We aim to help young mums create a healthy gut biota for their kids using plants grown in biological active nutrient rich soil.

What makes our gut different?

We are born with all our organs in place following instructions from our DNA - with one exception - our gut.

Our gut is not strictly part of us and we, or rather our mum, has to make it for us from the food she eats and feeds us as a baby and by the close physical contact mums give their babies. It is the one organ we can readily change - particularly when young.

Mum decides, consciously or by default, what sort of gut we are to have and the species that will live within us. In later life we can change our gut but that is not so easy when our eating habit has been established.

This is done by a process known as ecological balance - probably the most single important natural law so I have created a special post on ecological balance.

The journey of the microbes

This is Alice. She is two, and determined to get a cuddle from her mum, Bernadette. She will do whatever it takes to get that cuddle, so why is she so determined?

When she was born, Alice had every organ she needs for life, carefully made in minute precision - with one exception - her gut biota (or  gut brain!). Read more here and here

Alice knows, in her genes, that she has to develop her own gut biota.

It will control much of how her body works for the next ninety years.

It will decide what and how much she will eat, it will help manufacture the array of complex chemicals needed to replace her body parts as they wear and age, and it will host her immune system to protect her from all the germs and diseases which will attack her during her life.

But where does Alice get all those trillions of microbes that will make up her gut brain? From  her mum - Bernadette.

She got some during birth, others from breastfeeding, and yet more from cuddles and then from the food that Bernadette feeds her while she is still in those formative years.

That is why she is so determined to get that cuddle! She knows she needs to grow her Gut Biota (Gbiota) but is is quite a journey - from the compost - to a worm - to the soil - to a plant - to her mum - then at last to Alice.  That is just the way the world is and has been for a few million years - until we started eating plastic food.

Bernadette is the local coordinator of the Gbiota club based in Sydney, and she knows that these microbes come from the food she eats and the food she feeds Alice.

Over the next few years, while Alice is still a kid, her gut brain will stabilise and set the eating pattern for Alice for the rest of her life.

It may be technically possible to change her gut brain by changing her diet later in life, but that would be a major challenge that few people succeed in making.

Those first microbes Alice received may come from Bernadette, but where do those microbes come from in the first place?

The soil where the food is grown.

Now, Bernadette has come to understand this, and grows as much of her food in her garden as she can; making sure that the microbes in the soil are well fed and nourished, so they thrive and breed and enter the plants which she and Alice and her other two kids, Millie and Gabe will eat.

This is vital for everyone’s health, not just her own kids, so Bernadette wants to help other mums understand the importance of eating the right food and starting their kids on the right foot (or food, as it were) in life.

This is why she is working as the Sydney Gbiota coordinator, to spread this to other health-conscious people and mums in her area.

Part of this is just education, making other mums aware of the importance of the gut brain, but she also helps organise the local production of Gbiota boxes so people can grow the food, using kitchen waste to feed the microbes that will lead to a healthy gut brain - even if they live in a flat or have no growing experience.

Bernadette is happy to be called Bee and if you are a mum, interested in improving your  and your kids gut health, or even an ageing grandparent who want to see your grandkids flourish you can contact her at bee@gbiota.com 

She can put you in touch with a local suppliers who can provide you with Gbiota boxes already growing fresh plants ready for harvesting and full of beneficial microbes. You just have to collect your kitchen waste and add some trace minerals.  Eating healthy actually costs less than eating plastic food, and it comes without all the advertising hype - all you have to do is chat with a real mum thats actually doing it. Bernadette can show you how.  Just drop her a line bee@gbiota.com

To learn more follow our reading guide start here

About the Gbiota club

The GBiota club itself does not buy or sell anything. We conduct research into and promote the importance of gut biology. But we also try and link people who are willing to make Gbiota boxes (or grow GBiota food) with people who understand about gut health, particularly young mums as our gut is created in these formative and affects our health for the rest of our lives.

Let us summarise the message and how we work.

What our gut brain does

Our gut consists of trillions of cells which communicate with each other to form a genuine brain. Our gut does much more than help us digest food - it decides what and how much we will eat, it will help manufacture the array of complex chemicals needed to replace our body parts as they wear and age, and it will host our immune system to protect us from all the germs and diseases which will attack us during our life.

Where does our Gut Biota come from

We get some before birth, more during birth, others from breast feeding, and yet more from physical contact,, then more from food. Our gut biota begins to stabilise around age three but is still flexible in our teens but then we become set in our eating habits making it more difficult to change.

But it actually all starts much earlier, it is quite a journey - from compost - to a worm - to the soil - to a plant - to our mum - then at last to us. That is just the way the world is, and has been, for a few million years - until we started eating plastic food.

What we need to do

We need to educate future mums on the importance of eating plants grown in soil full of beneficial biology. They need to start eating these plants before birth and then feed their children these plants until their eating patterns are established, certainly up to the age of three, but preferably into their teen age years.

Where do they get this food?

The Gbiota club is a group of people who really understand the importance of soil biology and how it affects our health. Within the club are suppliers who will breed up the biology in their soil which they put into Gbiota boxes which they seed and grow until the plants are ready to harvest, using the principles of tipping and growing baby greens.

Mums can buy these boxes to supplement their diet for themselves and their children, feeding the soil biology with kitchen waste. When the harvesting cycle is finished they can either swap their old box for a replacement one or reload the boxes themselves.

Ecological balance

When I was a kid bread would go mouldy within a few days, now it is virtually indestructible by the elimination of the micro-biology. But is the elimination of this micro-biology wise? It is the micro biology which turns dirt into soil making essential nutrients available to us.

True - there are harmful microbes, but the natural world has evolved over millions of years, into a system where the beneficial biology out breeds and controls any harmful biology.

This is a totally sustainable system, the indiscriminate killing of all microbes is not. It leaves a vacuum which will eventually be filled by something which could be far worse.

This picture shows beneficial biology in an experimental Gbiota box - it is releasing nutrients and keeping any harmful biology at bay.

 

How do they contact a Gbiota club member who can supply the boxes?

They should first contact Bernadette at bee@gbiota.com giving their location where she will locate a local member for you.

How much do they cost?

Typically a Gbiota box costs $68 and with a refund of $25 when the box is exchanged or they can be rented on a subsription basis.

How many boxes are needed?

As a guide one box per family member. If you are reseeding yourself you will need extra boxes to cover the time the plants are germinating.

What do I need to tell the local club member?

You need to select the plants you want. The club member can advice on what plants to choose based on locality and season. Common plants are spinach, broccoli, alfalfa, linseed, cress, celery, purple amaranth, kale and Asian cabbage but there are many more to choose from.

Milder plants are recommended in the early stages of weaning as the baby builds up it gut biota.

How do I know what I am buying

It is just a fact of life that people are different and will react differently to different foods, but Gbiota club members supplying the boxes agree to adhere to a strict procedure in producing the boxes.

How do I pay?

This is up to the local club member but typically they will deliver to your home where you can pay directly - but others will prefer for you to pay on line.

What is the legal structure

Gbiota club members supplying Gbiota™ boxes are independent business. They agree to produce the boxes based on the Gbiota principles and are licensed to use the trade mark name Gbiota™.

 

 

 

 

The Gbiota box story

 

Technology should benefit the community

Go to any supermarket and you can buy a lettuce or cabbage for a couple of bucks. It is truly incredible that they can produce, transport and put these on the shelves so cheaply - this is possible because of a whole range of innovative technologies from chemicals, automation and genetics.

I am a great believer in technology, over hundreds of thousand of years it has enabled us humans to survive and become the dominant creature on our planet.

But I believe technology must work for the benefit of the community and not just make a few people very rich.

I was a pioneer in the computer revolution and for my pioneering work on computer aided engineering I was selected by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia's top one hundred innovators, but when I look at the food industry I see that innovation is focused on profits and not the health of the community.

Food that looks perfect but lacks the essentials

The products may look amazing, clean and perfectly shaped as though they had been made in a factory but what about the nutrient value? Modern food is lacking the mineral which are essential for a complex creature like us humans but which the much simpler plants don’t need, or only in small amounts. (See Technology)

But what is seriously lacking in modern food are the microbiology and fibre needed for a healthy gut.

I see very sophisticated data on how much carbohydrate, sugars, fats, minerals and vitamins we should be eating. I can look up and see how many micro-grams of selenium, zinc and magnesium we should be eating on an average day.

We are very strong on the bio-chemistry but what about our micro-biology?

Our gut brain

But the point is that over hundreds of thousands of years we have evolved a gut brain that automatically looks after us, without us even thinking about it - and it does it much better than weighing micro grams of minerals.

Our gut brain consists of trillions of cells which communicate with each other and send out signals saying we need to eat more of this or that or simply stop eating as we are satisfied.

It automatically monitors our bodies so it knows if we have had a couch day and tells us to reduce the amount of food, if we have been out in the hot sun it knows we need some extra salts and if we have been on a long hike we need to get the sugar levels up. Our gut brain is a very clever organ.

I spend many years of my life writing computer code, I understand how code works but I have absolutely no idea how the code works in our guts - and neither does anybody else. All we can do is marvel how well it works.

Unfortunately our modern food system does not look after our gut brain so we suffer many diseases related to poor diet but instead of fixing our gut brain we spend all this time and energy on creating an artificial process to control our diet.

Principles of Gbiota beds

That is why I developed Gbiota beds - to feed our gut brain. These large in ground beds work well and are well suited to commercial use by competent growers - but they do require some skill and understanding to make them work.

The microbes in the soil enter the plants which we eat so they become natural pre and pro biotics but we need to feed and water the microbes. The beneficial microbes need the soil moist, but not too wet, when they will out breed any harmful microbes. If the soil is too wet these harmful microbes will predominate - a process of ecological balance.

The key to maintaining that Goldilocks moisture level, not to wet not too dry, just right is the leaky dam and the partial flood and drain system. Water is pumped into a compost tube where it absorb the nutrients, flows down to the base of the bed where is spreads and starts wicking upwards to wet the root zone - just like in the wicking beds I pioneered some twenty five years ago.

But in a Wicking bed the water just stays in the base of the bed until it gets used up, this stagnant water can lead to the growth of the harmful microbes - in other words they become pongy. But in the Gbiota bed the water slowly leaks out through the leaky dam so there is never any stagnant water.

In a full sized commercial Gbiota bed water is pumped, for just a few minutes, several times a day, by a pump and timer system.

This is a very effective system well suited for commercial growers who obviously need a market for Gbiota food.

There was a clear need for a simpler system where people, may be just living in a flat, could have fresh Gbiota food growing in their own home.

This led me to develop the Gbiota box

The Gbiota box system

So I have now developed the Gbiota box so anyone can grow their own Gbiota food - even if they live in a flat and have no growing skills.

I am setting up a network of local suppliers who can manufacture and supply these Gbiota boxes so people can buy one or more boxes directly and have fresh Gbiota gut food growing at home.

Manufacturing these Gbiota boxes would be a very nice home business for the handyman who would be providing a service to their local community.

How to make these Gbiota boxes is described elsewhere on this web in the various articles and videos but now I want to describe how the user, may be a young mum who wants her kids to have a healthy gut can manage the Gbiota boxes she buys from the local supplier.

On Arrival

They come with plants already growing ready to be harvested. The most effective way is to use tipping where the tips of the plants are harvested where they can be made into green smoothies, wraps, sandwiches or whatever way suits. (see tipping video).

The micro farm

Anyone looking at a Gbiota box can be forgiven for thinking this is just for growing fruit and vegetables - and of course they are partially right. But the real point is to breed the beneficial micro biology for our gut and this is really like managing a dairy farm except that the animals are a lot smaller than normal.

But like any farm the animals have to be fed and watered - even if they are a bit on the small size.

The supplier of the box will have already loaded the box with these tiny animals and an initial burst of food and water. The new owner has the job of feeding and watering the animals - something a young mum would be very familiar with.

Let us start with water - Goldilocks moisture - not too wet and not too dry.

Moisture

The bed is watered by simply trickling water into the compost tube. A compost tube is simply a tube in the soil made from compost, as the water soaks through the compost it picks up nutrients from the compost to feed the microbes and the plants.

Some people prefer to have a proper pipe to hold the compost, this is a nice clean way of doing it, but I prefer to have a simple hole filled with compost - technically better but a bit messier - not a problem for a young mum used to changing nappies.

The water, or more correctly the compost tea trickles down to the base of the bed where it will spread over the base and start to wick upwards from the base.

This is exactly the way that the millions of Wicking Beds around the world work.

But the Gbiota box has a swivel drain.

When the pipe is pointing upwards the box act just like a conventional wicking bed.  Water (or compost tea)  is stored internally in the box.  But it is stagnant and will encourage the growth of harmful micro- biota if left.

When it is pointed downwards it acts like a true Gbiota bed with the partial flood and drain system so the soil is never wet for any length of time so the soil is kept moist which encourages the beneficial micro biota.  But it does need topping up with water more often.

The boxes are made with a soil dam so the box can be used with the drain pipe permanently pointed downwards so it is acting as a full blown Gbiota bed. This does mean that the bed may need to be watered every day (depending on weather).

The box must be raised with a container to catch the water. From a technical view point this is the best way of operating a Gbiota box but in the absence of an automatic pump and timer it does mean watering daily.

But, despair not, the box can be used as a hybrid Wicking and Gbiota box.

Before watering simply twist the drain pipe upwards when the box will become a conventional Wicking box. Trickle the water in until there is water in the sight tube (note it may take a bit of time for the water to trickle through - it is a good idea to measure out about half a litre of water and add this shot at a time with a bit of a wait in between, to see if the water has reached the sight tube.

The box can be left in Wicking Bed mode for a few days, then the drain pipe swivelled to point downwards when if becomes a Gbiota box.

While it is possible to go up a week in Wicking Box mode I would recommend draining at least twice a week and allowing a day between rotating the drain tube and refilling.

But the microbes are hungry little beasts and we have to feed them.

Feeding the microbes

The microbes must be fed. Fortunately there favourite food is kitchen waste which can be recycled back into healthy food. They, and particularly us, will need some additional minerals but the micro-grams needed can be added at minimal cost.

When the beds are made the lower layers are filled with compost but this will get consumed and will need replacing on a regular basis.

Soil develops a structure so we do not want to be remaking the bed but we must add the organic waste, preferably to the base of the bed where the conditions are best for composting.

We do this by refilling and remaking the compost tube. We can put a new compost tube in different places in the box to allow the organic waste in the previous tube to fully decompose.

It is best to chop up the compost, typically food waste, but making into a smoothie in a blender means the worms, already in the bed when it was supplied, will be better able to digest the waste.

The material in the compost tube should be soft so you can refresh the tube pushing a bottle with a tapered top to rework the tube.

Then when the tube is opened flip the bottle and push the square base to make a nice hole.

If you have made a compost smoothie you can fill the tube with this compost smoothie then push the bottle back into the tube where it will act like a piston and help distribute the compost below the surface over the rest of the bed.

Compost tube ready to go using the bottle method.

If all that sounds too complicated just dig a new hole and fill with food scraps and just leave it to the worms which are already in the bed when you bought it.

The bottle method is a nice easy way of making compost tubes but if the soil is hard then it is back to the old fashioned way of digging a new hole and spreading the soil around the bed. I don’t want do hurt the worms and am not squeamish so I just dig the new hole by hand or using a trowel, or better still a piece of pipe, so I can make the new hole without hurting the worms.

We also recommend covering the compost tube with some Biomin which contains a broad spectrum of minerals and some fresh biology.

You don’t need very much, your supplier may be able to provide 1 Kg packs which will last one bed about three months. (About a tea spoon per day) If you look at supplement jars in the chemist you will see they only contain micro grams so feeding Biomin to the plants is a very cheap way of getting minerals into your diet

Swap or reseed

Suppliers may offer a change over plan where you simply return the box to them in exchange of a new box with the plants already ready for harvesting or you can reseed yourself.

Before reseeding the bed - the box will need topping up with compost which is fuel for the microbes. This should placed a the bottom of the box which is done by making a new compost tube by filled with chopped compost (or a compost gel from the blender).

Seeding is done in the normal way but I recommend covering the seed with a layer of Biomin and fine soil or Vermicast and gently watering until the plants have put down their roots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opportunity

What’s for dinner mum?

What one family has for dinner will not change the world - but what a few billion families have for dinner will.

We all have to eat and the way we are currently growing our food is slowly but inevitably destroying our planet’s ability to grow the food we need. We are destroying our soils and aquifers on which our lives depend and making ourselves sick in the process.

Many of our modern diseases, like diabetes, heart attacks, obesity etc., are directly linked to a poor diet and while no one is saying that a poor diet caused Covid, the fact is that the majority of the people who died from Covid were eating a poor diet. Diet is certainly an enabling factor in many modern health issues.

Profits before the community

It is simply a classic case of putting short term profits for a few ahead of the long-term benefits of the community as a whole.

The food industry is the world’s largest industry and fits this pattern - but how do we create the needed change to a sustainable and healthy food system so our grand kids and their grand kids will be eating healthy, nourishing and tasty food?

Not just technology

For many years I thought this was just a question of developing the right technology, where our food was produced in a fully sustainable way. Developing this technology has been my obsession for many years and that turns out to be the easy bit.

All food is based on carbon, fortunately there is plenty of carbon dioxide in the air and sunlight to convert it into food, but it does need water and some critical minerals for photosynthesis to work.

We need a range of minerals for our health, these were generally available in virgin soils but are becoming depleted with modern agriculture. Fortunately there is a virtually inexhaustible supply in volcanic rocks, we just need the micro biology in the soil to release the minerals and we also need water which is recyclable.

We have the technology we need to create a fully recyclable health food system - that is not the problem - the real problem is: ‘how do we design the needed change to a recyclable system and make them happen?’

There are many people already committed to this change seen through a growing trend to regenerative farming, organics and permaculture but we are still lacking key ingredients.

Aspirations and result

It is fine to have aspirations for a better world but what matters in the end is the final results. To achieve this better world we have to overcome two critical problems.

Manipulation of the truth

The first is manipulation of the truth. Reading Noami Oreskes seminal book Merchant of Doubt you will appreciate just how insidious the manipulation of data has become from tobacco, acid rain, the ozone layer and global warming where the true facts have been massaged to either prevent or delay action on critical issues.

Nowhere is this more true than in food and supplements. Getting this message out to the wider public is critical in creating a sustainable and healthy food supply.

The power of the wallet

The second problem to overcome is creating an economically viable system. It is no good having the healthiest food in all the world if only the rich can afford to buy it. Healthy food needs to be affordable.

Also growers have utes that need fixing, kids who want money for school outings and husbands and wives that need a beer or a glass of wine. The system must be economic for the growers and not just rely on a passion for the land.

To resolve these critical problem, whether we like it or not, we must look on future food generation food as a business.

Here are the basics of the business plan.

What we do

Gbiota™ (trade mark of Cohort International Pty) develops innovative technology for growing plants to improve health particularly gut biota. (Hence the name Gbiota)

We do not manufacture or sell any physical products. Our business is purely intellectual property.

Our technology centres on improving gut health by breeding beneficial biology in organic waste, which then enter the roots of the plants, to act as pre and pro biotics which then enhance the gut brain.

Benefits of our technology

The benefits of our technology are:

- controls the appetite so people don't over eat and become obese

- produces the chemicals to replace body parts as they wear

- enhances the immune system

- organics and food waste are converting a waste product into food and as a bye product reduce green house gases.

Our users

We provide the technology free of charge to home growers, in the belief that this creates a user base who will help to spread the information about the technology and provide credibility.

We live in an age lacking confidence in the sources of power - big business and even some of our Governments. People now rely much more on real people they know and trust. They may be not the ideal source of complex technical information but at least they are trustworthy, not manipulating the truth for profit.

Running an operation like this costs money, which has come from me and my past success as an early pioneer in computer aided engineering (see My Story) but this project needs to continue and grow long after I am not here so it needs a source of revenue.

So our plan is to license the technology - for a reasonable and equitable fee - making it available to commercial growers as the direct source of our revenue.

Promotional strategy

Our immediate customer base are commercial growers who are often small farmers who do not undertake significant generic market development themselves.

This means an important part of out strategy is to create a market for these growers - which is otherwise known as ‘umbrella marketing’.

The target customers are of this marketing are the section of the community that are sensitive to the ‘eating healthy food’ concept. There are three key groups:

1) Mothers with young children. The baby’s gut biology comes initially from their mother before and particularly during birth. Then from breast feeding and later from the food supplied by their mother. Currently there is no vaccine available for kids who are susceptible to the delta virus.

2) Older people who generally have a weakened immune system.

3) People concerned about the effect of human activity on our planet particularly the destruction of our soils and global warming which has a direct effect on our food production.

While none of these groups are our direct customers we need to promote to them to create a market for our direct customers - the local farmers and suppliers. Our promotional efforts have will be focused on these three groups plus the local farmers.

The Gbiota box

This is a special project initiated by the delta virus. It enables people in lock down to grow their own food, recycling their kitchen waste to grow fresh food with all the associated health benefits, at a minimal cost.

While this project may have been initiated by the spread of the delta virus it is thought that there are many people who would like to grow their own food but are not sure how to go about this. The Gbiota box would be prepared by local suppliers, (may be just people working from home in the lock down) already seeded with plants, ready to harvest.

This is believed to be a significant market in its own right but would help to develop the Gbiota concept amongst the commercial grower market.

Problems in marketing

Our promotional activity is dominated by our web sites and the social media activity of our supporters. Honest influencers really do influence.

The technology of growing plants to enhance gut biota is complex and not particularly appealing (it is all about good and bad bugs and a bit yukky to some).

This means our web sites look complex, which may be an initial deterrence. However, once people understand what we are trying to do they become quite dedicate followers and are happy to read long and detailed technical articles.

The web is now saturated with promotions for health products often with little technical backing but very sophisticated marketing and presentation.

This has led to a great deal of cynicism within the public who are now quite resistant to what they perceive as high pressure and unethical advertising.

Our big opportunity

We live in an age of cynicism. People are fed up with being lied to by mega global corporations with neo-monopoly power, by Governments who pay more attention to these economic collossus than the needs of their people.

They want to live in a society with equity and compassion, not to be dominated by greed.

However, for the Gbiota movement to provide value, it must survive as an economic entity.

Above all Gbiota is a social movement to make the world a better (or at least habitable) place for our grand kids and their grand kids, to enjoy a life that their ancestors (that's us) have struggled to create.

That is a powerful motivator.

Opportunity knocks

This is a great opportunity to built a multi national organisation which is has that magic combination of benefiting humanity while being profitable.

If I were half my age I would be grabbing at this chance but now I have to look for other people to take this to fruition. If that is you please contact me here.

Colin Austin 13 Sep 2021

The health and even the future of our species depends on the micro-biota in the soil and in our guts.

Gbiota™ - feed our gut brain

It is just a fact that the Hudza tribes in Tansania, the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon and people eating wild food and people living in the various blue zones have a far healthier gut biome than people eating a modern western diet.

They may be all different but they have two things in common

- their food is based on how plants and soil have evolved over millions of years by the sustainable recycling of organic waste

- their societies are based on prioritising the needs of the community.

The Gbiota project follows these two leads. Our technology is based on studying how biology, soil and plants have evolved together over millions of years.

We cannot all go and live in the Amazon but we can study what they eat and how it is grown. It is simple - they eat a wide variety of plants grown in moist forest litter. This breeds a healthy soil biology which enters the plants that they eat. A spinach leaf grown in soil with an active biology will have over eight hundred separate species of micro biology.

I developed the Gbiota™ growing system based on this natural process using recycled organic waste to breed the beneficial biology. There are plenty of local growers who want to grow using regenerative agriculture. You just need to form a local buying group and I can provide all the technology and advice on how they can set up their Gbiota beds.

This is not a project run by big business for profit - we don’t spend any money on advertising - we just rely on people sharing this information, for real with friends or by social media.

If you share our views please study the key post indicated then contact me here.

The importance of gut biology

Gut Micro-biology is essential for our health. There are trillions of cells made up from thousands of species. But this is much more than trillions of dumb cells - they communicate with each other and our head brain to form an intelligent control system to manage our bodies to do some very important jobs.

Our gut brain does three very important jobs,

- it control our appetite so we have enough food without overeating and getting fat and sick

- it manufactures the complex chemicals we need to replace our body parts as they age

- it hosts much of our immune system so protect us from pandemics

Modern soils in chemical industrial agriculture lack this essential biology and nutrients. Many of the chemicals used are claimed not to harm us but they certainly harm the soil biology on which our lives and future generations depend.

Gbiota food provide this essential biology and nutrients missing in our modern food.

Gbiota beds

 Gbiota beds were developed specifically to grow plants to feed our gut brain (Gbiota™). Beneficial biology is breed in a blend of soil, organic waste, manure, mineral and inoculants.

The biology enters the plants via the root system so they act as pre and pro biotics feeding our guts.

Moisture levels are controlled by a partial flood and drain system to ensure the beneficial biology dominates.

It is a totally sustainable growing system.

Licensed growers

Growers are licensed to use this technology and sell through the normal channels, on line, farmers markets or conventional retail. Growers are expected to follow protocols so the customer can buy with confidence in the way the plants have been grown. This is indicated by the Gbiota symbol.

And we want to see the technology used for the benefit of the community, rather than make a few mega corporation and individuals excessively rich.

This is a social movement driven by dedicated individuals. We put the needs of today’s community, our grand kids and their grand kids first.  If you share our views join us.

It is just not possible to explain a complex topic like food, health and gut biology in a three word slogan so I have now organised this web like a book with a preface (home page),  overview, introduction (index) and a series of posts which follow on from each others like chapters in a book.

If you are not familiar with my background it is worth reading ‘My Story’ first.

Next Read overview

Or skip to index which leads to more detailed posts

Food and health is a complex business, dont believe the ubiquitous  manipulatives adds trying to sell you pills or magic potions, they just want your money. Just eat good food, it works better and is much cheaper.

If you share our views please study the key posts as indicated then contact me here. This is a community project which requires cooperation from people who see the need for change for our health and future generations.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on how to make the message clearer and more readable.

Letter to Minister

Forward Opportunity

Backward gbiota-boxes

Summary

How life works

The two great synergies

Life starts with energy which come from the sun. There is lots of it, in one hour enough energy falls on the earth to power humans for the whole year.

This energy is picked up by the plants which takes carbon from the atmosphere and hydrogen from water to make energy fuel - carbohydrates. There is plenty of carbon in the air and plenty of water in the oceans, it just needs the sun to make rain which tends to be too much or too little.

Plants exude sugars from their roots to attract and feed microbiology, this collects water, minerals and complex chemicals from the soil and feed to the plants. This is one of the two great synergies in the world.

Some of this microbiology enters the plants so when we eat plants - or animals that eat plants - we get energy fuel, minerals and complex chemicals and microbiology.

This second great synergy is between creature, great and small, and the microbiology in the soil and in their guts. We need this microbiology to digest our food and replace our body parts.

We need sugars to power our bodies but we need just the right amount. If there is too little sugar there is not enough energy to power our bodies, if there is too much then the sugars will cause our body part to at first turn black, rot and then die. This is the curse of diabetes which years ago was very rare but is now common as we stop feeding our guts.

Fortunately our bodies are very clever at controlling our sugar levels. It does this by sending our signals and hormones, but these don’t just appear. The trillions of cells in or guts communicate with each other and our head brain to form a brain which takes the decisions to release the signals and hormones which control our body.

How we have moved from our evolutionary base

But these trillions of cells need to be fed and replaced. They have a short life, measured in days, they breed rapidly inside us - if they are fed the right food - and we are continuously eating food which contains their food and replacement micro-biology.

We don’t need a lot, nowhere near the amount of food we need for energy but is totally critical for our health.

That is why we need to eat gut food - Gbiota food.

In our evolutionary era we had plenty of gut food which came from nutrient rich biologically active soil, we had all we needed so we did not evolve to crave gut food. However energy food was in short supply there is not much energy food in the wild - so we evolved to crave energy food.

But the food for modern humans has changed - our modern food system has the technology of  producing the energy food we crave in large amounts but there is little incentive to produce the gut food - which we only need in small quantities - but it absolutely essential for our health.

Our bodes are smart enough to sense this lack and so send out signals for us to eat more - and we end up overeating on energy food rather than gut food.

Profits and social responsibility in the modern food industry

This is the great contradiction of modern food - too much of the wrong sort of food and not enough of the food we really need.

The food industry is the worlds largest industry and invested heavily in technology to improve production - with great success. In the last eighty years energy food production has increase by 4.5 while the population has increased by just over 3.

It has also produced the type of food that people have evolved to crave - sugary fatty foods. No one could criticise an industry which increases production to give people what they want.

In a capitalist society it the accepted norm that companies are in business to maximise profits for their shareholders and the market will resolve any issues. Again no one can criticise an industry for following the accepted norm.

It would be fair criticism that the industry has engaged in a marketing campaign to convince the buying public that their food is healthy, meaning complete, when it only supplies part of our dietary needs. This is simply deception.

This would not be important if the product was not life critical, say like computer games, but food is different - we all need to eat and the modern food industry has created an epidemic of chronic diseases. This need correction.

The Gbiota movement

The Gbiota movements prime focus must be to develop the technology and understanding of healthy eating but this only leads to results if the community is educated about food and there is the opportunity to buy food from growers who believe that companies have a responsibility to the community as well as making profits.

That is why the immediate aim of the Gbiota movement is to recruit people who appreciate that this is a cause and not just a profit opportunity and are prepared to act to make the world a better and healthier place. Interested contact me

Don’t worry about the earth - worry about us

 Our earth has been spinning around the sun for some 4 billion years and we can expect it to be still spinning around the sun in another 4 billion years or more.

But will there still be people on it? A lot depends on whether we can feed the billions of people who inhabit the earth now and in the future.

We may think of some cataclysmic failure from fire or flood from global warming, but it may be totally unspectacular.

Our health is totally dependent on the microbiota in our guts which in turn is dependent on the microbiota in the soil.

We are systematically destroying our soil microbiota and we have no idea how this will affect the ability of the human species to survive.

Weakened immune systems are making us more susceptible to epidemics like Covid - that could just be a warning shot across our bows.

Maybe we should take soil and gut biology a bit more seriously - as though our lives actually depend on these minute critters.

 But I don’t want this to be a story of doom and gloom. Humans are the dominant creature on earth because we are smart, innovative and cooperative.

But we are also empathetic. I have four grand children - right now too young to have children themselves but that will come in the next decade or so, may be too late for me to see my great grand children.

But I want my great grand children to have the right sort of food to eat and I want them to live in a society where they can be free of the wars, conflict and socials tensions I have had to put up with in my life.

We may live in the digital age and expect immediate answers to our problems but that is not the way the world works. We have to understand the problems then work away at the solutions.

The Gbiota technology, like all science and technology, is based on established building blocks. Here is the basic science on which Gbiota beds are based

The first is the role of our guts. We understand that our guts

- form part of an intelligent control system which determines our appetite (e.g how much we eat,)

- manufactures some of the essential complex chemicals needed to replace our body parts

- is home to much of our immune system.

The second is that our gut biology or Gbiota is determined by the soil biology in which the food we eat is grown. At birth we received a major burst of biology from our mums and then from breast feeding but after that our gut biology is determined by what we eat.

Plant will absorb energy from the sun which they use to make specific sugars which they exude from their roots to attract and feed specific microbes to the local rhizosphere or root zone. Later these will enter the plant and hence our guts.

A spinach leaf may contain some eight hundred different species of micro biology. Other plants will supply a different range of species so by eating a varied diet we can build a very complex gut biology.

Eating healthy food is more effective - and much cheaper - than taking pills to make some company very rich.

Thirdly in our evolutionary period as hunter gatherers there was a natural abundance of both biology and minerals in the soil which led to a healthy gut micro-biome. In this period there were less than a million people on earth so there was no issue - if an area became depleted we just move on to a fresh area. We continued this until recently with the great expansion in the US.

Fourthly in the last sixty years or so we have adopted chemical industrial agriculture. This has been amazingly effective in the production of food as fuel made up from carbon and hydrogen. While population has increase by a factor of 3 fuel food has increased by a factor of 4.5 so there is an apparent abundance of food with our supermarkets brimming full of convenient and tasty food.

However the lack of the soil biology which created healthy gut biology has led to an epidemic of chronic diseases stemming from overeating because our bodies are not satisfied - such as diabetes, heart attacks, dementia etc.

There is no suggestion that this has caused the current Covid epidemic but it has certainly enabled the virus to spread and cause so much problem throughout the world.

All this is well understood by conventional science and provides the basis for the Gbiota technology. There are numerous papers on these subject some of which are linked here in references.

The purpose of the Gbiota technology is to regenerate our soils at a fast enough rate so our current population of 8 billion people (and growing) can have access to healthy soil and gut biology and trace minerals now we have reached the limit of our available land.

It is much more than a better way of growing a few cabbages it is facing the problem of how our great grandchildren are going to enjoy a healthy life on this planet.

But it is not sufficient to just develop the technology - we have to plan how this can be implemented in a way that benefits the community as a whole and not just monopolist corporations. A network of micro farms supplying the local community seems the most practical approach.

This web is structured rather like a book with this being the preface. The next post is like the introduction giving an index of how the Gbiota technology actually works. This then links to more specialist post going into greater detail.

Forward anthropocene

Backward index

Three functions of food

We are all familiar with the conventional way of classifying food -

carbohydrates, sugars, fats, proteins etc but let us look at what they do.

There is food we need for energy - this can be virtually any sort of food carbs, sugar, fats, protein.

As long as it contains carbon and hydrogen our bodies will simply burn it for energy - releasing carbon dioxide and water - just like in a steam engine.

Then there is food we need to replace our body parts as they wear or age.

This needs to contain a broad range of complex chemicals which our bodies can often make in our guts as long as the essential minerals are present. If our bodies cannot manufacture them we have to incorporate them into our diets (for example B12).

Finely there is our intelligent control system (Homeostasis). Our bodies are not just a bunch of organs doing their own thing, there is an intelligent control system made up of trillions of cells which receive information from sensors throughout the body, process them by working just like a computer with code, taking decision then sending our signals, either electric or hormonal to adjust how the body is working.

Unfortunately we have no idea how this code actually works - but we know that it does.

We don’t get fat simply because we eat too much - rather our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat, (again we can only guess why) so it send out signals for us to eat more - then we get fat.

It is a great shame we don’t know how this code actually works because it is totally critical to our health.

Much of this control system is made up from the trillions of cells in our guts and they need to be fed gut brain food.

The cells in our guts are short lived - continuously breeding, dyeing and being replaced. While we only need a small amount of gut food and the beneficial biology - this is a critical part of our diet.

Why we should feed our gut brain

Our gut has trillions of cells made up from thousands of species.

But this is much more than trillions of dumb cells to form our gut brain - these cells communicate with each other and our head brain to form an intelligent control system.

This manages our bodies controlling appetite, replacing aging body part and hosting our immune sytem.

This is what the gut biota (Gbiota) project is all about.

This web site shows how growers can set up and manage their own Gbiota beds to grow gut brain food, (Gbiota food), and ecourages people to form local buying coops so if they don't want to grow their own Gbiota food they can buy,  at an affordable price, from regenerative farmers.

If you may be interested in setting up your own buying group please contact me here

Our gut brain does three very important jobs,

– it control our appetite so we have enough energy but don’t overeat

– it manufactures the complex chemicals we need to replace our body parts as they age

– they host much of our immune system and so help protect us from pandemics

Our guts are really important for our health. Our gut biology has evolved over millions of years and originates from the soil.

Soil biology

Soil is formed by microbiology breaking down rocks and is continuously circulated as plant grow, die and decompose back into soil. This totally depends on micro-biology and the soil creatures particularly the worms. The natural process of making soil is slow and in the last fifty years has been replaced by chemical industrial farming which has increased productivity but dramatically lacks this essential biology which leads to healthy soil and healthy guts and bodies..

Many of the chemicals used are claimed not to harm us but they certainly harm the soil biology.

Trace minerals

These early soils were rich in a wide range of minerals which both we and the plants need for health. But plants are much simpler than us so there are many minerals which we need but plants either do not need or only need in very small amount.

Chemical industrial agriculture replaces the minerals such as N, P, K which the plants need for growth but there is no economic pressure on farmers to replace the trace minerals like chromium, iron, zinc, selenium, iodine which are essential for our health.

Modern industrial farming

Modern industrial farming may be productive but has meant that our intelligent control system senses that we are lacking key biology and minerals so creates food cravings which has led to a major health epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes dementia

See changing our food system here

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How we evolved with food

 During our evolution we were generally short of energy food - the fats and sugars - so we have an in built desire to search and eat energy food. On the other hand there was an abundance of beneficial biology and minerals in the soil so we had this bias to crave energy food rather than gut food.

help

The modern food industry aim is to make profit and the way to do that is to supply energy food in large quantities produced at minimum cost.

It does this very well but the minerals and biology to replace our body parts and power our control system are not well supplied.

Our food system is out of balance so we need to change the balance towards providing food for our gut brain and to provide the essential minerals to replace our body parts.

We can’t necessarily blame the food industry - working in the current economic philosophy based on profit without social responsibility - for supplying the sort of food we crave.

But the results have been a disaster for our health with a global epidemic of chronic disease related to overeating.

 

 

We overeat because our intelligent control system senses we are short of critical minerals and biology, so it sends out hunger signals so we eat more energy food than we need just to try and get the essential minerals and biology we need.

We need to change our food system and we need to do this in a sustainable way by recycling waste organic material

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