Human health begins in the soil that feeds our food and ultimately our gut microbes. Healthy, biologically rich soil creates healthy plants, which support a healthy gut, which supports a healthy intelligent control system. Community-supported models help reconnect people with genuinely fresh, living food.
Health starts in the soil
Cold hard fact. If you want to be healthy, eating plants grown in nutrient-rich living soil is essential.
The more our diets drift from living soil, the more chronic disease rises.
In modern society, people spend their money on houses, cars, travel, bling and other stuff. But the reality is that our bodies are our most valuable asset.
What keeps our bodies functioning are the trillions of cells in our body but these need a constant supply of food – what we eat.
The bottom line is that most of our food is now deficient in minerals and beneficial microbes.
Community supported agriculture
I am supporting community supported agriculture for a number of reasons.
Linking growers and eaters creates fresh, microbe-rich food that industrial systems can’t provide.
People need to eat plants grown in biologically active soil and eat genuinely fresh, that is before the microbes have died.
A domestic supermarket cannot supply this but a local network of regenerative growers can.
These growers need the support of a local community, community supported agriculture (CSA).
There is a growing movement worldwide where communities and farmers work together to grow and harvest food.
The approach I support is simple
Form a local group
Decide what you want to grow
Find a regen farmer
Farmer grows then lists produce online
Members order online
A van collects and delivers
You can read about the global CSA system here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture
Regenerative farmers
Regenerative farmers don’t just grow crops — they grow soil.
Regenerative farmers focus on creating healthy soil and ideally have both earthworms and BSFL.
Earthworms eat the dead microbes
BSFL eat the organic waste
This is ideal
Grow your own
This is the best long-term solution for the many people.
You can grow in your back yard raised beds or indoors in Gbiota boxes.
Plants must be picked and eaten while genuinely fresh, before the microbial life dies.
You pick and eat plants around breakfast time while genuinely fresh, that is before the microbes have died.
There are many articles and videos on this website to help you do this.
Our intelligent control system, shaped by evolution and supported by gut biology, regulates appetite, fat storage, cravings and long-term health. Blue Zone communities — where people live active lives into their 90s and 100s — reveal how feeding this system with nutrient-rich, microbe-rich foods supports lifelong wellbeing.
Feed our brains, our head brain and our gut brain and they will look after us.
In parts of the world known as blue zones, people live long and active lives—often into their nineties or hundreds—by eating mostly plant-based foods grown in healthy, mineral-rich soil. Their gardens are alive with beneficial microbes, unlike the depleted soils of modern industrial farming.
They harvest and eat their vegetables straight from the garden, keeping those living bacteria intact and supporting healthy gut biology.
They harvest and eat their vegetables straight from the garden, keeping those living bacteria intact and supporting healthy gut biology. They don’t follow diets. Their gut and head brains—the body’s natural control system—decide what and how much to eat. Modern food, by contrast, is high in sugar and fat, low in nutrients, and full of chemicals. This damages gut health and drives constant cravings for more unhealthy food.
What is Gbiota Food?
Gbiota food restores the minerals and beneficial biology missing in modern diets. It mirrors the natural nutrition found in blue zones, where people thrive on food grown in living soil. Gbiota food isn’t a diet plan—it’s eaten before meals to help the body’s natural systems regulate appetite and balance.
Feed your brain
Modern diseases like diabetes, obesity, and dementia stem from fat stored in the wrong places. Calorie counting and restrictive diets fail because they ignore how our two brains—head and gut—work together to manage appetite. These systems evolved to keep us healthy, but only if we feed them properly.
People on high-fat, high-sugar diets have shrunken, unhealthy brains, while those on nutrient-rich diets have full, healthy ones.
Neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Mosconi showed that people on high-fat, high-sugar diets have shrunken, unhealthy brains, while those on nutrient-rich diets have full, healthy ones. The message is simple: feed your brain.
Colin’s Journey
When Colin Austin’s wife, Dr. Xiulan, faced diabetes and near blindness, he turned his background in innovation toward health. He realised modern food lacks vital nutrients because industrial farming replaces only what plants need—not what humans need. This deficiency triggers constant hunger and disease.
Ask “Why?”
Fifty years ago, obesity and diabetes were rare. What changed? Our food.
Fifty years ago, obesity and diabetes were rare. What changed? Our food. Today’s diets are high in calories and low in essential nutrients. When we restore nutrients to our diet, cravings and “fat in the wrong places” begin to fade.
Forget Calorie Counting
Counting calories ignores how our bodies evolved. Feed your gut and brain real food, not processed calories, and they will regulate energy naturally.
It’s in the Soil
Colin travelled through Africa, Asia, and the Americas to learn from traditional farmers and combined their wisdom with modern innovation. The result was the Gbiota bed—a system that grows nutrient-rich, biologically alive food in a sustainable way.
Vegetables are healthy only if grown in living soil — chemically grown produce may look good but lack nutrients or even contain toxins.
Vegetables like kale or celery are healthy only if grown in living soil. Chemically grown produce may look good but lack nutrients or even contain toxins. Real food comes from honest soil.
Healthy soil biology mirrors the human gut. In Gbiota’s system, plants are delivered while still growing, full of living microbes that strengthen gut health and restore the body’s natural balance.
Test for Yourself
Track your weight, waist, or blood sugar levels—or simply notice how you feel. Health isn’t about numbers alone; it’s about how your body responds.
Many people leave traditional lifestyles for convenience and entertainment, but modern living often leads to poor health. We don’t need to choose between progress and wellbeing—we can unite both through a movement for real, living food grown in living soil.
The intelligent control system that manages appetite, fat storage and overall health depends on nutrients and soil-based microbes found in genuinely fresh, biologically active food. Understanding how food works — and how to grow it — is the foundation of long-term health.
Food for Health
Food is the key to health.
Junk food is tasty, convenient, inexpensive but not healthy.
Genuine organic food may be healthy but is very expensive.
There is a third type of food which is both healthy and inexpensive.
But there is a third type of food which is both healthy and inexpensive, cheaper than junk food and healthier than organic food.
How can that possibly be? What is the catch? It takes a little effort to understand how food works in our bodies and to grow, or buy, this food takes a little effort, that is the cost of health.
This web is in two main sections.
Food and Health
Here we look at how food determines our health with a particular emphasis on our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies deciding how much and where we should store fat.
It is often argued that we get fat and sick because we eat too much – that is how we get fat our intelligent control system determines why we get fat, which is very different.
We generally get fat because of deficiencies in our diet, not simply excess calories.
While there is a genetic component we generally get fat and sometimes sick because of deficiencies in our diet so our intelligent control system sends signals that make us hungry and eat more than we need.
The soil in which our food is grown dominates our health.
There are many articles on how food affects our health but first step is to read ‘The essence’.
It may be interesting to understand how our intelligent control system regulates our bodies and how the microbiology in the soil affects our food and then our health but to get the benefits you have to eat food grown in biologically active soil.
That means either growing or at least buying Gbiota food.
Growing
The growing section covers the specialist growing system to grow plants that avoid deficiencies in our diet which are the root cause of chronic diseases.
Microbes play a crucial role in this forming part of our intelligent control system and processing minerals to produce the wide array of complex molecules our bodies need.
Microbes breed incredibly easily — the challenge is breeding the beneficial ones without breeding the harmful ones.
Microbes breed incredibly easily, the challenge is breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes.
This is covered in the ‘growing’ section but the article ‘Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes’ explains the basic principles.
Recommended action plan
The first step is to read these two overview articles ‘The Essence’ and ‘Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes’.
These are free and you don’t have to sign in or anything, click and read which will give you a good understanding of how our intelligent control system regulates our bodies and how we can train and grow food to feed our intelligent control system.
You can then either sign up for free to read our articles on food and health which we publish most weeks or become a full Gbiota member and subscribe and receive technical support by email or video chat.
Gbiota is about breeding beneficial microbes in the soil, growing plants in that soil when the microbes transfer to our gut.
It is a simple, inexpensive and highly effective system — but it is important it is done right.
It is a simple, inexpensive and highly effective system and is in everyone’s interest that it is done right, hence we attach great importance to technical support.
So email me at colin@gbiota.com so we can chat about your project.
Lots of stuff
There are over 300 articles and 200 videos on this site, that is a lot of stuff and nobody expects you to view everything so here are some tips to make life easy.
The key point is that we all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and the key to health is to learn to feed and train this control system.
If this control system is working as it should we don’t have to worry about taking a specific number of micrograms of B12 or Selenium or whatever, our intelligent control system learns over time what foods contain what nutrients or minerals, sends out signals so we want to eat those foods without even thinking about it.
We evolved eating natural foods grown locally — foods containing the microbes our bodies depend on.
We have been successfully doing this for a million years or so without a dietary handbook in sight, just by eating natural foods grown locally.
These foods naturally contain the microbes which form part of our intelligent control system and also process naturally occurring minerals which make them bio-available.
That was until we changed our food system so it was deficient in these microbes which has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.
As these microbes breed in the soil it may seem obvious to start breeding these beneficial microbes in the soil again which is a simple and inexpensive process.
But that is not the conventional wisdom.
Gbiota is simply about how to breed these beneficial microbes in organic waste to make a nutrient-rich living soil then grow plants in this soil and eat the plants while fresh before the microbes die.
Despite its simplicity, this solution faces resistance because modern culture prefers complexity.
In a world which seems to worship complexity, it seems that such a simple solution to the major problem of the epidemic of chronic disease would be welcomed with open arms but that is not the case.\
If you feel that this is something you may like to undertake then you will need to sign up and become a full paying member when you will receive technical support.
However before you sign up and pay the money I suggest that you drop me an email, tell me a bit about your situation and I can make some suggestions on the best way to proceed.
You may want to be a home grower, you may want to become a Gbiota coach and advise new members or you may want to become a Gbiota grower and supply boxes to local people
Our intelligent control system depends on living microbes that originate in healthy soil. By learning how to breed and maintain these beneficial microbes at home, anyone — even in an apartment — can restore the gut biology that regulates appetite, immunity and long-term health.
A healthy gut is essential for health as it manufactures the hormones which regulate our appetite so we don’t get fat and sick.
Beneficial microbes start in the soil, entering our bodies when we eat plants grown in living soil and eaten fresh.
Beneficial microbes start in the soil. You eat plants grown in soil with the essential microbes while fresh before the microbes die.
You can easily do this even if you live in an apartment by buying most of what is required – containers, potting mix, seeds, etc from your local shops.
You will need to learn how to breed the beneficial microbes by creating the right conditions, which you can do by registering as a home grower and buying a starter or inoculant kit that provides the initial microbes.
People breeding beneficial gut microbes at home is a new concept, and our role is to guide you through the process.
People breeding beneficial gut microbes at home is a new concept, and our role is to guide you through the process, which is straightforward but must be done right. We do this by email and video conferencing and our many articles on this website.
There are over three hundred articles and a similar number of videos but when we make contact, we can guide you through the process of becoming a successful beneficial gut microbe breeder.
But the first step is to register for our Newsletter, and if you decide this is for you introduce yourself so we can walk you through the process of breeding beneficial gut microbes at home.
Our intelligent control system relies on the biology of living soil — the microbes, minerals and ecosystem cycles that humans evolved alongside. When modern food breaks this relationship, health declines, but Gbiota methods restore the natural gut–soil connection our bodies depend on.
Gbiota what? The essence
The microbes in our gut have swarm intelligence, which regulates where and how much fat we store. It produces a complex array of hormones which regulate our appetite.
Microbes breed and die rapidly in a dynamic equilibrium extending from soil to plants to animals — a system billions of years old.
Microbes breed and die rapidly in a state of dynamic equilibrium, which extends from the soil where the microbes naturally breed to the plants, the animals that eat the plants and the animals that eat the plant eaters.
This is a system which has evolved over billions of years and is the basis of all life on earth until humans changed the system, which has led to an epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
We know how to resolve this. Beneficial microbes in the soil need a combination of nutrients, water and air which can be achieved by making the soil breathe by circulating what we call soil blood in a series of pulses flooding the soil to expel stale air and draining to suck in fresh air, what we call flood and flush.
This simple, inexpensive process allows anyone — even apartment dwellers — to grow gut-brain food.
This is a simple and inexpensive process which can be applied in the long term and on a large scale to create a new industry of gut-brain food, but in the short term by people growing their own gut-brain food. The process is so simple and inexpensive that it can be done at home even by people with no growing experience living in an apartment.
However, this requires a wide acceptance by the population of the need to modify our food system.
But is it no good just telling people. Logic is not enough; people are strongly influenced by what other people think, so acceptance has to reach a critical mass with people seeing other people they trust adopting the technology before widespread adoption occurs.
Early adopters are essential — social proof is what drives real food system change.
This requires the early adopters, the entrepreneurial thinkers who are prepared to pioneer a new technology and so reach this critical mass.
These pioneers are critical for our species in developing a sustainable, healthy food system for the future. Humans are the most successful creature on the planet because we are both intelligent and naturally cooperative, prepared to invest in the long term benefit of our communities.
Join me in becoming a healthy food gut-brain pioneer.
Eco-balance
The Gbiota technology is based on the principle of Eco balance. We control the conditions, specifically nutrients and most importantly moisture and air so the beneficial microbes in the soil out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.
Eco-balance ensures beneficial microbes out-breed harmful ones — the foundation of safe gut-brain food.
This is a problem of fluid flow – my day job.
Gbiota beds and boxes
The majority of people now live in cities, often in apartments with no garden so the Gbiota system is a two-stage process.
Stage 1 is to produce Wickimix, a growing medium or soil full of beneficial microbes and nutrients in raised garden beds.
Stage 2 is to load the Wickimix into Gbiota boxes where plants can be grown in a modern dwelling, even a flat with no garden, so people can pick and eat plants while still fresh.
Plants must be eaten genuinely fresh — while the microbes are still alive.
Dynamic population
All the individuals living in a city a hundred years ago have now died, but they bred to create a new population. It is similar to microscopic life but the time scale if very different. An hour in the life of a microbes is equivalent to a human year so plants must be picked and eaten while genuinely fresh.
There is a big difference between being genuinely fresh, with the microbes still alive, and not gone rotten.
Growers and consumers
The Gbiota movement has growers, maybe just urban micro-farms which produce the Wickimix which they may load into Gbiota boxes and plant ready for the consumers so they have growing plants ready to harvest at home.
Gbiota boxes may be clean skins, eg loaded ready to start growing so the consumer looks after all the seeding and growing or with plants grown to the stage where they are ready to start picking.
Typically the plants are tipped, eg the tips of the plants are cut off where they regrow, often called cut and come again.
The boxes may also have a spectrum of plants, this is partly to achieve a wider spectrum of beneficial microbes but also they have a staggered growing period with slow and fast-growing plants giving a longer harvest period.
At the end of each cycle, boxes return to growers for reloading with fresh Wickimix.
At the end of the cycle, the boxes would be returned to the grower for reloading with fresh Wickimix and its beneficial microbes.
Sustainability
An important benefit of this system is that the inputs are organic waste and rock dust (to provide the essential minerals). Fortunately, these are in abundant supply and sustainable.
Swapping exploitation for recycling is essential for long-term food security.
Swapping from a system of exploitation to recycling is essential for the survival of our species.
We may be rich now but it will stop when we have used up the readily available resources. Look at Nauru, once one of the wealthiest countries in the world mining guano, then one day the thing happened that everyone had been predicting but done nothing about, they ran out of guano.
It will happen to us first with phosphorous, an essential mineral for growing plants.
Our bodies are regulated by an intelligent control system that evolved over millions of years. This system manages appetite, fat storage, immunity, energy, and long-term health — but it only functions properly when we feed it the biology and nutrients it expects from natural food grown in living soil.
Everyone has an intelligent control system, it manages our breathing so we have enough oxygen, our heart rate so our muscles have adequate energy, our immune system, our temperature and most importantly our appetite.
If we have a fully functioning intelligent control system we can look forward to a long and healthy life, if it malfunctions we may get fat and sick and if it stops working we die.
This is the result of over a billion years of evolution and is one of the wonders of the world. If we have a fully functioning intelligent control system we can look forward to a long and healthy life, if it malfunctions we may get fat and sick and if it stops working we die.
It could be called the essence of life yet we have very little understanding of how it works. We can observe the result of its actions which gives us some idea and recently humans have developed intelligent control systems for their machines which gives a further insight into how it may work.
Appetite
Unlike breathing and drinking, appetite is very complex, we need a whole range of foods, food for energy which is relatively simple but we need a complex array of nutrients to build and replace our body parts.
Our intelligent control system can sense if we are short of specific nutrients and learns over time which foods supply those nutrients.
Our intelligent control system can sense if we are short of specific nutrients and learns over time which foods supply those nutrients and then sends out a complex spectrum to make us crave those particular foods.
Fat or skinny
Some people are fat while others are skinny. We change throughout our lives, babies are born chubby, but when they learn to walk they lose their baby fat and are skinny until adolescence when the sexes diverge in their fat distribution.
These variations continue into midlife with men developing wobbly tums and women developing wobbly bums until in old age we revert back to being skinny.
Genetics play a part but research with twins shows this is not as strong as we may think.
But what drives this process?
Genetics play a part but research with twins shows this is not as strong as we may think. Fat people may have fat kids so we may think but they also share a similar lifestyle.
It seems that how we train our intelligent control system has a major influence. Without thinking we train our intelligent control system to learn that certain foods do certain jobs and can create a hormone spectrum to crave those particular foods. It is much more complex than a single hormone that makes us crave food and another hormone that makes us feel full and stop eating.
The role of hormones
Whether we are fat or skinny is decided by our intelligent control system and implemented by creating hormones to control our appetite.
We may try to override our intelligent control system but this is rarely successful long term.
True if we get fat it is because of what we eat and what we want to eat is driven by our intelligent control system sending our hormones.
We may try to override our intelligent control system but this is rarely successful long term.
But we can train our intelligent control system so it sends out the appropriate hormonal spectrum.
We learned this from observing people who have been deprived of food for a period. When food becomes available our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat. A restrictive diet only makes things worse.
To bring weight back to normal we have to re-train our intelligent control system by a nutrient-rich diet.
To bring weight back to normal we have to re-train our intelligent control system by a nutrient-rich diet.
Mostly our intelligent control system works in our subconscious which we do not control but we can use our conscious brain to retrain our intelligent control system.
Our gut microbes
Even more surprising is that the microbes in our gut, which are not part of us, form part of our intelligent control system.
These microbes communicate with each other to form swarm or group intelligence.
These microbes communicate with each other to form swarm or group intelligence.
We have known for a long time that we can make fat people skinny and skinny people fat by changing the species of microbes in their gut.
The epidemic of chronic disease
Across the globe, we are experiencing an epidemic of chronic diseases obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
A functioning intelligent control system will create the hormones that make you stop eating, even if your diet is highly processed foods.
These have existed for a long time but been relatively rare – but now the scale has reached epidemic proportions.
We may be tempted to blame the abundance of highly processed foods which are full of sugars and fats blended to the bliss point and containing addictive additives.
No way can we defend these but they are not the prime cause of the epidemic of chronic diseases.
A functioning intelligent control system will create the hormones that make you stop eating, even if your diet is highly processed foods.
But if your intelligent control system is not functioning then you will overeat, regardless of what you are eating.
The root cause is a lack of the beneficial microbes which form part of your intelligent control system – your gut-brain.
The root cause is a lack of the beneficial microbes which form part of your intelligent control system – your gut-brain.
That is simply solved by feeding your gut-brain by eating plants grown in soil where the beneficial microbes are breeding.
This is simple, anyone can do it even if they have no growing experience and live in an apartment.
Why is it that we are in the midst of a health crisis? What I call the fat in the wrong places epidemic of diabetes, dementia, obesity with their associated side effects yet there seems so little public reaction.
These are man made diseases caused by corruption of our intelligent control system which has evolved over millions of years into a highly sophisticated system which manages how much and where we store our fats.
But we are now starving and poisoning our gut brain, which forms an essential part of this intelligent control system. The facts are clear – but where is the social action as we have with climate change, plastic litter, animal rights etc which whatever your views have certainly created social action.
Surely, as a compassionate and cooperative species, we should ensure everyone has access to a diet that makes them healthy.
The health of the people should take priority over corporate profits.
Yet diabetics, on the road to becoming a blind cripple, obese people heading for an early death from heart attack – compliantly take their pills as though there were no alternative when there clearly is – in the food we eat. Why?
One explanation is that we are all so different, some people are totally immune to these disease and will never get fat or diabetic whatever they eat or do. Others will become diabetic even with the best possible diet.
But what we have done, with our food and toxins, is to shift the distribution so whereas fifty years ago there was just a very small minority of people suffering – now the bulk of the population has been pushed into the at risk zone.
Being at risk of becoming a blind cripple and dying young from heart disease does not seem to be adequate motivation for people to want action, and by the time people are in the waiting room to have their legs chopped off it is too late.
The pills and potions used to treat these diseases only treat the symptoms, we need to treat the root cause – corruption of our intelligent control system.
Medical Advances
Medical science has made great strides in identifying the key hormones, like ghrelin and leptin, which our bodies use as part of our intelligent control system, but these are just the messengers. We still has to unravel the complex logic which actually takes the decisions.
We can study evolution to get some indication of this decision making process. We can see that for millions of years our predecessors ate wild plants to feed our gut biology, and we can study the computer science of artificial intelligence to gain an impression of how it may work.
But we can be sure from the millions of years of our evolution, until the last few decades, that our intelligent control system was highly effective in managing our bodies.
We can be equally sure that a diet which included wild plants played a key role. The change in the our diets over the last few decades is a key factor in the failure of our intelligent control system and the consequent health epidemic.
But we cannot feed a population of 7.8 billion people on wild plants. But we can study ecology to understand how the balance of plants (and animals) worked together as an effective and sustainable system.
This has led to the development of the Gbiota™ bed which aims to restore our gut biology.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
Home gardeners, by themselves, are not going to create a healthy society. We need to establish an alternative food system to supply Gbiota produce to the wider society.
This will probably start with tree changers who see an opportunity to help improve the society in which we live, and earn honest money, by providing Gbiota produce to those who cannot be self sufficient.
Hopefully this will then spread to the enlightened regenerative farmers who see the damage being done to our soils by industrial chemical farming.
This website make no effort to be populist and is targeted to the people who are prepared to put the effort into understanding how they can protect their intelligent control system and are prepared to take the action needed to protect their food supply.
Learn how living soil supports human health. Discover how beneficial microbes, nutrient-dense food, and simple growing methods can help you improve your gut microbiome and overall wellbeing. Explore the Gbiota resources, videos, and community.
