This article reflects on more than four decades of work exploring technology, soil, water, food systems, and health. It explains how early work in computer modelling led to irrigation innovation, wicking beds, and eventually a focus on diabetes and gut biology. The central idea is simple but profound: while we can produce enough food to feed the world, declining food quality and damaged gut biology now threaten long-term human health. Restoring biologically active soil and gut bacteria may be critical for our future.

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Looking Back After 21 Years

This website is now more than twenty-one years old. Over that time the focus has evolved, but the underlying concern has remained the same: how do we survive and thrive as a species? In recent years my attention has centred on improving gut bacteria by growing plants in biologically active soil. Earlier work focused on diabetes, wicking beds, intelligent irrigation, and subsurface watering systems. All of these threads are connected by one idea—systems thinking.

Early Technology and a Turning Point

Back in 1974 I realised that computers were going to change the world. This was in the era of punch cards, long before touch screens and personal devices. I taught myself programming and wrote software called Moldflow. Using numerical methods, it solved problems that conventional mathematics could not, such as predicting how hot plastic flows into a cold mould.

Today this sort of modelling is common, but at the time it was new territory. The software took off, and my company became one of Australia’s leading exporters of technical software. Despite the success, we were still a small operation competing with global multinationals. To survive, we had to keep innovating.

The Zig-Zag Approach to Research

I discovered that true innovation rarely follows a straight line. Instead, it comes from speculative research—exploring ideas that look strange or even foolish at first. Most fail, but a few lead to breakthroughs. I called this the “zig-zag” approach to research.

After nearly twenty years running the company, I began to feel uneasy. While the business was successful, I was no longer convinced I was working on the most important problems. The question that kept returning was not how to optimise manufacturing, but how humanity would survive the challenges ahead.

A Shift to Soil and Water

I sold the company and redirected my energy toward what I saw as the real limiting factors for our future: soil and water. That decision marked the beginning of this website. Food, after all, comes from soil and water. If those systems fail, no amount of technology can compensate.

The Irrigator’s Dilemma

One of the first problems I tackled was irrigation efficiency. If you apply a small amount of water, it wets the surface and is quickly lost through evaporation. If you apply too much, water drains past the root zone, taking valuable nutrients with it. The challenge is delivering just enough water, exactly where plants need it.

I explored two main solutions. The first was subsurface irrigation, which delivers water below the surface. The second was intelligent irrigation scheduling, where the system “learns” how much water plants use and applies only what is needed to reach the base of the root zone.

From Failure to Insight

I developed working systems based on these ideas, but they did not achieve commercial success. They were effective, but too complex for widespread adoption. However, zig-zag research often produces unexpected results. While working on these systems, I realised that placing a plastic film beneath the root zone solved many problems at once.

This barrier prevents water and nutrients from draining away. Scheduling becomes simple: fill until full. Experts warned the water would become stagnant and putrid, but experiments showed that if the water was cycled, the system worked extremely well.

The Birth of Wicking Beds

Although this approach did not take off with large commercial growers, it led directly to the development of wicking beds. These beds spread rapidly and are now used around the world. Unfortunately, many imitations ignored the importance of soil biology. Using inert materials such as stones and fabric reduced performance and missed the core principle.

Soil biology is not optional. It is central to nutrient cycling, water efficiency, and plant health. Numerous articles on this site explain how wicking beds work best when soil life is supported rather than sterilised.

A Personal Turning Point: Diabetes

My work took another major turn when my wife, Xiulan, was diagnosed with diabetes. At that point, my focus shifted from abstract questions about humanity to the very concrete task of helping someone I love. Diabetes forced me to confront food quality, not just food quantity.

The world is capable of producing enough calories for everyone, now and into the future. The problem is quality. Mass-produced foods are often high in carbohydrates and sugars because they are cheap to produce at scale. They are frequently low in essential minerals and phytonutrients—complex compounds made by plants that support human health.

Insulin, Resistance, and a Simple Trap

Our bodies have a powerful mechanism for dealing with carbohydrates and sugar: insulin. When sugar intake is high, insulin rises to move glucose out of the bloodstream. Over time, chronic excess insulin can lead to insulin resistance. This is the pathway to type 2 diabetes.

On the surface, the solution seems obvious: reduce sugar and refined carbohydrates and eat more nutrient-rich food. If it were that simple, a third of the global population would not be diabetic or pre-diabetic. Something else is clearly at work.

Diet Alone Is Not Enough

Changing diet is essential, but it is often not sufficient. The missing factor is gut biology. We are only beginning to understand the complexity of the gut microbiome, yet we already know it plays a central role in health.

Gut bacteria produce essential vitamins, help unlock minerals from food, interact with the immune system, and manufacture hormones that influence mood, appetite, and behaviour. In many ways, the gut acts as a second brain.

Why Willpower Fails

If your gut biology is sending strong signals to eat certain foods—such as sugar or rich desserts—it is extremely difficult to resist over the long term. This is not a failure of character. It is biology. Appetite and cravings are regulated by chemical signals that evolved to keep us alive, not to cope with modern processed food.

The New Focus: Changing Gut Biology

This reality has shaped the current focus of my research. If we want lasting change, we must improve gut biology itself. That means providing the gut with the diversity of organisms and nutrients it needs to function as a stable control system.

Growing plants in biologically active soil is one part of this solution. Plants grown in living soil carry beneficial microbes and higher mineral content. When combined with practices such as fermentation, they can help reintroduce diversity and resilience into the gut ecosystem.

Connecting the Threads

Looking back, the path from computer modelling to irrigation, wicking beds, diabetes, and gut health is not as strange as it seems. Each step involves systems that must be balanced and adaptive. Computers need feedback loops. Irrigation systems need control. Soils need living biology. Human health depends on internal ecosystems working as intended.

Why This Matters for the Future

The survival of our species does not hinge on producing more calories. It depends on producing food that supports long-term health and functional biology. As chronic disease rises, we face limits not of technology, but of biological resilience.

If we continue to degrade soil biology and ignore gut biology, we will spend ever more resources managing disease rather than preventing it. Rebuilding these living systems may be one of the most important challenges of our time.

Moving Forward

The articles on this site explore these ideas in detail—from soil and water systems to diabetes and gut health. The work continues, guided by the same principle that has driven it from the beginning: real solutions come from understanding how systems work as a whole, not from chasing single fixes.

 

This article explains why common approaches to type 2 diabetes—low fat, low carb, plant-based, or fasting—can help, yet often fail to “stick” for many people. The missing piece is gut biology. Our gut is not just for digestion; it is a control system that influences appetite, cravings, blood sugar stability, immunity, inflammation, and even mood. I outline a practical, pragmatic path: restore gut biology first using biologically active food and fermentation, then fine-tune diet, fasting, exercise, minerals, and habits.

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Why This Matters

Type 2 diabetes has become a modern epidemic, and it sits inside a larger crisis of non-communicable diseases: obesity, heart attacks, stroke, fatty liver, dementia, and many problems that look unrelated but share common roots. Health systems spend vast sums managing symptoms, yet numbers keep rising and the age of onset keeps dropping. Many people now live for decades on stronger and stronger medication, without ever feeling that the underlying problem is being resolved.

What makes the situation worse is confusion. Patients hear one expert say “cut fat” and another say “fat is fine, cut carbs.” Some say “go vegan,” others say “avoid plants,” others say “fast,” and others say “never skip breakfast.” People are not stupid; they are overwhelmed. When advice becomes contradictory, many tune out and fall back into the comfort of the familiar modern diet that created the problem in the first place.

Xiulan’s Diabetes

This work is not an abstract interest. My wife Xiulan developed type 2 diabetes and experienced serious complications. At times her eyesight deteriorated. She fell down stairs and broke multiple bones in her foot. After surgery, the foot began to turn black. Anyone who has watched that sequence understands that diabetes is not a “slightly high reading.” It is a disease that can destroy quality of life in slow motion, and then suddenly accelerate.

We worked hard on diet changes and thought we were improving her condition, only to see blood sugar jump unexpectedly. Sometimes these shifts appear to link to heat, stress, travel, sleep disruption, or some other change in environment. If you are dealing with diabetes inside a family, you quickly learn that simple rules are not enough. You need a system that works under real-life conditions.

The Specialist Problem: Treating Symptoms, Not Causes

When we sought specialist advice, we were told diabetes is not reversible and will steadily get worse. The recommended path was stronger medication, then insulin injections, and eventually the expected list of complications. That view is common. It is also discouraging, because it implies the only hope is permanent management of decline.

Yet for years I have also read work by qualified doctors who claim diabetes can be reversed by diet and lifestyle changes. This is not fringe “magic plant” material. These are medical practitioners treating diabetics every day. The fact that two groups of qualified professionals can hold opposite views tells you something important: diabetes is not a simple mechanical failure with one standard fix.

What Type 2 Diabetes Really Is

Diabetes is often described as “high blood sugar.” That is true, but incomplete. High blood sugar is a symptom. The core problem is insulin resistance: insulin fails to move sugar from the bloodstream into muscles and organs efficiently. A widely accepted explanation is that fat accumulates inside muscle cells and organs such as the liver and blocks this transfer.

Standard treatment often increases insulin action or insulin levels to push sugar down. This can be essential in the short term to prevent damage, but it may worsen the long-term disease because insulin promotes fat storage and tends to increase hunger. Over time the pancreas can become exhausted, and then diabetics may rely on injections for life. That is why a symptom-focused approach can create a trap: it manages the immediate danger while nudging the system further into insulin resistance.

The Diet Wars: Low Fat, Low Carb, High Fibre, Fasting

Four broad strategies dominate the diabetes debate, and each has logic behind it.

Low-fat diets aim to reduce fat accumulation by reducing fat intake. This seems sensible, but in practice many low-fat foods become high-sugar or high-starch foods, and appetite often remains a problem.

Low-carb or high-fat diets argue that carbohydrates create insulin spikes that drive hunger, fat storage, and insulin resistance. Many people see rapid improvements in blood sugar on low-carb plans, especially early on.

Plant-based high-fibre diets focus on whole plants, slower digestion, and fibre that reduces sugar spikes. Plants also contain phytonutrients and can feed gut microbes.

Intermittent fasting reduces the time the body is processing food and producing insulin, giving periods where insulin drops and stored fat can be mobilised. I have trialled fasting myself because it is safer to test on me than to test first on a diabetic. I found moderate fasting workable when it is flexible, not extreme. A simple “late breakfast, early dinner” approach can be practical and sustainable, and it is surprisingly controllable.

The problem is not that one of these is “the truth” and the others are “lies.” The problem is that different people respond differently, and the current debate often ignores why.

Why Advice Conflicts: The Food System Has Changed

Before we argue about the best diet, we should acknowledge that modern food is not the same as food fifty years ago. Agriculture has become extraordinarily productive. Hygiene has improved. Supermarkets demand long shelf life and visual perfection. Produce is often washed aggressively to remove microbes. Crops are bred for yield, transport, and appearance.

That sounds like progress, but there are hidden costs. Soils have often been driven for yield rather than mineral density and biological richness. Many trace minerals matter to human physiology, yet they do not necessarily matter to plant yield. There is no strong economic incentive to replace trace minerals if the plants look fine. Minerals such as chromium and vanadium are often discussed in relation to blood sugar control, but modern farming rarely targets these as outcomes.

Even more important is soil biology. Vegetables grown in biologically active soil are naturally covered in microbes. In the past, people regularly consumed a “background dose” of soil-derived biology through fresh produce. Modern washing, storage, and sterilisation reduce that biology. Produce may be cleaner, but it can also be biologically poorer.

Meanwhile diets have shifted toward processed foods engineered to be irresistible: sugar, fats, salt, and refined starch. These foods do not just add calories; they shape cravings. Gut biology adapts to what we eat, and that adaptation may be driving modern eating patterns.

How Diet Is Studied: Three Methods, Three Limitations

Most nutrition arguments rely on one of three types of evidence.

Observational studies compare populations. They are cheap and can involve large numbers, but they cannot prove cause. Lifestyle, culture, stress, sunlight, activity, and community all blur the picture.

Clinic-based evidence comes from doctors who apply a specific diet model and see results. This is powerful because it is real life, not theory. But it can be biased: success stories are shared, and failures are less visible. Also, patients who choose a specialist clinic are already a self-selected group.

Controlled trials are the gold standard, yet dietary trials are difficult to run cleanly because people do not live in laboratories. Even when results are “statistically significant,” the effect sizes can be weak. A 10–20% improvement may be real, but it is not the sort of reliability people want when facing a serious disease.

As an engineer, I find weak reliability unacceptable. If an aircraft arrived at the correct destination only 15% of the time, the airline would collapse. Engineers would immediately conclude that a key component is missing.

The Aeroplane Problem: Missing the Rudder

Think of the human body as a system. We talk endlessly about fuel (carbs, fat, calories) and engines (metabolism). But systems do not function reliably without control. Planes need rudders, autopilots, sensors, and feedback loops. Without control, even a powerful engine is not enough to reach the destination.

In human health, the control system is not just the “brain in the head.” It is also the gut brain and the microbial ecosystem inside us. If gut biology is damaged, appetite control can fail. Cravings can intensify. Energy handling changes. The result is that even “correct” dietary advice becomes hard to follow, because the body does not behave like a simple machine. It behaves like an intelligent system trying to satisfy signals it believes are necessary.

Gut Biology as an Intelligent System

The gut microbiome is not one organism. It is thousands of families, species, and sub-species, interacting continuously. No single bacterium “decides” to make you eat cake. Intelligence emerges from communication between many simple units. This is how brains work, how ant colonies operate, and how ecosystems stabilise themselves.

Gut biology communicates with the body through hormones, immune signals, and nerves. It affects appetite signals, inflammation, insulin sensitivity, and even mood. It is a form of biology-based decision-making. When gut biology is stable and diverse, appetite control often becomes easier. When it is compromised, appetite can feel like an enemy you cannot defeat with willpower.

Why “Just Eat Less and Exercise More” Fails

The long-running message “eat less, exercise more” fails because it assumes the body is a simple calculator. It is not. Appetite is controlled by hormones and by the gut-brain system. If you damage the control system, lectures do not repair it. People can force weight loss for a period, but the system often rebounds because biology is trying to maintain what it believes is normal.

Also, modern food is addictive in a practical sense. The combination of sugar, fat, and salt triggers reward pathways. The result is not “weak character”; it is a predictable response to engineered food acting on a compromised control system.

A Simple Social Example: The Cheesecake at the Party

Imagine you are at a party determined to eat only salad. Your conscious mind is sincere. Then someone offers cheesecake. The smell, the social cues, the emotion of being included, the pleasure expectation, the dopamine anticipation—suddenly your intention is under pressure. If you have strong gut biology and stable appetite control, you may refuse easily. If not, refusal can feel like trying to hold your breath forever. Eventually the body wins.

This is why diet advice alone often fails: it assumes decisions are made by logic, when in reality decisions are heavily shaped by internal signals and learned reward loops.

Why Commercial Probiotics Often Disappoint

Many people hope probiotics are the simple fix: take a pill and repair the gut. Sometimes they help, particularly for specific digestive issues. But rebuilding an ecosystem of thousands of interacting species is not like replacing a flat battery.

Many commercial products contain a small number of strains. Some do not include species capable of long-term colonisation. Some are destroyed by stomach acid. And even when bacteria arrive alive, they still need the right food environment to thrive. A few strains do not automatically rebuild diversity, resilience, and stability.

Faecal transplant is a proof that gut biology can change health rapidly, but it is not a mass solution for millions of people. We need practical daily methods to rebuild gut ecology.

There Is No Single “Perfect” Gut

Healthy people from different parts of the world can have very different gut profiles. There is no single ideal microbiome. What matters is ecological strength: diversity, stability, and the ability to resist harmful species. This supports a practical conclusion: we should aim to rebuild complexity, not chase one “magic” strain.

So What Is the Practical Path?

If gut biology is central, then the first step in reversing diabetes is to rebuild gut ecology. Only then does it make sense to fight over fine details of macros. A healthy gut control system makes good eating easier, because cravings reduce and appetite signals become more trustworthy.

That brings us to a practical requirement: gut biology needs regular inputs of living biology and the foods that support it. In the old world, people got that naturally. In the modern world, we often do not.

Biologically Active Food: Soil, Minerals, and Microbes

Vegetables grown in biologically active, mineral-rich soil can carry beneficial biology. When eaten fresh, they can act as natural probiotics. They also contain fibre and phytonutrients that feed and shape gut ecology. This is one reason I have focused on growing systems that increase soil biology rather than sterilising it.

Minerals matter too. The body requires trace minerals to manufacture enzymes and hormones that regulate metabolism. I am not enthusiastic about simply swallowing mineral supplements, because absorption and balance are complex. I prefer minerals delivered through food grown in soils designed to release and cycle minerals through biology.

The Reliability Problem: Gardens Have Gluts and Gaps

Growing your own biologically active vegetables is valuable, but it has a major flaw: you get gluts and gaps. One week you have too much, then nothing is ready. Health improvements require consistency. You do not want a “good week” followed by three weeks of nothing.

Fermentation: The Missing Tool for Consistency

Traditional cultures solved the reliability problem with fermentation. Fermentation preserves food and multiplies biology. It converts a glut into a stable daily resource. Fermented vegetables are not just “stored vegetables.” They are living foods that can act as both probiotic and prebiotic support.

In my own experiments, fermented vegetables produced clear signs of increased gut activity. That does not prove they reverse diabetes on their own, but it does show they can change gut function in ways you can observe, not just theorise about.

G-Biota as a Practical System

G-Biota combines biologically active growing with fermentation. The aim is not perfection. The aim is a practical routine that fits daily life: a regular intake of living fermented vegetables grown in an environment designed to support soil biology and mineral cycling.

In practice, it can be consumed in small daily amounts. It can be combined with other foods to make it pleasant. The key is not the exact recipe; the key is regularity and ecological input.

Integration: Gut Biology, Food Choice, Fasting, Exercise, Stress

Gut biology is central, but not the only factor. Diabetes is multi-factorial. Diet composition still matters. Fasting can be useful. Exercise can shift blood sugar quickly in many people. Stress can push blood sugar up through cortisol. Sleep matters. Social support matters.

What I am arguing is that these tools work better when the gut control system is repaired. Without that, people are trying to steer the plane without a rudder.

Why This Is Not a Miracle Cure

I do not claim that all cases of diabetes can be reversed. Some people may have advanced damage or complex genetics. But there is enough evidence from clinicians and real-world cases to justify serious effort. The alternative—accepting inevitable decline—is too bleak to accept without a fight.

A Short Practical Summary

First restore gut biology using real food, fibre, and living fermented foods. Second reduce exposure to addictive processed foods that hijack appetite. Third use fasting and exercise as tools, not as punishment. Fourth improve mineral density through biologically active food rather than sterile calories. Fifth build habits and social support that make the system sustainable.

Final Thoughts

We are not dealing with a minor lifestyle issue. We are dealing with a failure of regulation driven by a modern food environment that damages gut biology and trains cravings. The most practical path forward is not ideology or diet wars. It is rebuilding an internal control system that can once again manage appetite and energy with less effort and less suffering.

G-Biota is one attempt to build such a system using the oldest tools humans have always had—soil biology, plants, and fermentation—combined with modern understanding of gut ecology. If we can make this practical, reliable, and scalable, it may become part of a wider solution to the chronic disease epidemic.

Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart attacks are rising fast, and medical treatment alone cannot stop the epidemic. This article explains a practical prevention approach: improve “refurbishing food” (minerals, phytonutrients, and living biology) so the gut can recover, then train our habits so we naturally eat the right amount of fuel food. Gbiota beds are an evolution of wicking beds designed to grow biologically active, nutrient-rich plants at home and at larger scale.

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Colin Austin — 20 January 2018 

Preface: Why Gbiota Is More Than a Garden Bed

At first glance, Gbiota beds can look like something only keen home gardeners would care about. They are an extension of wicking beds, but with a stronger focus on gut biology, minerals, phytonutrients, and a pathway to larger-scale production. That is true, but it is only a fraction of the vision.

Over millions of years humans and pre-humans lived as hunter gatherers. Food came from wild plants and animals, grown in living soils. There was a natural balance between food that fuels the body and food that helps rebuild it. Life could be violent and short, but the food system itself supported strong biology.

Agriculture was a major innovation. It stabilised food supply, populations grew, and people clustered in villages and cities. Later, antibiotics, sewage systems, and clean water helped people live longer. Then came another revolution: industrial agriculture and modern food processing. We produced enough energy food for a much larger population, but the quality of that food changed.

Modern food can be high in energy, yet low in the essentials that rebuild the body: minerals, phytonutrients, and the living biology that supports a healthy gut. Most importantly, it fails to refurbish gut biology, which works with the head brain as an intelligent control system. There is also a hard truth: there is a difference between what we should eat and what our bodies want to eat, and what the body wants usually wins.

1 — Preventing Chronic Disease by Changing Food

The aim of the Gbiota project is prevention. Chronic, non-infectious diseases such as diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and dementia now dominate health systems and quality of life. Heart attacks can kill quickly. Diabetes can bring long, expensive decline with severe complications. The message is blunt: we must do more than search for cures. We need to stop these diseases happening in the first place.

Epidemics teach a useful lesson. Medical action alone cannot stop them once they are widespread. Cholera in London in 1849 was not solved by treating each sick person; it was solved by finding and eliminating the root cause. Dr John Snow identified contaminated water, shut down the pump, and the epidemic slowed. The parallel is clear: we can and must help people who already have diabetes, but that will not stop the epidemic. We need to address root causes, and for diabetes the core driver is food.

2 — The Daunting Scale: Why Prevention Must Be Practical

Humanity struggles to grasp big numbers. There are hundreds of millions of diagnosed diabetics worldwide. Add undiagnosed diabetes, pre-diabetes, and the large group that is overweight and likely to progress, and the number of people at risk becomes enormous. Health systems cannot provide full, individualised care to everyone in that pipeline. That is why prevention must be something ordinary people can do for themselves, without needing a medical lab.

Over the last century we changed how we die. Infectious diseases, accidents, and violence were once the main causes. Hygiene, clean water, sewers, and medical science lifted life expectancy, but now chronic diseases are pulling average age at death down again. Some people live longer than ever, but more people are dying younger due to chronic illness.

In these articles, diabetes is used as a proxy for the broader chronic disease problem. It is measurable. Blood sugar, weight, and waist size give simple feedback. The working idea is that the rise in diabetes is strongly linked to changes in our food system, including depleted soils, reduced minerals, and reduced soil life that should support a healthy gut.

3 — Prevention vs Cure: A Food-System Problem

Research into cures matters, and new drugs may help. But prevention is still the better target. If food is a root cause, then preventing disease means changing food production and food quality, not only medical treatment. The challenge is that prevention is harder to “prove” in everyday life. If you fix a toothache, you feel cured immediately. With food, success is measured by what does not happen over years. That is one reason prevention is often neglected.

There is also a reality check about scale. If one wealthy family can buy pristine land, grow diverse produce organically, eat wild-caught fish, and stay active, they can create a modern version of a hunter-gatherer diet. But that solution does not scale. We now have billions of people, dense cities, and lifestyles shaped by modern infrastructure. We cannot solve chronic disease by telling everyone to own a rural estate.

Food quantity is not the main issue globally. In recent decades, food production has increased faster than population, and an extraordinary share is wasted. Many people still suffer hunger, but that is often politics and distribution rather than absolute shortage. The deeper issue here is food quality: many diets are deficient in essential minerals and, more importantly, fail to support healthy gut biology.

Even if we produced healthier food, one more hurdle remains: people must actually want to eat it. It is no good repeating “eat healthy” slogans if the body’s cravings and habits pull in the opposite direction. Prevention is not only about producing better food; it is about changing what the body wants.

4 — What Is a Healthy Diet, Really?

The obvious question is: what is a healthy diet? Here the article points out the confusion. Experts argue: fat is bad, carbs are bad, sugar is bad, eat more vegetables (which contain carbs), eat more fruit (which contains fructose). This conflict makes people tune out. Meanwhile large industries promote their interests, pushing their own story.

A different way of thinking is proposed. Instead of classifying food only by chemistry (carbs, fats, proteins), classify food by what it does for the body. One part of food is fuel. The other part provides the “materials” needed to refurbish the body: proteins, minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, and living biology. This is like a car needing petrol, but also needing oil, coolant, brake pads, and replacements as parts wear out. The body can turn many foods into fuel, and modern systems supply fuel in abundance. The weakness is in refurbishing inputs.

5 — The “Fuel Gauge” Problem: Why We Overeat

The body is intelligent. If something is missing, it sends hunger signals. But there is a design fault: the signals rarely tell us precisely what is missing. Instead of “you need selenium” or “you need salts,” the message is often just “eat.” In a modern diet that is already heavy in fuel foods, that signal leads to eating more fuel when what is needed is refurbishing food. Over time this pushes high insulin demand and contributes to insulin resistance and diabetes.

The article gives a simple example. On a hot day you might feel restless cravings, drink lots of water, and still feel unsatisfied. The real need could be salts. Once salts are supplied, the craving disappears. The issue is not that the body is “weak.” The issue is that the signalling system is crude: it flags a deficit, not the exact solution. In the past, traditional diets were lower in fast fuel and higher in refurbishing foods, so this design flaw mattered less. Modern food flips that balance, so the flaw becomes dangerous.

This is where Gbiota beds fit. They are designed to increase the supply of refurbishing food: mineral-rich, phytonutrient-rich, biologically active plants that support a healthy gut. But the article stresses that growing better food is not enough on its own. We must also change why we eat what we eat.

6 — “Want” Beats “Should”: Why Willpower Messages Fail

Diet advice often assumes humans are simple machines: tell people what they should do, and they will do it. But experience shows that “eat less, move more” does not solve the problem at population scale. The focus needs to shift from what we should eat to how to make our bodies want to eat what keeps us healthy.

To explain this, the article draws an analogy to early computers and simple programming: “if this, then that.” Human behaviour includes conscious decisions (slow, effortful) and unconscious decisions (fast, automatic). Much of eating is driven by the fast system. People rarely decide consciously, “I will get diabetes.” The behaviour happens because habits and cues trigger automatic choices before conscious reasoning arrives. If we want prevention, we must train the subconscious, not just lecture the conscious mind.

The article uses the “yellow ute” story to show why the fast system exists. When danger appears, the body reacts in microseconds. Conscious logic is too slow. The brain uses shortcuts: stored patterns and pre-built responses. This protects us, but it also means food cues can trigger rapid eating before we “decide.” The prevention strategy is to build better stored patterns, so the automatic system makes better choices.

7 — Re-Programming Food Habits: A Practical Direction

The good news is that brains re-program themselves. Babies do it constantly, turning effortful actions into automatic skills. Adults still have plasticity, but changing habits can require clearing space: breaking some old programming to allow new patterns. This is not a mystical process. It is repetition, cues, and rewards, applied deliberately.

The author’s practical approach is simple: learn to distinguish hunger from cravings. Hunger is a general need for fuel. A craving can be a signal for something specific, or a learned habit triggered by context. If you can learn that difference, you can respond more accurately. When the body is given refurbishing food consistently, it is less likely to send confusing “eat more” signals.

8 — Intermittent Fasting, Listening to Signals, and Avoiding Panic Mode

The article describes experimentation with intermittent fasting. The key is not rigid schedules, but learning to use the body’s own “fuel gauge” more accurately. A strict timetable can be mechanistic and detached from real needs, similar to putting fuel in a car on fixed days regardless of the gauge. Instead, the idea is to eat when genuinely hungry, while ensuring that refurbishing needs are met so the gauge is not giving false readings.

The body tends to burn carbs first, then fat. The author wants a practical way to know when the switch happens, without lab equipment. He notes that hunger can come in waves: it rises, then passes. Over time, fasting becomes tolerable, and a person may feel more in control. The test is simple: does weight reduce and does the waist shrink? For him, the answer is yes. The point is not that everyone must do it, but that self-testing and feedback matter.

The “false gauge” issue remains important. If you are deficient in refurbishing food, you can feel hungry even when fuel is plentiful. If you are short of something specific (like salts), cravings may appear. The practical method is to supply the likely missing item and see if the craving disappears. This is presented as training sensitivity to signals, not as a perfect scientific method.

9 — A Simple Model: Treat Gut Biology Like a “Pet Doggy”

The article offers a memorable metaphor. Think of the biology in your tummy like a pet that needs training. Learn to read what it is telling you through hunger, fullness, and cravings, then train it with patterns that reduce overeating. The author uses examples that work for him: bitter fermented foods and high-cocoa dark chocolate can curb appetite and help stop “pigging out.” The claim is not that these specific foods are universal, but that people can experiment to find what calms appetite rather than inflaming it.

10 — Changing the Food System: Two Types of Agriculture

The larger goal is not only personal habits, but a broader food system change. Modern large-scale agriculture is effective at producing fuel food. We can grow enormous quantities of energy, and the limiting factors are often logistics and water efficiency rather than the sun’s energy. But we need a second type of agriculture, on smaller scale, focused on refurbishing foods: minerals, phytonutrients, and living biology.

Home gardeners already produce some of this, and many people buy organic produce, but the argument is that it is not enough to meet global needs. The Gbiota bed is proposed as a practical growing system that can scale up, producing biologically active, nutrient-rich plants at an economic price. That is a major change, and it will not happen through argument alone. It will happen when people try it, see results, and share the story.

11 — How Innovation Spreads: Proof Beats Persuasion

The article closes by reflecting on innovation. Two earlier examples are given: Moldflow simulation work that challenged conventional thinking, and wicking beds that were dismissed by experts but proven in practice. In both cases, acceptance did not come from clever persuasion. It came from other people trying the idea, seeing it work, and telling others. That is the viral pathway of real adoption.

Chronic disease is a global-scale crisis, and the author recognises the ambition is huge. But the strategy is similar: build a community of advocates who test, improve, and share. The Gbiota club is framed as the mechanism for this. It needs a range of skills, including gut microbiology expertise, and it needs people willing to try, measure, and report. Teamwork is the only way scale change happens.

Conclusion: Prevention Is Food Quality Plus Better Automatic Habits

The prevention approach described here is two-part. First, improve food quality by increasing refurbishing foods that restore gut biology and supply minerals and phytonutrients. Second, train the subconscious habits that drive eating, so “want” aligns more often with “should.” Modern food systems are excellent at producing fuel. The missing piece is widespread access to biologically active, nutrient-rich food and the practical skill of listening to signals without being trapped by cravings. Gbiota beds aim to help make that shift real, not theoretical.

To join the Gbiota club, email: colinaustin@bigpond.com.

 

Chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and dementia have risen from affecting about 1 in 100 people to nearly 1 in 3. This article explains a practical reason for that change: our gut biology has been damaged by how modern food is grown and processed. Gbiota beds offer a low-cost way to grow biologically active, mineral-rich plants that support gut health. However, technology alone is not enough. This article outlines how Gbiota can be adopted, protected, and scaled through people-led action.

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Why We Have a Health Crisis Despite Abundant Food

Modern society produces food that is cheap, plentiful, and hygienic. Governments spend billions on medical research, and pharmaceutical companies invest heavily in new drugs. On the surface, this should result in good health. Instead, chronic disease has exploded. Fifty years ago, diabetes and related illnesses affected about 1 in 100 people. Today, around 1 in 3 suffer some form of diabesity.

Genetics cannot explain such a rapid change. The more likely explanation is that the quality of food has changed, particularly in ways that damage the gut biome. Gbiota beds were developed to address this by restoring biologically active soils and growing plants that nourish gut biology. The challenge is not just proving the idea works, but ensuring it is adopted correctly and widely.

The Gut Biome as an Intelligent System

The gut biome is not just a digestive aid; it is an intelligent control system that uses hormones and nerve signals to decide what happens to the food we eat. It influences appetite, fat storage, energy use, immunity, and mood. Short-term dietary changes or probiotic pills can alter gut biology briefly, but gut bacteria live short lives. Long-term change only occurs when beneficial bacteria are continuously fed through diet.

This leads to a practical question: how much food do beneficial gut organisms need? Using simple estimates, the article suggests that around half a cup of suitable “good-bug food” per person per day could tilt the gut ecosystem toward health. Scaled globally, this represents an enormous volume of food, meaning the solution must extend beyond home gardens.

Why Markets Alone Will Not Solve the Problem

A common belief is that if something is useful and profitable, the market will provide it. In reality, this is often false for public health problems. Even if growing good-bug food could save trillions in healthcare costs, those savings do not directly reward the people who grow the food. Individuals may still choose cheap, addictive foods, and large companies profit from selling them.

To explain this, the article turns to altruism. Humans survived and thrived because individuals were willing to act for the good of the group. Over time, groups expanded from families to tribes, villages, nations, and eventually corporations. In modern systems, loyalty to employers and institutions can conflict with broader social good, creating what the author calls “defective altruism.”

Big Food, Big Pharma, and the Status Quo

Large food companies make money from products that look and taste good but are often low in biological value. Pharmaceutical companies profit from managing disease rather than preventing it. Doctors are overworked and not trained in changing gut biology through food. Together, these forces reinforce the status quo, even as chronic disease rates climb.

The internet complicates matters further. While it offers access to information, it also spreads confusion, misinformation, and aggressive marketing. Any grassroots health solution must compete in this noisy environment.

Lessons from the Wicking Bed Story

The adoption of wicking beds offers a useful lesson. The technology spread not through major marketing campaigns but through people trying it, seeing it work, and telling others they trusted. Two conditions made this possible: the system worked, and it was simple and cheap enough for people to test themselves.

There is also a warning. As wicking beds spread, the technology became corrupted. Key features were removed or replaced, such as substituting stones for biologically active materials, reducing effectiveness. This experience shapes the Gbiota strategy: adoption must be guided and protected to preserve what actually works.

What Makes Gbiota Beds Different

Gbiota beds evolved from wicking bed principles but focus even more strongly on soil biology. They are designed to be simpler, cheaper, and more scalable. The central idea is that biologically active soil transfers nutrients, microbes, and signals into plants, and from there into the human gut.

If the goal is to produce large volumes of food that genuinely supports gut health, soil is the foundation. Gbiota beds are therefore built around managing decomposition, water movement, and biology rather than just plant growth.

Why a Club Model Is Needed

Convincing billions of people individually is impossible. Instead, the strategy is to work with a committed community. By supporting a defined group, the system can be tested, refined, and protected. This group can then demonstrate results that influence broader opinion.

In return for guidance and shared knowledge, the community is asked to do three things. First, verify that eating food grown in biologically active soil improves health. Second, act as guardians of the technology so it is not degraded or misrepresented. Third, recruit others and share results through trusted personal networks.

Changing Gut Biology: What Does Not Work

Several common assumptions are challenged. Taking probiotic pills alone does not create lasting change. Antibiotics damage gut biology and cannot restore it. Returning to some imagined “old-fashioned diet” is unrealistic and does not explain the speed of the current epidemic.

The real issue is how food is grown. Modern agriculture often relies on inorganic fertilisers and chemical controls that leave soil microbes with little to feed on and actively kill many organisms. The resulting food may look good but is often low in biological value and trace minerals important for human health.

How Nature Grows Food

In natural ecosystems, nutrients are recycled. Plants die, decompose, and are broken down by a hierarchy of organisms from insects to microbes. Plants also form networks with fungi, sharing signals and nutrients. This system evolved over billions of years and maintains balance without external inputs.

Animals eating plants also consume microbes and microbial by-products, supporting their own digestion. This creates a stable triangle between soil organisms, plants, and animals. Disrupting one part of this triangle disrupts the whole system.

From Traditional Farming to Industrial Farming

Traditional farming attempted to mimic natural recycling through manure, compost, crop rotation, and fallow periods. Over time, nutrients were still depleted unless replaced, leading to practices such as slash-and-burn clearing. Modern farming solved yield problems with fertilisers, but often at the cost of soil biology.

Inorganic nutrients feed plants directly but leave little for soil microbes. Herbicides and insecticides further reduce biological life. Processing then removes what little biology remains. The article argues this shift is the primary driver behind the rapid rise in diabesity.

The Gbiota System in Simple Terms

Gbiota separates decomposition from plant growth. Organic material is broken down in a controlled fermentation area. Water passing through this material collects nutrients and biology, then delivers them to plant roots. Excess drains back to a sump and is reused.

This approach allows plants to access the benefits of decomposition without being harmed by toxic by-products. It is simple, adaptable, and suitable for both small and large systems.

System Research, Not Just Plant Trials

The aim is not only to grow vegetables, but to observe whether people feel and function better when they eat them. This is system-level research. It complements laboratory studies of gut species by focusing on real-world outcomes such as energy, waist size, blood sugar, and general wellbeing.

Biodiversity matters. There is evidence that contact with diverse environments, animals, and soil organisms improves gut diversity. Gbiota systems can potentially enhance this through controlled, safe exposure to biological richness.

Scaling the System

Any large-scale system needs a steady supply of organic material. This is not a limiting factor. A large proportion of food is wasted and sent to landfill. Animal waste is also abundant, though socially sensitive. The article proposes staged composting systems to make recycling safer and acceptable.

Fast-growing plants can act as filters, converting compost into safe biomass, which is then composted again for food production. This approach supports nutrient recycling while managing risk.

What Plants Matter Most

The article raises concern that knowledge of beneficial plants is being lost. In some rural areas, older people still use a wide range of wild plants for health. As younger generations move to cities, this knowledge disappears.

Many modern medicines originate from plants. Metformin, for example, comes from French lilac. This suggests that preserving plant diversity and seed knowledge is critical. Growing whole plants may offer benefits that isolated pills cannot replicate.

A Practical Call to Action

The author is frank: one person cannot solve a global problem. Ideas only matter if others test them and show they work. The Gbiota club is proposed as a vehicle for shared testing, learning, and protection of the system.

Members are encouraged to build simple Gbiota beds, observe health effects, share results, and help others do the same. If enough people demonstrate real benefits, demand can influence farmers, investors, and policymakers.

Looking Forward

The goal is not perfection or instant global change. It is steady, protected adoption of a system that restores soil biology, improves food quality, and supports gut health. If successful, Gbiota could help reverse the trend toward chronic disease and create communities that are both healthier and more resilient.

This article is written as a playful “screenplay for a film by Steven Spielberg,” but it carries a serious message. Diabetes and obesity are not just about willpower or one perfect diet. Our guts act like an intelligent control system, and modern science still does not fully understand how that system decides what to do with food. The story argues we are chasing symptoms instead of causes, and proposes an integrative, real-world approach: change the system, test outcomes, and learn what works.

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Colin Austin — 1 March 2018.

What This “Film” Is Really About

“Gutivars strike back” is written as a screenplay, with Spielberg-style scene changes, humour, and a few sharp jabs at modern systems. Under the fun, the goal is serious: explain why diabetes and chronic disease have become so widespread, why experts often disagree, and why the missing piece is the gut as an intelligent control system. The film framing is not just entertainment. It is a way to make a complex topic easier to follow, while keeping the central argument intact.

Scene 1: Austria, 1920s — The “Little Man” With Levers

The opening scene is set in a beautiful Austrian town in the 1920s. Two scientists are developing what the script calls one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time: how hormones control our bodies, a discovery that could save millions from heart attacks and diabetes. The film uses a humorous cartoon model: inside our guts is a “little man” who inspects food and decides what to do with it.

He has levers. If the food is energy-dense (like cheesecake), he might pull a lever that sends energy into the bloodstream, turning the person into an overexcited kid at a party. Or he might store the food as tummy fat. Or he might decide the food is “crap” and send it out of the body. The key point follows: there is no little man. Hormones do it. But what we still do not fully understand is how the “system” decides which lever to pull.

The scientists publish their work in an obscure publication, not a major journal. Then history turns dark: Hitler’s people decide the scientists should not “waste time” saving lives and the breakthrough is almost lost. The script claims it is later recovered when someone finds the paper in New York around 1950. It is written as a dramatic rescue of an idea that should have changed everything.

Scene 2: Mao’s China — Trauma, Hunger, and a Real Person

The film jumps to Mao-era China during the Cultural Revolution. Spielberg-style visuals show starvation and terror. The script references estimates of famine deaths ranging widely, and shows extreme human behaviour during famine to underline how powerful food scarcity is. Then it narrows to one person: a teenage girl separated from her family and sent by train to Xinxiang near Mongolia, leaving her scarred for life.

The script names her: Xiulan Tang. It then shows resilience. Despite early trauma, she becomes a doctor and later a respected surgeon in Shanghai. This matters to the story because it contrasts real hunger (where people will do anything for food) with modern abundance (where people can be surrounded by food and still be nutritionally damaged).

Scenes 3–8: Modern Life — A Diabetes Story With No Clear Guide

Next we meet Colin Austin as an older man in a Shanghai hospital, looking for a remedy for a collapsing knee. He ends up with a high-tech artificial knee, and a wife, Xiulan. The couple later move to Australia, and the story shifts to a supermarket scene: abundance everywhere, strong contrast to famine memories. Xiulan comes to love tasty processed food and, within two years, develops Type 2 diabetes. The script notes that changing diet is not easy, especially across cultures and habits.

Then come the medical scenes. A doctor confirms diabetes. Later, the story escalates: Xiulan begins to lose sight, falls down stairs, breaks bones in her foot, and the foot begins to turn black. They face the classic diabetic fear: becoming a blind, limbless torso. They move from specialist to specialist, and each tells a different story. One suggests cortisone injections; another warns it will raise blood sugar. Colin asks about diet, but specialists refuse to enter the “low carb vs low fat” debate and tell them to keep eating normally and keep taking pills.

The tension peaks with the dietician: diabetes is described as irreversible, steadily worsening until insulin injections and early death. Colin reacts with anger, thumps the table, and insists that if diabetes is caused by diet, it should be cured by diet, and he will find out how. Spielberg then adds a human twist: the dietician cries afterwards and admits, quietly, that he may be right but they do not know how to help people.

Scene 9: Driving Home — “Silo Effect” and the Setup for the Real Message

Driving home, Colin explains the “silo effect”: clever people working in narrow areas without understanding how the pieces link together. In engineering he calls it “cardboard box engineering” or “over the wall engineering,” where one group throws the problem to the next and it becomes a “dead cat.” The dialogue is written for humour, but the meaning is serious: chronic disease care needs integration, not isolated expertise.

Scene 10: A Flashback to Detroit — Integrative Technology

The film flashes back about forty years to a General Motors training room. Colin is teaching computer-aided engineering software. The audience is sceptical at first, then angry when he suggests they are doing things wrong, then gradually receptive as they see the method. A senior engineer asks how someone “from Australia” can tell them what to do. Colin’s answer is the backbone of the article: experts are expert in their own field, and each will know more than him in their speciality, but the real job is integration.

Colin explains that complex problems involve many technologies: heat transfer, fluid flow, materials, geometry, and unknowns where you cannot calculate an answer. He describes solving equations, getting wrong results, then changing assumptions and using empirical methods until results match real-world tests. The point is not “make things up.” The point is: fill the gaps between disciplines, then test the whole system. He calls this “integrative technology,” where “2 plus 2 makes 5.” It is powerful, but only works when you test the system as a whole under real conditions.

Scene 11: Proof It Works — Business, Wicking Beds, and Empirical Testing

The screenplay then uses a quick “company history” segment to prove the method is real, not theory. Colin describes early computing, building software, forming Moldflow, and the idea that integration can create extraordinary value. He then links it to environmental work, including developing wicking beds and responding to experts who said water would go putrid. The claim is that by integration and empirical testing, wicking beds became practical. The message is: integrative thinking is investable, and it solves problems that silo-thinking cannot.

Scenes 12–16: Carb vs Fat, Big Food, and the “Red Car” Warning

Now Spielberg turns to the nutrition war: Ancel Keys and the low-fat paradigm, contrasted with writers like Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz who challenged the process that led to the “fats are bad” conclusion. The screenplay argues Keys used correlation without mechanism, got the wrong answer, and his authority helped lock the view into medicine. It also satirises Big Food, which benefited from low-fat messaging because cheap carbs and sugar became profitable. It compares this confusion-making to techniques used by tobacco companies: create doubt, fund research, and keep the public uncertain.

The “red car” scene is a simple lesson in bad science. Speed cameras catch more red cars than grey ones. Officials test red vs grey cars, find no performance difference, then tax red cars anyway. The true reason is social: young men drive red cars fast to impress girls. The parallel is blunt: we often chase symptoms (like fatness) without understanding causes (the control system that drives fat storage). Statistically significant does not automatically mean meaningful.

The Central Claim: We Are Still Missing the Lever-Puller

The film returns to the Austrian “little man” metaphor. We know excess insulin can make people fat and drive insulin resistance, which we call diabetes. We also know faecal transplants can make fat people thin, showing gut biology matters. But the screenplay insists we still lack the deeper answer: why do some people’s guts push levers toward fat storage and diabetes, while others seem almost immune even with similar diets? Until we understand that decision-making system, we will keep arguing diet slogans and treating symptoms.

It also warns against turning “keto vs low fat” into the new dogma. Even if one side is partly right, it will not solve a global problem at seven billion people. Any workable solution must involve changing the food system, not just giving wealthy people a special diet. The screenplay frames Nina’s message as criticism of scientific method, not just a food argument.

My Comments: Why This Matters to Ordinary People

Colin then steps out of the film voice and speaks directly. He describes moving from specialist to specialist and seeing competence in silos, but no one of “average competence” integrating the whole story. He argues diabetes is caused by diet, so it is a fair bet it can be cured by diet, yet after years of following arguments about “the right diet,” he calls it a shambles that defies scientific process.

His explanation is consistent: our bodies are not dumb machines. Our guts are an intelligent system formed by billions of communicating cells. This changes how we interpret diet disputes. Even fructose becomes a different question. One gut might send it to the liver and convert it to fat, triggering obesity and diabetes. Another gut might discard it. So the goal is not to fight endlessly over which food is “bad,” but to use diet and environment to change gut decision-making so it works for health.

The Gbiota Hypothesis: Soil, Plants, and a Path Into the Gut

Colin describes a “hunch” that changing gut biology may involve the route biology takes from soil through plants into our guts. He admits it may sound silly because soil biology is not the same as human gut biology. But he argues it is worth testing, especially after reading research suggesting plants have their own biome and that soil creatures with guts can attack roots and pass biology into plants. None of this proves the outcome, but it supports the idea that growing plants in biologically active soil could influence gut biology through diet.

Citizen Research: Why the Gbiota Club Can Help

The screenplay finishes with a call to action: citizen research. Gardeners can grow plants in biologically active soil and observe whether it changes gut biology and health. If a proof of concept is demonstrated, professional researchers are more likely to invest serious effort. Citizen research can be faster and freer because it does not require grants and rigid academic constraints. It can pursue ideas that are high risk but high reward.

The text also includes a practical “facilitating factor”: diabetes is measurable. It is risky for citizens to experiment with heart disease directly, but diabetes progress can be tracked simply through blood sugar monitoring, and general chronic disease improvement can also be observed through waist measurement, scales, and personal energy levels. That is why the author wants to form the Gbiota club and invites readers to email if they want to join.

Contact: colinaustin@bigpond.com