry Jacks. But Hungry Jack will not feed our gut-brain—that is what the Gbiota system is all about.
We only need to supply about 5% of our total food intake as Gbiota food.
Growing plants to full maturity can take several months, so you get much more food by growing baby greens, which are often more nutritious and tastier anyway.
I make up a mix of seeds from fast-growing plants like rocket and radish to slower-growing plants like baby broccoli. It may take up to four weeks from germination to first harvest, but then I will have a continuous supply of food for four or more weeks.
We still need more than one bucket. How many depends on the season (how fast plants are growing) and how much organic waste you generate.
As the time from seeding to seeding will be about eight weeks, and most people will want to empty their kitchen waste every week, we are talking about having around eight sets of pots—which will set you back about $24, so a single finger up to the bank manager (do they still exist? Not for much longer with AI).
Here is a cartoon series for the process.
We live in the misinformation age. Later I will take a general view of the damage caused by misinformation but let me start with a specific case - amputations from diabetes.
Diabetes is important, it is the fasted growing disease of modern times and every eight seconds some unfortunate soul has a limb amputated.
Let me work through on a step by step basis.
Diabetes leads to high blood sugars which makes the blood more thick and viscous so it cannot get through the fine capillaries feeding our extremities so they simply go rotten and have to be amputated.
Next step - why do we get diabetes? The first stage, which often goes unnoticed is that we become resistant to insulin which is the hormone which controls blood sugar but then our pancreas, which makes the insulin, becomes clogged with fat and can no longer make insulin.
Next step - and this is where things go wrong - why does our body store excess fat? The misinformation is that this is simply due to us eating too much sugary fatty food so the solution is to go on a calorie restricted diet. It is true that eating too much sugary fatty food is not healthy but it misses the step ‘why do we eat to much sugary fatty food’
Next step - why so we eat too much sugary fatty food? We have an intelligent control system, made up of our gut and head brains which control our bodies including our appetite. If our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat it will send out hormones to make us hungry and is is almost impossible to defy these hormones over time.
Next step - how do we manage our intelligent control system so it stops us storing excess fat? Answer - training and gut composition.
Our intelligent control starts to learn the minute we are born. If we cut our food intake so there is not enough food we are teaching our gut brain that it needs to store food - excessively restrictive diets are teaching our gut brain to make as fat - exactly the opposite of what we want.
Our gut brain is made up of trillions of microbes which are foreign to us. If we have the wrong sort of microbes they will make us fat but we can simply change our microbes by changing the type of food we eat.
Next step - why are we eating the wrong sort of food?
OK it is time to go general. Diabetes is just one of the many illnesses that is the result of poor food and storing excess fat. The big killers of our era are heart attacks, strokes and dementia and they all have the common theme of food that makes us store the wrong sort of fat in the wrong places.
We live in the era where we have the greatest access to information the world has ever experienced - the internet. But we are also living in the era where power has migrated to global corporations who have more power and money than even a medium sized country and they are ultimately motivated by power and money.
They have more power and money than many Governments and by comparison an isolated consumer has negligible power.
They are extremely good at manipulative promotion so we buy what will make them the most money. In the case of food that is sugary fatty foods. It is virtually impossible for them to provide the fresh food with the beneficial living microbes we need in our gut - they just die before they are even on the shelves.
Next step - what can we do about it?
We are not totally helpless we just need two things. We need information and we need the technology of growing the food that will make us healthy.
That is where the Gbiota movement comes into play. Gbiota is a social benefit organisation, we rely on people volunteering their time and sometimes money to make sure the public has access to the proper information. We cannot supply the world with food that will make people healthy and avoid getting fat and sick but we can give them the information on what to eat and how to grow it.
We simply do not have the money to run massive advertising campaigns but we can be more effective by relying on real people to tell their friends about the Gbiota movement and persuade them to join the movement.
Growing food to feed your gut brain is about using modern technology for what really matters – extending our healthy years, not just our lifespan.
From James Watt’s steam engine through to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, technology has reshaped how we live. Yet when it comes to food and health, these advances have often been misused. Instead of working for the benefit of communities, they too often enrich a handful of mega-corporations while our health span – the years we live in good health – declines.
At the start of the last century, most people died from infectious disease. Thanks to powerful combinations of technology, medical science and hygiene, we reduced deaths from infection to only a small fraction of total mortality. That is how technology should work – improving lives on a large scale.
But look more closely. Today, many people are not living active, healthy lives into their eighties and nineties. Instead, they face chronic conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, dementia and, fastest-growing of all, diabetes. Every eight seconds, somewhere in the world, a person loses a limb to diabetes – a modern phenomenon directly linked to how we use technology in our food system.
The core problem is simple: our high-tech food system does not properly feed our gut brain – the intelligent control system that keeps us lean, energised and resilient.
Our Intelligent Gut–Brain Control System
We have an intelligent control system formed by the interaction of our gut brain and head brain. Together they regulate our bodies. This system:
Controls appetite and where and how we store fat.
Coordinates the replacement of cells and tissues as they wear and age.
Trains and supports our immune system to defend against disease.
When this gut–brain system is well fed and supported, it keeps us healthy. When it is starved of the right signals from real food and living microbes, we gain fat in the wrong places, feel unwell and become vulnerable to chronic disease.
The reason so many people get fat and sick is that our industrial food system simply does not feed the gut brain. It delivers energy, additives and shelf life – but not the living biology that our internal control system depends on.
Growing Plants as Natural Prebiotics and Probiotics
Right now, we already have the technology to change this. We can grow plants that act as both prebiotics and probiotics by breeding beneficial microbes in the soil and managing conditions so the “good guys” outbreed and control the harmful microbes.
This is what Gbiota technology is about: practical methods anyone can use to grow plants that support gut biology. It can be done at scale and at minimal cost. So why is this not the norm?
The answer is straightforward. Very few people know about it, and it is not in the financial interests of the mega-corporations that dominate our highly centralised food system. They rely on long supply chains and extended shelf life. In contrast, plants grown as pre- and probiotics need to be eaten soon after picking, while their beneficial microbes are still alive – which calls for local, decentralised food systems.
So what can we do about that?
Option 1: Accept that limb amputations from diabetes every eight seconds are just a feature of modern life.
Option 2: Recognise that we live not in an information age, but in a misinformation age – and actively push back with real facts and real food.
The only serious choice is Option 2. We need to build a community movement that gives people clear, trustworthy information and shows them how to act on it.
We counter the misinformation age not with slogans, but with living plants grown to feed our gut microbes and real-world proof of the health benefits.
Independent Research and Community Action
I have spent years writing about these topics on my website www.gbiota.com. The next step is rigorous, independent research that measures the impact of gut-food plants on real people in real communities.
I am currently fundraising to support a PhD project at the University of Queensland to:
Conduct laboratory research on plants specifically grown as prebiotics and probiotics.
Run community-based trials where people shift to diets that include these plants.
Measure outcomes such as blood sugar levels to see the benefits quickly and objectively.
This work needs to be independent – free from the influence of large commercial interests – so that results are credible and focused on community health rather than profit.
I do not have billions of dollars for a global advertising campaign. What I do have – and what you have – is the ability to share reliable information person-to-person. You can help simply by telling your friends, both in your local community and online, about gut food, gut microbes and Gbiota-style growing.
We may live in the misinformation age, but people still listen to those they trust. When they see neighbours, friends or family members growing and eating microbe-rich plants and enjoying better health, that is more persuasive than any marketing campaign.
The path forward is clear: grow food that feeds your gut brain, prove the benefits in everyday life, and share those stories through trusted community networks.
‘I will just give these to the chickens.’ How can such a simple phrase lead to a major rethink of how we stay fit and healthy.
You see I was standing at Community Lifestyle Support’s nursery on one of their market days when I heard that phrase and it really got me thinking about the supply system for fresh vegetables.
I know just how important our gut biome is, our modern epidemic of non infectious diseases like heart attacks, strokes, dementia and particularly diabetes all stem from a poor gut biome which forms part of our intelligent control system which manages how much and where we store fat.
Plants are natural pre and pro biotics, our gut evolved over a couple of million years by our predecessors eating green leaves so we know they work.
The snag is that the microbes in and on green leaves have a short life span, one hour for a microbe is equivalent to a human year so plants are the most healthy and taste much better if they are eaten within 24 hours of picking.
Each day after that the beneficial microbes are progressively replaced by harmful microbes until the plant is obviously rotten.
That is why we developed the Gbiota box system so people can have plants full of beneficial microbes growing in soil teaming with microbes and nutrients.
But there was two things that struck me at that market day.
First even though growing plants at home is undoubtedly the best way of improving gut health there is still a lot of people who just don’t want the hassle and prefer to buy the plants directly.
Secondly although there are many successful home gardeners growing their own food for their health there are times when the crops grow so well that there is a total abundance of plants and they have no idea what to do with this surplus other than give it to the chickens.
There are probably millions of tons of perfectly good food, full of beneficial microbes going to waste because these home growers have no easy way of supplying this to people who really need it.
Then it struck me - I am sitting on the solution with my web aptly named www.pickandeat.shop
Home growers can simply advertise, for free on my web, that they have surplus food. If they wish they can make a charge for this food which people pay for on line then just go and pick up at some set time, say between 10 to 11 on Saturday morning.
Even commercial growers could use this system, receiving pre paid orders which customers just pick up at the local market.
This would save millions of tons of food going to waste (and I hate to see food wasted) and mean people would have access to fresh food before the beneficial microbes are replaced by the harmful microbes.
Interested? Just email me at colin@gbiota.com and I will send you details of how to set up your pickandeat.shop advert.
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