How to breed gut microbes yourself

We may live in our cities of concrete and steel, but we are totally dependent on the Earth’s Ecosystem to survive.

Our energy comes from the sun captured by photosynthesis from the plants, plankton or algae. Our nutrients come from rocks, broken down by fungi, while the system of digestion and natural replacement is powered by the microbes.

But the microbes do more than that, they communicate with each other in our gut, creating natural intelligence which regulates our appetite, how much and where we store fat.

Sustained life is not possible without microbes, yet our modern food system has decimated the natural microbes and led to a worldwide crisis of chronic diseases, yet it is so simple to resolve.

Forget about thinking you can just go and buy a bag of microbes from your local chemist’s shop or online.

Microbes have a short life of around a day. They breed and die rapidly, typically in a day, in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Of the microbes you think you are buying as probiotics, some may just survive if they are kept cold enough, but the real solution is to breed them yourself.

It is better and cheaper.

No, don’t think you need a Ph D in microbiology to breed microbes, they are a randy lot and breed like crazy with a little help from us. We just need to control the conditions so we breed the beneficial microbes and not the harmful ones that make us sick or even kill us.

This is not some wonder new technology; ancient hunter-gatherer tribes had a healthy gut biome, as do the few remaining hunter-gatherers. Their gut biome has been extensively researched, so we can be sure of that.

True, it can be a delicate process but I have experimented to find the easiest way so virtually anyone can breed their own gut microbes and have the benefit of a healthy gut.

Here’s how.

Containers

The easiest way, particularly if you live in a flat with no garden or growing experience, is to grow the beneficial microbes in containers, or more correctly, container sets.

You will need several to provide the volumes and reliable supply that you need, but let us just start with a single container set.

You will need two containers, which you can buy from any hardware shop.

Eventually, I suggest you buy a number of small containers rather than one big one. Technically, it allows much better control, and in practice, they are heavy.

I use 20-litre containers.

Most containers nest neatly inside each other, but some are designed so they can either stack or nest. Both work fine, but you need them in the nesting position.

You will need to drill a drainage hole, at least 15mm in diameter, in the edge of both containers, but preferably at the opposite end of the boxes, so the water has to flow through the boxes.

The top box

Fill the top box with any good potting mix and seed in the normal way.

The potting mix will not contain the beneficial microbes that you need in your gut biome, but we will come to that later.

Plants exude sugars

Plants use sunlight and carbon from the air to create sugars. They exude some of these sugars to attract and feed the microbes into the root zone.

Plants need these microbes to process the nutrients for the plants.

This is one of life’s greatest synergistic relationships, and without this relationship, you would not be here to read this article. It is the result of a billion years of evolution. Nature may take its time, but it produces incredible results in the end.

Different plants exude different sugars to attract different microbes. Gbiota distributors supply seed kits containing the needed spectrum of species to grow baby greens; the easiest and quickest plants to grow to breed gut microbes.

The bottom box

The bottom box is where most of the breeding action occurs. This is fuelled by organic waste, which you might otherwise throw into the green waste bin, at least if your local council is environmentally sensitive.

Put a piece of dishcloth over the hole so the waste does not fall out and make a mess.

You may need to poke the cloth with your finger from time to time so it does not silt up.

But this organic matter is not waste; it is a highly valuable resource which is part of the process of leading you to a long and healthy life. Pretty valuable!

But you can’t just throw in a load of kitchen scraps; the flies may be happy, but you will not be happy.

You will also need to add an inoculant kit to the bottom box.  This contains the starter microbes but also a variety of creatures of the soil, the great recyclers which break down organic waste for the  microbes to digest and have guts like us.

It is no coincidence that the microbes in our gut are also found in the soil.  Put it simply that is where they came from in the first place.

If you live in Australia you can sign up as a home grower when you will automatically receive a Gbiota inoculation kit in the post.  Delivery does have to be arranged as the kit contains living creatures which must be put into the Gbiota box as soon as it is received so they don't die.

You can sign up to become a home grower here.

The recyclers

You need the aid of the recyclers, that myriad of creatures which recycle waste into something that is valuable.

There are many recyclers, each doing the job they are best suited to.

Worms are at the front of the list, but they don’t have teeth to break down tough waste, but they do have a very active gut biome, which can process their own weight in a day, but they do need the help of the other recyclers.

Soldier fly larvae do a great job here, but they won’t win any beauty competitions.

Beetles (not the musical Beatles, who have a good beat, but no beet) are also a critical member of the team.

But recycling is a team effort with many and varied species involved. Ask any soil micro-biologist and they will talk for hours about the world of recyclers.

But you don’t need to become a soil microbiologist; that is the job of the Gbiota breeders who supply the Gbiota distributors the material to make the kits, which consist of a combination of both the seeds and the inoculant.

All you have to do is buy the kits from your distributor.

Preferential breeding

Labile compost

If you just watered the top box, you would have two boxes: the top box growing plant in the conventional way. They will grow quite happily, but they will not be the beneficial microbes you need.

The bottom box is teaming with what is commonly called labile or young compost, meaning that some microbes will be the beneficial microbes you want, while others will not be properly processed as yet. Labile rhymes with nubile, which implies young

That is why you need two boxes.

Creating the conditions

But now comes the critical part, which is creating the conditions so the beneficial microbes will out compete and out breed any less beneficial microbes.

This may sound tricky, but in practice it is very simple - it is just a question of creating the right balance of air and water.

If the soil is too wet, the harmful microbes will breed; if the soil it too dry, the beneficial microbes won’t breed.

Goldilocks moisture

We need that magical Goldilocks moisture.

If you are one of those sorts of people who like to read long, boring technical articles, such as mine on how water moves through the soil and hydrophilic and hydrophobic soils, then please go ahead - but you don’t have to.

All you have to understand is that most soils love water and will hang on to it in a deep embrace and not let it go. Romantic but a bit of a pain.

So what we have to do is to thoroughly wet the soil until all the soil is saturated, then let the water drain away.

When the water saturates the soil, it will expel all the stale air, and when it drains, it will suck in fresh air.

Flood and flush

That is how we get the Goldilocks moisture, and it is just so simple and is actually less work than dribbling water in every day.

It is so simple. Take the drainage from the bottom box and add enough water to completely flood both the upper and lower boxes.

If you are using 20 litre containers, that may be about 5 litres, but you can easily tell, water needs to drain out of the bottom box and if it does not, then next time use more.

Soil blood

Unless you are wearing exceptionally dark sunglasses, you cannot help but notice that the so-called water is not clear water, but a dark brown.

If you are that sort of person, you may look at this under a microscope, when you will see that it is full of wriggly little creatures. Unless it is a very powerful microscope, you may not see the microbes themselves, but you will see that it is just full of life.

Where there is life, there is microbes, so you can be sure that when you pour this liquid over your plants, they will be covered in microbes.

We call this liquid soil blood because it is doing the same job as our blood - distributing air, water, nutrients, and other essentials around our bodies and among those essentials are the microbes that we need to regulate our bodies.

Does it work

Right now, I can’t tell you that it will extend your health span or life. It should, but now I don’t know for sure, you will have to wait a few more decades until you are really old, when it will be a bit too late.

But you can very quickly tell if it is working, maybe not right now but within a month or so.

You don’t need any complicated piece of scientific equipment to see if your appetite and food cravings are reduced. They should be, but there are some people who suffer from a genetic permutation that makes them continuously hungry, but that is very rare.

The most common cause of excessive hunger or getting fat is the wrong microbes in your gut.

You can also tell if you feel better. But if you want to be a bit more scientific, you can measure your weight or waist dimensions.

Risks and balances

But life is a question of risks and balances.

What are the benefits?

A longer health span and generally feeling better.

What are the costs? Apart from a bit of cost in setting up, the cost of the greens are a lot lower than buying decidedly non-fresh vegetables from the supermarket.

Apart from misreading the instructions and pouring raw sewage directly onto your plants, there is minimal risk from eating fresh home grown vegetables, certainly less risk than much commercially grown fruit and vegetables.

So what is the final conclusion?

In plain Aussie, just give it a go and see what happens.

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Extinction or survive and thrive

The wrong fat in the wrong place is at the core of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

Three out of four people now die from a chronic disease, which is crippling our health system, leading to 8 million people a year suffering from an unnecessary diabetic amputation, and is a direct result of misapplication of modern technology.

There are some who say that modern technology will lead to the extinction of our species. Most people dismiss this as alarmist, green woke talk.

But who is right?

I am in the hot seat. I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering and have been recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators. The company I formed became Australia’s leading exporter of technical software, a multi-million dollar company that changed an industry.

Am I an evil creature leading to the extinction of my species, or can I become a leader to a better society where people not just survive but thrive?

The answer is simple: technology should be developed for the benefit of the community and not for greed or profits.

But what is the technology we need to develop so we thrive?

For the first three billion years, the Earth was a dead rock with no life.

Then microbes appeared, probably from an asteroid.

They broke down the rocks to create soil, plants followed, then life exploded, leading eventually to us.

But not all microbes were beneficial: others were harmful microbes which made us sick or killed us, so only a few people lived to their natural life span.

But humans, ever inventive, developed technologies to combat these harmful microbes.

We initially increased our life span but that plateaued and our health span declined.

Our life span increased dramatically, and all looked good until we realised that we had also decimated the beneficial microbes on which life depends, and our health span, how long we remained fit and healthy, was dropping dramatically with an epidemic of chronic diseases - overweight, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and dementia.

We were slow to appreciate that the beneficial microbes did more than transform rock, recycled organic waste and digested our food. The microbes in our gut communicated with each other to create genuine intelligence, which formed part of the intelligent control system which regulated our bodies, particularly our appetite and where and how much fat we stored.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is at the core of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

The answer is obvious: we need the technology of breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes. It had to be simple and inexpensive, so everyone could benefit from it and not limited to the laboratory.

So that is why I developed the Gbiota technology, so we can not just survive but thrive.

Interested? Join the Gbiota movement. Start here and sign up for our Newsletter, then act.

If I am honest, you will probably find my website overwhelming and at first confusing, with over 300 articles and videos.

Solving the world’s greatest health crisis is not trivial and requires a change in thinking from focusing on bio-chemistry to thinking about homeostasis and understanding the basics of control theory, which is an engineering rather than a medical technology.

But don’t give up, we are not some mega corporation focused on profits, but real people trying to save the people from the obsession with power and money.

When you are ready to take action to start growing your own beneficial gut microbes just drop us an email telling us a bit about your situation and we will direct you in the best way that suits your needs.

The theory may seem overwhelming but anyone can grow plants in living soil. People have been doing it for ages before our obsession with profits.

MM x Gbiota Marketing Strategy_v1

Bad things happen

There is a saying that bad things happen when good men stand by and do nothing.

Right now, bad things are happening, so we need good men (and women) to act. I will tell you how later.

The state of the world

But for now, just look at the state of the world. Decent, ordinary people, women and children, are being slaughtered in bulk with the aid of modern arms.

Bad, but things get even badder.

Mis and dis information are destroying the structure and confidence in our society.

Bad, but things get even badder.

Refugees across the globe are escaping from their native countries, looking for security, damaging both the countries they leave and try to migrate to.

Bad, but things get even badder.

People need a home where they feel safe and secure. We know how to build homes, but our political system blocks our ability to build at scale.

Bad, but things get even badder.

We all need to eat food that leads to a long and health life, yet we have a food system full of sugars, fats and salt but deficient in essential microbes and trace minerals and which makes us fat and sick and creating the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and dementia.

The scale is overwhelming, three out of four people die from a chronic disease, diabetes is the fastest growing of all diseases with eight million people a year suffering from a limb amputation.

It is true there have been remarkable improvements in diabetic drugs but the first approach should be to avoid becoming diabetic is the first place.

This is not expensive, it actually costs less than buying highly processed food.

The emphasis should be on prevention using simple and inexpensive technology that works rather than complex technologies, that at best, reduce the damage when disease becomes established.

Sadly, there is little reward for prevention while cure is highly profitable.

Microbes - essential for life

But worst of all, it is destroying our ability to produce the critical components needed to grow our food, such as the right amount of water and nutrients, but in particular, the microbes which recycle nutrients and also live in our gut and control our bodies.

We know how important these microbes are. For three billion years, there were no microbes and no life on Earth. Then, a billion years ago, microbes appeared, leading to the proliferation of life and eventually us.

Life cannot exist without these microbes. But there are beneficial microbes that are essential for a healthy life, and those that make us sick or kill us.

We have proved very effective at killing microbes, but we need the technology of breeding beneficial microbes, without breeding harmful microbes.

That is where the Gbiota technology comes in.

Capability profiles

Everyone has their own capability profile; some people are good at many things, while others are very good at some things and pretty useless at many others.

I fit into the second category. I am a natural innovator, I have been recognised as one of the top leading innovators by the Institute of Engineers, but I am pretty useless at many other things, including marketing.

Breeding beneficial microbes

I set myself the task of creating the technology of breeding beneficial microbes by recycling organic waste, but without breeding the harmful microbes.

A critical technology, but useless if not widely applied, which means bringing a new technology to market.

Technology, useless without wide adoption

I, like many people, am suspicious of the honesty of many marketing companies, but after much frustration, I found a marketing company that clearly understood ethics and the need for food that keeps people healthy.

Gbiota - a social benefit organisation

Gbiota is a social benefit organisation, our prime focus is to benefit the community by ensuring a healthy food system, but like any organisation, we need to generate money to pay the bills.

I therefore asked Mediamortar and their associate company, Explanate, to prepare a report on how we could best make this technology widely available.

In the spirit of openness, which is part of being a community benefit organisation, I have decided to make this report available to those interested in participating in the social benefit project.

You can read it here.

At the start I said I would tell you what I am asking. In this era of mis and dis information and marketing hype, people naturally distrust anything they are told, particularly if it is on their screen.

But people do believe what they hear from a trusted friend, so I am asking people to try the system and eat food produced using the Gbiota system, see for themselves that it actually works and then tell their friends.

Why are some people fat and others skinny?

Do fat people live longer than skinny people?

Does it matter anyway or should we just enjoy life?

Can we do anything about it?

I can’t answer all these questions, all I can do is give you the facts as I understand them.

We need to store some fat, that is what our bums are for, and it is healthy to store some fat in our bums.

But the wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious diseases.

For the individual, this means a shorter life span and, probably more important, a much shorter health span.

Globally, this is the world’s biggest health cost to our health system.

I think these matters and is why I run this website. There is a lot of information here, but this is the essence.

For a long time, we were told that people got fat because they consumed more calories than they burned. This is not the reason why we get fat. It is true that to get fat we do have to consume more calories than we burn, but it is not the reason why we get fat.

We get fat because we have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

If we consume more calories than we consume, then our intelligent control system is perfectly capable of disposing of the excess in our pooh.

If it decides there are deficiencies in our diet it will generate hormones which will make us crave food that will overcome that deficiency.

If it decides that there are no deficiencies, it will create other hormones that say you are full, stop eating. We can override those hormones, but that is our decision.

Modern biochemistry has advanced rapidly in the last few years, so we understand all the complex chemicals we need and, on average, how much of each we need. We have the tests to reveal any deficiencies and can readily buy supplements to correct those deficiencies

But, our intelligent control system is continuously monitoring our bodies, can detect any deficiency and learns (or more precisely, we can train it to learn) which foods will correct for that deficiency.

But our intelligent control system does this far more effectively.

But, and this is the crux of the matter, for our intelligent control system to work effectively, we need

1) The right microbes in our gut, which is an integral part of our intelligent control system. This is easily fixed by eating the right food

2) We need to regularly feed our gut microbes so the beneficial microbes prevail

3) We need to train our intelligent control system, which we do by eating the right food from the minute we are born and onwards

All simple and inexpensive. You just have to take your health into your own hands and do it.

Here we show you how.

 Obvious - but wrong

We are told that if we want to live a long and healthy life and avoid the dangers of the modern epidemic of chronic disease, we should eat less and exercise more, but it does not seem to work. People who go on strict diets seem to end up fatter, while people who eat what they fancy seem to be perfectly healthy.

What is going on?

The calorie balance theory says that if we eat more calories than we burn that we will get fat. It sounds so simple and obvious - how can it possibly be wrong?

It may be true of a water tank, if you put more water in than what you take out, the tank will eventually overflow, the equivalent of getting fat.

But we are much smarter than a dumb water tank. We have a highly sophisticated control system that regulates our bodies.

It is not just one organ but a collection of our gut, which has

- microbes which communicate with each other to form intelligence,

- our subconscious head brain, which learns that a slice of cheesecake will lead to a rush of dopamine in our bodies, which makes us feel good,

- our conscious brain, which decides whether to stretch out our arms and scoff the cheesecake,

- a complex array of sensors throughout our bodies

- a communication system of hormones, manufactured by our gut brain and an electric communication system.

See, quite an upmarket system.

If it decides that we need to store fat, for example, if we have been deprived of food for any length of time, as in a war or from an extreme diet, it sends signals to our gut to manufacture hormones to make us crave food.

We get fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store more fat not because we are little piggies and stuff ourselves.

If we want to avoid getting fat and avoid becoming yet another statistic in the chronic disease epidemic we have to do three things.

- make sure we have a healthy gut with the right species of microbes

- train our subconscious head brain so it knows what foods work for us

- make sure we eat enough of the right sort of foods so there are no deficiencies

Although it may seem obvious that the solution to getting fat and avoiding chronic diseases is to eat less that is just wrong.

We need to eat more, but not just more sugary fatty foods but foods which will ensure that our intelligent control system recognises that we have all the nutrients that we need when it sends out signals to out gut saying “body full - send out hormones to stop eating”.

Our intelligent control system is the result of a million years of evolution and is smart.  Treat it nice and it will look after you and tell you what foods to eat - so simple - so effective.

Don't look after your intelligent control system and life will be short and miserable.

Change your gut microbes

Gbiota aims to help people change their gut microbes so they can expect to lead a long and healthy life and less at risk from the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

While genetics plays a small part, the microbes in our gut dominate whether we expect to live a long and healthy life or be fat and part of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

We have known for a long time that it is simple to change the microbes in mice - they eat each other's pooh. We can make fat mice skinny or skinny mice fat.

We can change the microbes in humans but it is more difficult. We need to eat food which both contains the beneficial microbes and the nutrients that feeds the beneficial microbes so they continue to breed in our gut.

Breeding beneficial microbes is easy, they breed like crazy starting within twenty minutes of being created, but there are two problems we need to overcome.

The first problem is that we have to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes which make us sick. We do this by carefully controlling the conditions so they favour the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

The second problem is that while microbes breed very rapidly,  they live in a state of what we call dynamic equilibrium.  The microbes appear to be the same but they are the children or grandchildren of the original microbes.

They breed and die equally rapidly, so you need eat plants containing the beneficial microbes shortly after harvesting.

That means you have to grow the plants yourself and pick and eat.

I am sorry about that but that is just the way of the world.

We solve both of these problems with the Gbiota bio-boxes which control the conditions to favour the beneficial microbes and make it easy for people to grow the plants themselves, even if they have no garden or growing experience.

We can’t do it for you, you have to do it yourself. It is your body and you make the choice.

What we can do is show you how to do it and supply living starter soil in which the beneficial microbes are already breeding.

Our intelligent control system

We all want to live a long and healthy life.

Our health depends on the intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, and the microbes in our gut are a critical part of this system.

But they are not us, we have a synergistic relationship with them. They keep us alive, and we keep them alive.

If we get fat, it is not simply because we eat too much. Our gut microbes, rightly or wrongly, decide that we need to store more fat and create hormones which make us crave food, so we overeat and get fat.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, heart attacks, diabetes and dementia, so I suggest that you read the following story about the history of gut microbes.

No microbes - no life

For the first three billion years on Earth, there was no life and no microbes.

Just a dead rock whizzing around the sun.

No microbes - no life. Pretty simple.

Microbes appeared

Then, a billion years ago, microbes appeared, maybe from an asteroid, and life exploded.

The microbes broke down the rocks to produce soil, plants grew in the soil, then animals ate the plants, and other animals ate the animals that ate the plants.

Microbes breed incredibly fast, and the children of microbes are not identical to their parents, so soon there were hundreds of thousands of different species of microbes.

We still have only a limited understanding of this multitude of microbes, but we do know, for sure, that there are beneficial microbes - the good bugs, which lead to a healthy life and harmful microbes - the bad bugs, which make us sick.

Humans arrive

Humanoid creatures evolved some million years ago. There were very few of them, so they lived in isolated communities, so the harmful microbes which make us sick, or kill us, were not too much of a problem.

Agriculture

Then we developed agriculture, which gave us a secure source of food, so we developed cities with people living in close proximity.

These created good conditions for the harmful microbes to breed, so disease and plagues were a major issue.

Modern technology

But humans are inventive creatures, pioneers like Janssen and Leeuwenhoek developed the compound microscope, leading to Louis Pasteur's understanding of microbes and how they can make us sick.

This understanding led to a wave of technology to reduce infectious diseases being developed. Some were clearly beneficial. Who can debate the benefits of clean drinking water, louse-free bedding, sewage systems, antibiotics, etc.

But as happens so often with technology, the benefits are immediately obvious, but the negatives appear later. I very much doubt that when Stevenson took that ride on the first commercial train, the rocket, he was too much concerned about climate change.

Similarly, our modern food system with its highly productive use of synthetic fertilisers and convenient, highly processed leading to supermarkets full of tasty food loaded with energy may seem a wonder.

The unexpected result is a degradation of the microbial distribution in our guts.

Microbes matter

Microbes play a critical role.

They breed in the soil and break down the rocks to make the nutrients bio-available for the plants that we eat.

Some microbes enter our gut, where they continue to breed. They communicate with each other to create real intelligence, our gut-brain, which regulates our appetite.

Working with our head brain, they learn which foods are beneficial and supply critical nutrients.

If we are deficient in these nutrients, the gut-brain will create hormones so we crave the food that supplies those nutrients and if we are satisfied, it will create hormones so we feel full and satisfied and stop eating.

In ages past, we had no idea about microbes. By random chance, some of the food we ate would contain the nutrients and beneficial microbes, but harmful microbes bred profusely so most people died before reaching their natural life span.

But we learned about the harmful microbes and changed the conditions, improved the way we grew our food, better hygiene with sewage and clean water systems and increased our life span.

But we had not only killed off the harmful microbes but had killed off the beneficial microbes which regulate our bodies. We lowered our gut’s ability to regulate our bodies.

Our intelligent control system recognised the deficiencies and sent out hormones for us to eat more. We accumulate excess fat and as the wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of chronic or non-infectious diseases, we created the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

We now need to enter a third stage where we learn to control the conditions so the beneficial microbes out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is what Gbiota does, we show people how to control the conditions in both the soil and in the food we eat so the beneficial microbes triumph.

Learning how to do this has been a long and expensive road. But we are a community benefit company, our aim is to benefit the community, not to make unjustified profits at the expense of the community.

Neither are we a charity so we need to cover our costs. Much of the information we supply is free for anyone with an interest to study how food works in our bodies, but we do charge for the more detailed information on how to control the conditions.

If interested you can read about Community benefit companies in the article ‘Changing the system’.

Will it work?

The bomb shell or light bulb moment

I may be a woke greenie concerned about the communities well being, but I read a lot.

One morning I was having my after breakfast read, this time “I’m So effing hungry” by Dr. Amy Shah when I was hit by a bomb shell if you are a pessimist or a light bulb moment if your are an optimist.

You see, for years I have been working on the problem of chronic disease, or more specifically, why eight million people a year have a limb chopped off from diabetes.

I thought I had the solution pretty much sorted out from a technical viewpoint, which is my skill set, but I was failing miserably to get the message out to the wider public. I understood that I may have a good technical record, after all, I was selected as one of Australia’s leading innovators, but I was no marketing guru.

Yet here I was reading a book that said pretty much what I had been trying to get out to the public. So I decided to ask my friend, Dr. Google, how successful Amy was in getting the message out.

And what did I find out, she was a rip-roaring success with millions of followers, she was a fully qualified medical doctor, but unlike most doctors, she started by studying nutrition, which is a cornerstone in combating chronic disease.

Yet despite her success, when I go to my local shopping centre, what do I see? I see a sea of wobbly bums and tums.

There is something going on there I need to understand.

Now I admit to being a dull, boring engineer, and engineers have a role in life to study the best available science and work out how to apply it for the benefit of the community and maybe make enough money to keep on doing our job.

But we have one phrase we keep on asking, we may study all the leading science and work out how to apply it but then we ask a simple question “Does it work”.

The theory may seem unimpeachable, but when it comes to practice, there is always the fear of that hidden snag.

One of my favourite sayings is that

“Science is the art of managing truth, engineering is the art of managing ignorance”.

There is something here that we are missing, and I had to find out what.

The story I have been telling

We all want to live a long and healthy life.

No one wants to be fat, have a limb chopped off from diabetes, die of a heart attack or inflict the suffering on our carers.

These are the costs of the modern epidemic of chronic disease which is by far the biggest health problem across the modern world.

Naturally, it has received a massive amount of research, and it was very quickly understood that they were caused by the wrong fact in the wrong place.

Initially, scientist and indeed much of the population dismissed this as people eating too much and the slogan “eat less, exercise more” was promoted.

It totally failed and has largely been abandoned, apart from that handful who cling to outdated ideas.

But there are plenty of open-minded scientist who studied and experimented until they had a clear, and now well accepted view, that we have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies

Our gut is an integral part of this intelligent control system with individual microbes in the gut communicating with each other and our head brain.

If this intelligent control system decided that we needed to store more fat the gut would produce hormones which would control our appetite, telling us to stop eating if we were full or crave specific food if our bodies need certain nutrients.

The spectrum of species of microbes in our gut played a critical part in this decision. Basically there are gut bugs that make us fat and other gut bugs that make us skinny.

This was first demonstrated in mice by feeding the pooh of skinny mice to fat mice when they became skinny and vice versa.

Later this was demonstrated beyond doubt on humans by the faecal transplant. Graphically if you poked the pooh of a skinny person up the bum of a fat person they would become skinny and vice versa.

There is no doubt that the science is correct - the species of microbes in your gut determines whether you are fat or skinny.

This has led to a multi billion dollar industry of pre and pro biotics, which as anyone can see by a visit to their local shopping centre and viewing the array of wobbly bums and tums has failed miserably.

So what went wrong

We need to understand three concepts.

The first concept is dynamic equilibrium. The gut bugs we have today are not the same as the ones we have tomorrow. Microbes have a very short life span so they are continuously breeding and dying so tomorrow microbes are the sons and daughters of today’s microbes. They may be similar but are not identical to today’s microbes.

Our gut microbes are slowly but steadily changing.

The second concept was given to us by Richard Dawkins in his selfish gene story. A gene in a living creature will struggle to preserve its nature. It may die along with the animal it lives in but the gene will fight to keep the gene family intact.

The third concept is that the food we eat contains microbes.

Microbes breed in the soil. If the conditions favour microbes beneficial to us they will be the dominant species of microbes, they will enter the plants, if we eat them fresh, just after picking we will benefit from these microbes.

If we eat them later we will be eating different species of microbes, the longer we wait the less beneficial they will be.

If the conditions in the soil do not favour beneficial microbes we will be eating plants containing harmful microbes.

If we do not eat plants with beneficial microbes and eat highly processed foods we will not be gaining the benefits of the beneficial microbes, but some other microbes.

Microbes breed incredibly fast and will breed until they fill all available space. In our everyday world, there is no such thing as microbe free, it is just a question of whether we eat beneficial, harmful or neutral microbes.

The microbes we have in our gut are the result of an ongoing battle for space between the various species of microbes. Who wins is dominated by the food we eat.

What does this all mean in the real world?

It means that the microbes in our gut are dominated by the food we eat. We can eat all the pro-biotics we like or have all the faecal transplants that we can bear but ultimately the species of microbes will be dominated by the food we eat at every meal.

What is Gbiota all about?

Showing people how to grow and eat the food that will lead to a beneficial gut biota.

How do you get started? First job is to sign up for a free Newsletter and check for new posts so you become part of the world of ever-changing gut microbes.

Creating a gut-brain food industry

Life is good, we are living longer and the supermarkets are full of healthy food.

Sounds great but is it true?

My daughter, when she was about seven taught me a valuable lesson. She said she believed in Father Christmas because if she stopped believing she may not get any presents.

But the other kids around her told her that Father Christmas was not real and it was mum and dad that bought the presents so she stopped believing.

But I realised that this applied to the bulk of the population. People tend to believe what is convenient to believe and what other people believe.

I am an innovator, my job is to identify problems and find solutions and there is a very real problem with our food.

We may be very proud of our technical achievements but the human body, the result of millions of years of evolution is incredibly sophisticated. It has formed a relationship with the microbes in our gut that digest our food.

These microbes monitor the types and amount of food in our bodies and if they sense a deficiency they will send out a complex family of hormones to make us crave the foods we need. Every time we eat it learns about that food and that information is stored in our head-brain ready for use when needed.

If it senses that we have all the foods that we need it will send out other hormones to say stop eating.

This is truly a remarkable system.

But we need to feed, train and replenish our gut microbes - something we have done naturally by eating plants that have grown in soil full of living creatures with beneficial microbes living in their guts.

This has been happening for millions of years but then we changed our food system so we stopped feeding and nurturing our gut microbes. The result was that it no longer sent out those essential hormones so we overeat and get fat and sick.

This is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

This is well understood by scientists working for drug companies who have developed synthetic hormones to stop food cravings. They do work, at least for a period until our smart bodies learn about these hormones so they are no longer effective.

But my job as an innovator is to find an effective solution and that is what I have done by creating a system where people can breed the beneficial microbes that create the natural hormones, at home, even if they live in a flat with no garden.

But as is common, developing the technical solution is the easy bit of innovation, the difficult bit is getting people to adopt the solution and that is where the lessons from my seven year old daughter come in.

It is no good running some monster advertising campaign to try to convince everyone. For a start the bulk of the people don’t want to admit there is a problem and even if they do they don’t want to feel out of place with their daily contacts.

That does not work - it has to be taken in steps.

There are always a few people who are willing to admit there is a problem and be pioneers in adopting a new solution.

But here comes another problem. The epidemic of chronic diseases is a huge problem causing much misery to the sufferers and costs to the health system.

It is natural to think that such a difficult problem requires a highly sophisticated solution like synthetic hormones which is undoubtedly a sophisticated solution.

By contrast, the solution of people breeding beneficial microbes, that create hormones naturally, at home is just so simple and low cost.

It is unbelievable to most people that such a simple low-cost solution could possibly be effective - so they don’t believe it.

How do we solve that problem? Not by more and yet more scientific studies and reports, that do not convince people.

What will work is finding those entrepreneurial pioneers and supporting them to use the system for themselves. Even these pioneers may not be convinced by scientific arguments but if they try it for themselves and it works for them they will form the nucleus that leads to societal change. I have written many articles on creating paradigm shifts, the latest is Innovation is a Funny Business which you can sign up to read for free along with many other articles.

And if you see yourself as one of those pioneering spirits willing to change the society they live in for the better then email me here.

Warning

Bertha Benz ride through the German countryside may not have seemed particularly significant at the time - but look what happened.

A few pots breeding beneficial microbes may not seem particularly significant now but the global population needs a gut-brain food industry if we are to be healthy.

Failures in the development stage are part of life. When it comes to the early stage of adoption failures could kill any hopes of developing a viable industry.

Success is in the hands of a few visionary pioneers - we must get this right hence the need for an effective support structure.

Our gut-brain is highly sophisticated - evolved over millions of years to keep us alive and healthy for as long as possible.

All we have to do is to feed and train our gut-gut brain. It will then do its job with no further effort from us.

It monitors our bodies, sensing what sort of food we may need or whether we are full. It sends out a complex array of hormones so we want to eat the food we need or to stop eating.

The microbes start life in the soil, or more precisely in the gut of the creatures of the soil, enter the plants that we eat and then our gut.

These microbes have a very short life, living and dying in dynamic equilibrium. This means the plants must be eaten shortly after harvesting.

In our modern chemical industrial food system, there are few microbes in the soil and they will have all died by the time we eat the plants the microbes will have died.

This is the underlying reason for the modern epidemic of chronic diseases obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

This is easily resolved, even if you live in an apartment by growing plants in a basket with special soil. It is effective and literally dirt cheap.

Our job is to show you how.

Breeding beneficial microbes in the soil is a natural process which which has been going on for millions of years. However breeding the microbes at home in organic waste depends on the flood and flush system so the soil breathes and the soil blood never becomes stagnant. This needs to be done correctly so we restrict access to members registered with a valid email address who will receive regular newsletters.

We offer technical support by email and video conference so you can do it right.

You can start by signing up for our weekly Newsletter and reading the many articles on our website. This is free - just register. Later you can upgrade to become a consumer, buying the boxes from our licensed grower, or if you feel you have the gardening skills and space a home grower or a licensed grower running a profitable community company benefiting your local community.

Start by registering here. You can cancel or upgrade at any time.

Innovation is a funny business.

Colin Austin 27 March 2025. Published under the Creative Commons System, This may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Food and health

Let us look at the story of food and health.

In the past, and that means going back a million years to the first humanoids there was no epidemic of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

These are all caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place and we had evolved a very effective system in which our gut would sense if there were any deficiencies in our diet and send out a hormone complex so we craved the needed food. When satisfied it would send out other hormones saying stop eating you are full.

For convenience, let us call this our gut-brain.

Evolution at work

Our gut-brain is an incredibly sophisticated system that has evolved over millions of years. But evolution is never after perfection just survival, so there are millions of creatures, from cockroaches to crocodiles, which have survived for millennia but are far from perfect - like us.

So although there were isolated cases of chronic disease, there was no epidemic.

Then, about fifty years ago, we changed our food system and the epidemic of chronic disease has been growing steadily ever since.

The great human intelligence

So what did we humans, with our great intelligence and innovation skills, do to reverse this epidemic? If ever there was a $64,000 question, this is it.

We understood the cause of the epidemic. Our gut-brain stopped working in the way it has done for the last million years.

Our gut-brain is in a state of dynamic equilibrium with individual microbes breeding and dying rapidly but with the system staying in equilibrium.

This depends on feeding and replenishing them from the food we eat.

Increased population and food demand

As our population increased, we changed the way we grew our food so instead of eating fresh plants grown in living soil teeming with beneficial microbes, we changed it to growing plants with synthetic fertiliser, which is debatable, but far worse is we changed the food distribution system with extensive delays from harvest to eating.

Net result - poor gut health and poor control over our appetite - we got fat and sick, and the epidemic grew and grew.

Ask a seven-year-old kid for the solution, and they would say we need to invent a box so people can grow plants, full of beneficial microbes, on their windowsill.

This would have been a great solution as our subconscious brain would have continued to control our appetite as it had done for the last million years.

Eat less exercise more

But being highly intelligent and sometimes overly logical creatures, we ignored the advice of the seven-year-old and decided we had the technology to manage our diet.

So we developed sophisticated diets and pills measuring calories and nutrients down to the last microgram.

People thought this would solve all the problems and we had catchy advertising programs like eat less, exercise more which sounded great but were a total failure - we just got fatter and sicker.

Subconscious and conscious intelligence

To understand why these catchy advertising jingles fail, we need to understand the differences between conscious and sub-conscious intelligence.

The fact is that subconscious intelligence eventually wins.

To make the point, let me refer you to one of my favourite characters - the kid on the bike.

A three-year-old will soon learn how to ride a bike and will be outpacing mum or dad. That is because the kid is using her subconscious brain which is highly perfected.

If dad had never seen a bike before and I tried to explain how it stays upright by talking about self-balancing gyroscopic couples he is likely to have no idea what I am talking about and certainly no better idea how to ride a bike than when I started.

It is the same with food. We may know, in our conscious brain, what we should eat but what we want to eat (our subconscious brain) will win in the end.

Back to the boxes

OK, our seven year old has the idea of breeding the beneficial microbes, and their food, in a box. She will probably love playing with all the worms and creepy crawlies but will need a bit of adult assistance to get everything working properly.

That is where we are now, but that is just the start. There is this conception that all you need to be an innovator is to have this great idea.

I have been having so-called great ideas all my life. 80% fail because they don’t work.

Another 15% fail because they don’t do anything useful that people want.

To turn the remaining 5% into a useful product or service requires a lot of grunt work.

The marketing myth

There are internet advertising gurus who will try and convince you that they can run an internet campaign and you will be an overnight success - and nothing is further from the truth.

Let us get back to the box which does have the potential to combat the chronic disease epidemic - but there is a long way to go.

Growers

It is fine to have all these wonderful concepts but they are useless without a product. A very old-fashioned idea I know but innovations need products that work and do the job and people have confidence that the product works.

That means setting up what is a new industry which requires on one hand growers who can produce the boxes but also the marketing, legal and commercial infrastructure which requires a spectrum of skills.

We may know how to do that but is still has to be done.

Changing the way we eat

Now comes the difficult bit. Persuading the bulk of the population they should have a box on the balcony growing plants which they cut and chop up to make a garnish for their main meal.

The Internet marketing gurus will tell you how they can run this brilliant marketing campaign on the web with flashy web pages, social media, video clips etc the whole shebang.

The net result will be they will end up richer, you poorer with no advance to the cause.

How innovations happen

I have spent my life in the innovation business, with my fair share of ideas that did not work, ideas that worked but no one wanted, two that worked and now the last one which is by far and away the most important. Broadly food that makes us healthy but more specifically breeding gut microbes that will create the hormones to tell us to stop eating when we have had sufficient.

There are three steps in this process.

Step 1 assembling the skill set

No one person has all the skills to generate the social change that a major innovation involves.

This requires the formation of an inner circle with a range of skills, technical, marketing, communications and understanding of how societies work and change.

This is where we are now, forming this inner circle - are you interested in changing the world for the better - let me know, we need you.

Step 2 the pioneers

There are eight billion people on Earth and we are all different. We are a social animal and being part of a group is incredibly important to us.

But there is a small minority of people who are prepared to go against the conventional wisdom and replace it with a better wisdom - the paradigm shift.

But they won’t do this based on logical augments alone, they have to test it first for themselves.

I know this very well. Fifty years ago I was travelling the world telling people about my innovation in the area of Computer Aided Engineering which challenged the conventional wisdom.

Not a nutter

Most people wrote me off as a nutter, but a few thought I may have a point. In no way were they convinced by my logic but they thought it worth their while to test for themselves.

Fortunately for me, it worked, an essential requirement for any innovation, and then they became convinced. It was not my logical or miserable marketing skills that convinced them - they had to try it and prove to themselves that it worked.

This group then became the disciples, they were often people of influence and when other people saw that people were using this technology they became the message bearers and we entered the third stage.

Step 3 Acceptance

When it became clear that there was a group, even if it was a small group, people felt more comfortable about making the change. Again they had to go through the process of trying it for themselves before they made the change but eventually, the change became the norm and the paradigm shift occurred.

Back to the box

This is the process we need to follow to get the box accepted.

We need this small group with the spectrum of skills needed.

Recruit the growers to produce the boxes so people can try it for themselves.

Make contact with the pioneers who will become the first wave of acceptance

Finally, be able to satisfy the demand as this becomes the accepted norm.

Interested

Interested in becoming part of a global change for the better - contact me

Food change

For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren rock.

Then microbes appeared, they broke down the rocks and made soil which led to plants flourishing.

Next came animals that ate the plants which were full of microbes so some microbes ended up in the guts of these animals

These microbes digested the animal’s food, manufacturing the spectrum of complex chemicals the animals needed and, most significantly regulating appetite, sending out specific hormones to make the animals hungry for that food when they were low in a particular food and yet other hormones so they would stop eating when full.

Microbes make life possible

We need the microbes to power the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

Without these microbes we don’t live a long and healthy life we overeat and get fat and sick.

Our modern food system is a highly sophisticated industrialised chemical process relying on synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays which have eliminated the microbes.

This has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases which is causing so much personal suffering for the population and so much cost to the Governments in charge of our health system.

Obesity affects much of the population.

Diabetes is the fastest growing of all diseases with over eight million people a year having a limb amputated.

Heart attacks are the most common cause of death.

Dementia must be one of the most heartbreaking conditions.

All these stem from not having the beneficial microbes in our gut that regulate our appetite.

Solution - breed microbes at home

But we can solve this problem.

Microbes breed in organic waste which makes breeding microbes easy and naturally move into plants. But they also die very quickly which means they must be grown and eaten shortly after picking, in practise - as most people now live in apartments or have little garden, this means in special breeding containers at home.

This is cheaper than buying aged plants from a supermarket but it does mean a change in behaviour, like having a breeding container on your balcony if you live in an apartment.

Microbes have a short life.

We already have the technology of breeding beneficial microbes. Gbiota basket-boxes breed beneficial microbes in organic waste under controlled conditions to grow the plants which contain the beneficial microbes.

This is straightforward but we need to create a social change where people grow that critical part of their diet - gut brain-food - at home rather than relying on the centralised industrial chemical food system.

For that, we need a food social movement.

The community has to be educated about the importance of our gut microbes and shown that they can grow these microbes at home, even if they have no garden or growing skills.

Local gut-brain food industry

We need to create a new industry where people can buy everything they need - the soil, boxes, seeds etc from a local supplier and if needed, get the critical support from a suitably qualified dietitian who understand how the gut microbes act as the control system for our appetite.

How do we create this societal change? We need to create a team of people with a range of skills who understand the benefits to the community of the gut microbes in regulating our bodies.

We need a team because no one person can have all the skills needed, these skills include a spectrum of knowledge, not just the obvious skills of diet, of how gut microbes control our appetite, but a knowledge of how communities work, internet marketing, communication and business skills.

If you feel that you could be interested in becoming part of this team then I suggest you have a look at the many articles on my website gbiota.com then contact me directly here.

Managing change

Colin Austin 17 March 2025 Published under the Creative Commons system so may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

The third mega-change

If you think the world is going through a difficult period you are right. We are going through our third mega-change and managing this change is not going to be easy.

But we can learn from looking at the two previous mega changes.

Mega change no 1 - Fire and cooking

The biggest change was the use of fire for cooking over a million years ago.

The results were dramatic - more nutrients led to bigger brains and smaller guts.

Fire changed us humans creating a new, very different creature.

Humans became the dominant creature and changed the planet forever. No fire and we would have remained an insignificant ape.

Mega change no 2 - Agriculture

The next biggest change was the development of agriculture which had some surprising side effects. It led to us living in close proximity in cities where infection could easily spread.

Natural selection meant that those with a stronger immune system survived better - so again humans changed. We became smaller than our hunter-gatherer ancestors but with a stronger immune system.

This led to the age of colonisation, the history books may talk about significant battles won by the colonisers but in truth, these were just a formality, the people of the colonised countries had been decimated by the introduced diseases.

The world changed yet again.

These changes were not planned by some evil master brain, we can leave that to some Netflix video and were only well understood after the event.

Mega change number 3 - Technology and Industrialisation

We are now in the midst of a third change which is neither planned nor understood - it stems from the new technologies we have developed.

The simplest, and easiest to understand is climate change which is leading to a steady but progressive change to our planet and also has led to a strong activist movement.

Related and even more significant is the industrialised food system.

Let me explain why this is so dramatic.

How life started

For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren rock, nothing, no Netflix, Facebook, nothing not even TikTok.

Then one day microbes appeared, probably from an asteroid that crashed into Earth.

These microbes were hungry so they broke down the rocks and made soil which led to plants flourishing.

Next came animals that ate the plants which were full of microbes so some microbes ended up in the guts of these animals where again it was nice and warm with plenty of food so they flourished.

Evolution leads to the most amazing results. It was in the interest of the microbes to keep the animals alive as long as possible.

So they adopted the role of digesting the animal’s food, manufacturing the spectrum of complex chemicals the animals needed and, most significantly regulating appetite, sending out specific hormones to make the animals hungry for that food when they were low in a particular food and yet other hormones so we would stop eating when full.

We are only just beginning to appreciate the sophistication of this system which is the deal of the millennium.

Microbes make life possible

It is just a fact that life on this planet is only possible because of the microbes.

Without the microbes, our planet would still be a dead rock with no soil to grow plants to feed the animals.

But having food is not enough, we need the microbes to power the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

Humans goof

But there was one funny animal that decided to stop feeding the microbes.

That animal was of course us and that is why instead of living a long and healthy life we overeat and get fat and sick.

Why did we stop feeding the microbes?

This was not because of some evil person worthy of being the central character of a Netflix film. It was because we did not understand the sophistication and benefits of this natural intelligent control system and it was a lot cheaper and more convenient to use synthetic chemicals to grow our food rather than rely on the natural process of microbes making nutrients bio-available.

This was among the biggest goofs that humans have made and has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases which is causing so much personal suffering for the population and so much cost to the Governments in charge of our health system.

Fixing the goof

So how do we fix this goof? We need two things, the technology and a change of attitude.

The technology is easy. Microbes are a randy lot and are happy to breed in organic waste which makes breeding microbes easy. But they also die very quickly which means they must be grown and eaten shortly after picking, in practise - as most people now live in apartments or have little garden, this means in special breeding pots at home.

It is still cheaper than buying aged plants from a supermarket but it does mean a change in behaviour, having a pot on your balcony rather than going to the supermarket.

This does take a bit of training for the non-gardener so the right microbes are bred. They also need to be able to buy their pots and particularly soil from a local grower.

But these are simple problems to resolve.

Creating social change

The overriding problem is how to create the change by creating a social movement.

Just as climate change requires climate activists food requires food activists.

The motivation is there, in most developed countries over half the population are overweight.

Diabetes is the fastest growing of all diseases with over eight million people a year having a limb amputated.

Heart attacks are the most common cause of death.

Dementia must be one of the most heartbreaking conditions.

Two ways to look at food

Visit a dietitian and you will get a clear picture. Highly processed foods full of fats and sugars are not healthy and you should be incorporating plants grown in living soil, full of nutrients and beneficial microbes and eaten fresh into your diet.

The amount of research being undertaken in research labs across the globe into food and our gut biome is staggering. Thousands of peer-reviewed papers are published every year and they conform to a common theme.

You will learn the importance of microbes and how they regulate our appetite so we naturally want to eat the right sort of food in the right amount.

We know what sorts of food we should be eating.

Now walk out of the office and enter the commercial world we live in.

The supermarkets are full of highly processed foods supported by multi-billion dollar advertising campaigns claiming how healthy they are.

The fresh fruit and vegetable myth

You may not be convinced so you go to the fruit and vegetable aisles expecting to find healthy products. You see row upon row of identical and almost perfect-looking produce.

How wonderful you may think - just what I am looking for - healthy fruit and vegetables, my search is over.

But wait a minute, how did they manage to grow such magnificent-looking produce? By a highly sophisticated industrialised chemical process relying on synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays which have eliminated the microbes you have been told are essential for health.

And worse - any beneficial microbes will have died in the time from when the plants were harvested to when they are eaten.

Microbes have a short life.

The great divergence

There is a clear divergence between what the science-based community are telling us we should eat and what the commercial mega corporations are offering.

The deficiencies in the current food system are seen as an opportunity for another industry, the supplement industry to create good profits by providing pills.

But pills are not the solution, we need to fix the problem at the source and eat healthy food.

‘Real food not pills’ is a good motto.

Gbiota role

Gbiota is not trying to duplicate the massive research effort which is being carried out in respected research institutions across the globe. We are taking that as a given.

We are facing the challenge of how the community as a whole can access the food which is accepted as healthy.

When I say the community as a whole I mean the whole community. There are many dedicated home growers who are using organic style approaches to produce food which is genuinely healthy. No arguments here.

But the reality is that the majority of the population now live in apartments or houses with very small gardens. They don’t have the area, time or the skills of the dedicated organic home grower so they need an alternative to access the healthy food they need.

The first part of the problem, the technical part has been solved by the development of the Gbiota boxes which breed the beneficial microbes in organic waste to grow the plants which contain the beneficial microbes.

This is straightforward.

The difficult part is to create the social change where people grow that critical part of their diet - gut brain-food - at home.

For that, we need a food social movement.

How to create the food social movement

The pressure is there but how do we make it happen? How do we create this social movement?

This problem is made worse by the misinformation and disinformation which now dominate the web and the marketing power of the food and drug industries.

One person, (particularly if he is 85 like me) is not going to be able to do this, it needs a team of about a dozen people with a range of skills, not just technical but marketing and communications and an understanding of how communities work to form a team.

My immediate aim is to build this inner sanctum of a dozen or so people, committed to the ‘food for health’ cause.

Local gut-brain food industry

Once we have this inner sanctum in place we can move onto the next stage - creating a local gut-brain food industry.

The bulk of the population cannot do everything from scratch - they need to be able to go and buy the soil, boxes, seeds, and everything they need from a local supplier.

It has to be local as microbes have a short life.

Going Viral

In the current age of disinformation, people may have become sceptical about what they are told but they believe what they see.

When they see so many wobbly tums and bums at the shopping centre and while there are other people who are fit and healthy from eating a different diet they will change their views and see the need for change.

Death of the Deniers

We can learn from that other and closely linked need for change, climate. For decades climate deniers who benefit directly from the current system have been able to create doubt so they could block the needed action.

But when people experienced for themselves the increase in floods, droughts and storms they began to question what they were being told and now the bulk of the population has accepted the need for change.

The deniers, often in positions of extreme power are still able to block the change.

In my younger days, I fought a similar reluctance to change from deniers. I accepted that it was impossible to change their attitude but then I was young and knew they would die and be replaced by younger people who were more accepting of change.

It will happen with climate change and it will happen with food change.

Younger people have this odd habit of growing up into older people in a position of power.

The future of our species lies with the fresh minds of the young and they will create the change and our species will not just survive but thrive.

At my age, I will not be around to see it but I am happy to have been part of the process of change that enables our species to thrive.

Invitation

If you feel that you could be interested in joining this inner sanctum then I suggest you have a look at the many articles on my web gbiota.com then contact me directly here.

The community needs you. There may be a lot of selfish pricks in the world but our future lies with those who are not selfish pricks. Labelling them woke greenies won’t stop them.

Prevention Super Clinics

Colin Austin 12 March 2025 Published under the Creative Commons system so may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Fighting the chronic disease epidemic

Across the globe, we are facing an epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Whether we approve or not what happens in the real world is that people just carry on with their normal life until their health deteriorates to the point where they need to go to a doctor who tries to cure them.

This is at great personal burden to the individual and financial cost to our health system. Chronic diseases inflict the most damage to community health and are a major financial cost.

Prevention is better than cure.

Prevention depends on understanding the root causes of the epidemic.

Changes in our food production system

One of the best videos explaining the changes in our food system is by David Trood of The Weedy Garden

Organics is an unfortunate name as the underlying principle is how all food has been grown for over a billion years, until we changed it.

A complex array of soil creatures, microbes and fungi break down the rocks to make them bio-available for plants and then animals that eat the plants.

These microbes end in our gut, they communicate with their neighbours to create real intelligence and work with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite by creating the hormones which make us feel full or hungry.

Watch video here https://www.gbiota.com/2025/03/14/hormones/

The hormones work at the subconscious level and are extremely powerful.

Our sub-conscious brain is what enables us to do amazing things like catch balls and ride a bike.

We may try and control what and how much we eat by going on a diet but this is at the conscious level and is typically only effective for a period of time, our hormones almost always win.

The change in our food system to relying on inert fertilisers has resulted in a loss of the beneficial microbes that form our gut-brain and is the underlying force behind the epidemic of chronic diseases.

This is why we need to change our gut biota - by diet - to combat the epidemic.

Our intelligent control system

At the core of all chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place. Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create genuine intelligence which then forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

If our intelligent control senses deficiencies in our bodies it will send out hormones to make us hungry so we overeat, and alternatively, when it thinks we are satisfied, it will send out other hormones so we feel full and stop eating.

This is a very powerful system operating at the sub-conscious level; we have no control over it and attempts to override this in our conscious brain are rarely successful long term.

We have to work with, rather than against, our intelligent control system.

Prevention super clinics

I am suggesting setting up a network of prevention super clinics.

Prevention super clinics would be run by a qualified dietitian, following the existing protocols but integrating a much wider range of services.

They would certainly have close working relations with a suitably trained grower to breed the beneficial microbes in soil containing both organic and mineral waste using the appropriate protocols.

This soil is referred to as Wickimix and can be sold directly to keen gardeners but is more likely to be incorporated into growing baskets for wider use.

These baskets, with growing plants, may be bulk delivered to a place where the clients may visit regularly such as a gymnasium or health food cafe or store.

It needs to be recognised that the life span of the beneficial microbes is short so the plants need to be consumed shortly after picking.

While these may be separate businesses they need to follow protocols, and the dietitian has both and integrating and supervising roles.

Making organic style food widely available

I think there is no debate that organic food, rich in nutrients and microbes, is beneficial for health however, it tends to be expensive and the microbes only have a short life after picking.

The Gbiota basket/box system means that people, even if they live in an apartment, can have organically grown plants growing in their home at minimum cost ready to harvest.

Personal anguish and money.

Before you reject the idea that this is adding an extra expense to the system, this would save a great deal of personal anguish and money.

The basic cause of chronic disease is deficiencies in our diet, specifically beneficial gut microbes and trace minerals.

With the appropriate protocols, you can breed beneficial gut microbes in organic waste at a relatively trivial cost.

Growers can have a truckload of volcanic rock dust, a waste product from quarries, delivered to their door at about $10 per tonne. This contains all the trace elements needed, it just needs the soil microbes to make it bio-available in our food, which costs a fraction of buying pills and contains a wider and better-balanced spectrum.

Further information

My website gbiota.com contains many articles and videos on food and health. there is a special section for health professionals accessed from the home page and you can contact me directly at colin@gbiota.com

Integration

Surely the aim for any community is for its members to live a long and healthy life.

Yet we are not doing that well with over half the population suffering from some form of chronic disease, maybe just a bit podgy, maybe in fear of having a limb amputated from diabetes or worse of all dementia, sitting in a chair, covered with blanket to hide that you have just peed your pants and wondering who those pesky kids are who keep on calling you granddad.

But the frustration is we know exactly how to fight this epidemic, if you take 5 minutes out of the whirlwind of modern life and look at all the expertise that is available then we have all the knowledge needed, but everyone is just too busy beavering away they never have time to lift their head and look at what all the other beavers are up to.

It is not that we are not cooperative, the two features that have led to humans becoming the dominant creature on Earth are that we are both intelligent and cooperative.

It is just that we all have different skills and our current system and work pressures make it difficult to communicate with a fellow human with a different skill set to you.

I know this too well. I look at my granddaughter’s skills on their mobile phones. Their fingers and thumbs are just a blur of high speed activity making me look like some monster from the pre-dinosaur age.

Yet ask them to help clean out a blocked gutter and their interest and skill level is well into the negative, yet to me, it is just a routine part of the chore of being a householder.

So how are we going to coordinate all the skills necessary to battle the epidemic of chronic disease?

The motivation is there, no one wants to be fat or have a leg chopped off from diabetes and it costs trillions of dollars to the world economy.

And believe me the skills are there, I don’t have a job description so I spend my time in anyway I want and that is chatting with Mr Google and following up on the leads to chat further twith the specialist in all the relevant fields. I have also been recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators and conduct experiments that no sensible grant agency would even consider - but good ideas come from doing things that seem daft and learning from the failures.

So what is the next step? It is no good just talking about the integration of skill sets, we have to show that it really works and to do that we need to set up pilot operations. One is good but three or more would be so much better particularly if they are in different parts of the world, this is a global issue.

So how do we set up these pilot projects? A must-have is a coordinator, someone with the skill set to bring a range of different skill sets and people with very different backgrounds to work together.

What is the required profile for a coordinator? They must have a conviction of the importance of fighting the epidemic of chronic disease and they must be comfortable with working with a variety of people from researchers, growers and maybe highly stressed members of the public facing some pretty horrible predictions.

Do they need any specific qualifications? I am not sure they do, I think motivation that this is a highly socially important project is the key but if I had to pick a particular skill it would be a dietitian.

And who are the other members of the group?

There must be members of the public who are motivated about their health and they must be willing to learn about how we all have an intelligent control system, a combination of our gut and head brains which regulate what we want to eat and also control what happens to the food that we eat, burned for energy, rebuild our body parts, stored as fat or out at pooh.

We need organisations who are prepared to carry out this education. The lead organisation here would be the Government Health Departments which are carrying the cost of the epidemic.

This is not as simple as it seems as there is a well-recognised time gap from the leading edge of research to when this knowledge becomes the norm. In the medical field, which has requirements for caution, this time gap can be twenty years.

For these projects, we must apply the latest thinking.

We need growers who are going to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil which will eventually become part of our gut biota. There are many regenerative growers with a good knowledge of soil biology who can readily acquire the specific skills of breeding the beneficial microbes.

The growers need a supply of organic waste for breeding the microbes. Local Governments have a key role to play here.

So what is the next step? First step is to have a look at the section for health professionals on my web gbiota.com then if you feel you would like to be part of these pilot projects (note the plural) email me indicating whether you see yourself in the coordinator or participant roles.

I have created this section for health professionals.

This may seem a little odd as I have no medical qualifications apart from being married to a medical doctor, who became diabetic, her foot turned black and our medical advisers were talking about amputation, but we changed her diet and she still has both feet.

But I am not a drongo, I am an engineer I was selected by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work in Computer Aided Engineering.

I, like many of my fellow engineers, may lack the sophistication in articulation of many professions but I don’t rank too badly in understanding how things work.

I was what is often called a code cutter, I wrote software and that included intelligent or self-learning software for intelligent control - which works by monitoring what needs to be controlled, making changes, observing the effect of these changes to develop an understanding of how that system works which eventually leads to very effective control of that system.

Even though I am an engineer I can read, which I do with great intensity, trying to understand how food affects the health of our bodies and recognise the sophistication of professionals in that area.

I see an almost universal belief among health professionals that modern ultra-processed foods are harmful to health while diets centred on plants are beneficial.

Yet, despite this overwhelming evidence the consumption of ultra-processed food increases but plants-based food does not, or at best marginally.

As an engineer with expertise in control theory, I ask myself why?

It is not that people are not informed, they know full well that this ultra-processed food is harmful to their health and plant-based foods are beneficial but the majority of people continue to eat an ever-increasing amount of ultra-processed foods.

Why do people do things that are bad for them knowing full well that they will cause harm? And being an engineer what can we do about it?

Humans are notorious for doing things that are harmful to other humans and themselves so I thought I would ask Mr. Google if he had any ideas.

As usual, I was surprised.

I anticipated to be told that humans were the most destructive creatures to their own species, after all just watch the news and it is dominated by humans using their great skills in technology for the sophisticated killing of other humans.

We humans can be a violent species, with stories of war, murder and terrorism frequently hitting the headlines. Yet the record went to those cute and cuddly Meerkats who put our bloodthirsty tendencies to shame with 20 per cent of the cute critters being slaughtered by their own species.

Animals unquestionably kill members of their species, all the time. Male lions slaughter all the cubs when they join a new pride; rival ant colonies of the same species fight bloody wars; chimpanzees have been shown to kill each other at similar per capita rates to humans.

Hippopotamuses, Hamsters, Crab spiders, Cane toads, Praying mantis, Black widow spiders, Polar bears and many snakes are going to have to improve their game to win a Nobel Peace prize.

This may all be interesting but it does not answer the question why the bulk of people eat food that is bad for them, while knowing it is bad for them. That is why understanding how our intelligent control system works is so important and what this website is about.

I have created this section for health professionals.

It consists of a number of posts and videos that I have previously created and are relevant to health professionals.

You are welcome to contact me here happy to chat.

You can start with the video gut-brain matters

Then posts

Superclinics

Integrations trials

Health Span or Epidemic

Change for the Better

Intelligence

Taste Hunger and Health Span

Gut Health

Health Myth

Fake Food

Health challenge

Your choice - how to change your set point

Creating Change for the Better

Happy Birthday

This is a decidedly different post. I have just had my eighty-fifth birthday. Very nice party - but a time for reflection.

I was thirty-five when I formed Moldflow pioneering my career in computer-aided engineering. This involved a lot of paradigm busting, brushing away old ways of thinking and replacing them with the new ways that computer simulation enabled.

But this was a battle to change thinking between engineers and I am an engineer so I was fighting on my home turf.

Tough Battle

This was a tough battle, and although I am still fit and healthy you don’t have to be a brilliant mathematician to see that eighty-five is a lot bigger than thirty-five.

Gbiota, at its core, is still about paradigm shifting but the scale of the battle is just so much bigger. Chronic diseases are the biggest health problem across the globe.

Being overweight is everywhere, don’t bother about statistics just go to the local shopping centre.

Diabetes is the most rapidly expanding disease with eight million people a year suffering from a limb amputation, heart attacks are the most common cause of death and at eighty-five dementia is a real threat - sitting in a wheelchair, peeing your pants and wondering who those pesky kids are who keep calling you grand-dad.

If you are one of that diminishing minority that thinks human suffering matters this is an immense challenge.

If you are one of that rapidly expanding majority that thinks the only thing that matters is money then the global health costs are measured in the multi-trillions.

The battle over paradigms

Again the battle is over paradigms.

The old way of thinking is that chronic diseases are a medical issue which will be solved by medical technology.

The new way of thinking is that chronic diseases may appear to be a medical problem but they will be solved by food technology.

Wrong fat in the wrong place

It is simple. The underlying cause of chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place and that, quite correctly, stems from overeating.

But we overeat because we are not feeding the intelligent control system which regulates our appetite.

The microbes in our gut communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which, together with our head brain, regulates our appetite.

It does this by manufacturing hormones which make us crave specific types of food which we have learned about from our accumulated experience of eating food over our lifetime. That information is stored in our head brain which works at the subconscious level - we have no conscious control over what our sub-conscious brain does.

Food not pills

Our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain so it generates hormones to make us hungry.

We may be able to override our hunger cravings for a while but they will always win in the end. That is why telling people to eat less and exercise more does not work long term.

The solution is to feed our gut-brain which includes enhancing the microbes which live in our gut and drive the process.

We know exactly how to do that - breed beneficial microbes in soil which includes both organic waste and a spectrum of minerals, which is the food for the microbes.

Three snags

But there are three big snags.

The first snag is that it is incredibly inexpensive. Yes, you read that right, inexpensive. Breeding beneficial microbes can be done for next to nothing by collecting organic waste and incorporating this into a special soil and growing plants in this soil.

So why is ‘inexpensive’ the problem?

Because of snag number two which is that it must be done right to breed the beneficial microbes and not the harmful microbes which are equally keen to breed.

This is a catch-22. Because there is no expensive product to sell there is no money to promote and teach people how to feed their gut-brain.

Companies selling drugs like Ozemic, which costs about a thousand dollars a month have plenty of money to promote their expensive pills.

Snag number three is that we live in an age of disinformation. The web is saturated with very effective, manipulative advertising so that no one (or at least no one with a basic thinking capacity) believes anything they see on the web.

But I do know that people will listen to and follow real people (no Avatars thanks) they trust.

Don’t sit in the corner and rock

Now before we sit in the corner and rock, or hit the bottle or whatever is your method of coping - there is a solution.

In theory, it is simple but in practice not so easy.

We have to form a small group, not the entire population of eight billion people - so how many? This small group needs to change their gut biota to show what happens.

Eating gut-brain food and showing that this really does curb appetite and avoids food cravings is hard evidence.

Forming a lead group

How many people should be in this group?

Robin Dunbar may have the answer. He suggested that the maximum number of people we can effectively communicate with is 150.

But there is a little twist to the story which I discovered when I gave a talk to the local organic growers association. They were not that motivated by my talk, which was a little frustrating until I looked at the audience of about fifty people.

They looked a similar age to me (eg old) but they all looked fit and healthy and were certainly very different to the people I see at the shopping centre.

We have to work with the people that need help.

Diabetics

We need to focus on a group that needs help, and there is no group that needs help more than diabetics. The standard procedure as soon as someone is diagnosed as diabetic is to start medication of some, sort, typically Metformin.

If that may be proved essential later but the first action should be diet. But it is no good just telling people if their hormones are telling them differently so the first action should be to change the way their gut works so they want to change their diet.

The magnificent dozen

So my thinking is that we should aim for a small core group of about a dozen people. They may not need help themselves but can be leaders of a group again of about a dozen, who are at risk of suffering from a chronic disease.

How do we find these dozen people to act as group leaders? I have no idea but I do believe in the power of ‘group think’ so if you have an idea how to create this group of group leaders please, let me know.

Colin

Taste, hunger and Health Span

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

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

Zonked

Eighty fifth birthday party

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

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

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

Zonked

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

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

Haem iron

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

Zinc

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

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

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

Out numbered

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

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

The wrong fat in the wrong place

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

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

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

Motivated

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

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

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

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

We have been here before

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

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

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

Modern day prevention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is a waste of time and energy.

Abstract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The essence - Creating the new gut-brain food industry

Chronic disease caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place

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

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

Our bodies have an intelligent control system

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

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

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

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

Our gut-brain dominated by the food we eat

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

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

Conscious and subconscious brains

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

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

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

Microbes have a short life - dynamic equilibrium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ecological balance

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

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

Circulate Soil Blood

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

Skilled growers already exist but they need a market

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

Need for major educational program

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

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

Must make the effort

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

Taste, hunger and healthspan

Preface

Extinction

Is humanity in danger of extinction? Probably not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deciding what we eat

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

That is the easy bit.

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

That is the difficult bit.

Intelligent control

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Group intelligence and building a house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Group intelligence and our bodies

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

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

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

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

The Big Food Control Myth

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

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

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

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

Feeling satisfied

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conscious v subconscious - the battle

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

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

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

Training our subconscious brain

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

There are three steps to this.

Full spectrum of microbes

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

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

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

Feed the microbes so they breed

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

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

Train the gut-brain

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

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

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

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

Part 2 Solutions Technology and Social

Technology

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

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

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

Ecological balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soil blood

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

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

This is how fish and soil life works.

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

Dynamic equilibrium

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

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

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

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

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

Gbiota beds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This problem is resolved by Gbiota baskets.

Gbiota baskets

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

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

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

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

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

It also save time with less frequent waterings.

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

It need to be circulated using the flood and flush.

Gbiota boxes

Gbiota boxes are intermediate between beds and baskets.

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

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

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

Social

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

So how do we go about creating this social change?

Functions of food

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do we do that?

Farther Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to convince the public

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statistics and an n of 1

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

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

that ‘n’ happens to be you.

Strategy for the Disinformation Age

Step 1 - Keen, health-conscious gardeners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 2 Set up a local gut-brain food industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final note

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your choice

We are at a crossroads and have two options.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is the introduction?

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

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

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

A long time ago

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

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

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

Nutter from down under

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

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

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

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

Simple, obvious and does not work

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

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

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

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

Our body has intelligence

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

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

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

We have ignored this for eighty years

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

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

Eat more but of the right sort of food

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

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

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

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

Thanks for re-thinking

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

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

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

Wonce a pone a tie’m

Nothing like a good yarn

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

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

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

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

Sorry if I offend but the truth can be nasty.

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

Father Christmas and Fantasy land

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

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

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

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

A big deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t tangle with a rutting moose

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

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

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

Happy Birthday Earth

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

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

How well we will survive is another question.

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

The future is here now

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

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

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

It just won’t happen.

You can take action

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

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

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

Stop pretending and accept the world as it is

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to my site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A very brief history of the world

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

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

The first life

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

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

Humanoids appear

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

Fire, cooking and the creation of modern man

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

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

Tribes - fit and healthy

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

Agriculture, cities and disease

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

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

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

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

The fight against infection

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

Population explosion

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

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

The dreaded side effects

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

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

The supercomputer that controls appetite

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

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

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

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

The epidemic of chronic disease

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

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

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

The solution - breeding beneficial microbes

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

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

Simple and inexpensive - but must be done right

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

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

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

The search for dedicate pioneers

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

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

Register to enter this site

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

There are several levels of membership.

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

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

They may like to look at New Posts

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

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

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

They may like to look at articles on Food and Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Gbiota?

What is Gbiota?

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

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

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

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

Colin Austin

Thinking, very much out of fashion

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

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

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

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

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

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

How being simple and obvious can be wrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Types of Food

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

Energy food

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

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

Not a problem.

Replacement food

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

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

Not a problem.

Gut-brain food

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

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

Microbes - the first life on earth

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

Nothing new here.

Beneficial and harmful microbes

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

In the past, we mainly died from infectious diseases

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

We innovated to kill the harmful microbes

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

But we killed the beneficial microbes as well

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

How can we breed beneficial microbes without breeding harmful microbes?

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

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

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

Control the conditions

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

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

Gbiota’s aim breed beneficial microbes not harmful ones

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

Our gut-brain controls appetite

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

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

No gut-brain food - we overeat

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

Microbes start in the soil

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

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

Gbiota shows growers how

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

Gbiota links growers and consumers

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

Register and join the Gbiota movement

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

 Linking to a grower

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

You can join the Gbiota movement in three ways

Consumer

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

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

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

Licensed grower

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

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

Local grower (offer Gbiota boxes for sale)

Home grower

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

Private home grower (just grow for own use)

Register here

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

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

Fat or skinny

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

Why are some people fat and others skinny

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

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

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

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

Newton

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

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

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

What is the mechanism?

This raises many questions -

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

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

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

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

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

See food not sea food

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

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

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

Will it work?

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

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

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

So what goes?

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

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

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

Understanding our gut biota

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

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

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

Eating plants grown in living soil

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

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

Eco-balance

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

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

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

The wrong technology

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

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

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

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

Local growers

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

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

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

Register your interest

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

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

A new food industry for a healthy and sustainable future

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

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

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

Pioneering spirits

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

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

How organic growers will save us.

The great problem solvers

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

The population explosion

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

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

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

Finite resources

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

Improved efficiency

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

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

Creating technologies easier than changing society

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

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

Deficiencies in modern food

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

Why we overeat

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

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

Beneficial microbes come from our food

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

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

Short life and dynamic equilibrium

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

Creating a new industry

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

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

Local versus centralised

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

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

Local growers already exist

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

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

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

Dedication does not pay the bills

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

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

The chicken and the egg

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

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

The solution - show you care

Here’s how and it is pretty simple.

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

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

Linking consumers and growers

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

The smartest creature on the planet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snag number 1 the silo dwellers

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

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

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

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

Snag number 2 Microbes die fast

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

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

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

But there is an easy solution to this.

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

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

Then grow plants in this living soil.

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

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

Any more snags?

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

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

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

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

Wickimix

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why develop the Gbiota technology?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How It Works

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

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

Why It Matters

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

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

Explore Two Paths to Better Living

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

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

Be Part of the Solution

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

Explore More

Our intelligent control system

Infectious and chronic or non-infectious diseases

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

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

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

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

The mind and body are inseparable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding out how our intelligent control system works

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

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

Prevention is so much better than cure.

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

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

Fat in the wrong places

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

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

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

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

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

The big question

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

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

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

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

Continue reading the full article on our intelligent control system.

Colin Austin © 11th Dec 2024 This document is published under the Creative Commons system which means that it can be copied and republished without further permissions but the author Colin Austin at gbiota.com must be recognised.

Our intelligent control system

Infectious and chronic or non-infectious diseases

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

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

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

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

The mind and body are inseparable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding out how our intelligent control system works

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

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

Prevention is so much better than cure.

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

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

Fat in the wrong places

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

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

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

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

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

The big question

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

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

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

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

Understanding intelligent control systems

I am an engineer. Engineers create machines, and every machine has some form of control system. These can range from simple on-off switches to highly sophisticated intelligent control systems that learn the operating characteristics of a machine to anticipate changes before they happen.

I will describe an intelligent control system I wrote for irrigation and compare it to the intelligent control system in our bodies. This comparison will help us understand how this significantly more advanced biological control system may work.

Both systems are designed to control living organisms - relatively simple plants in one case and our complex bodies in the other.

Processors

• In the irrigation system, there is just one processor. In the human body, we have three:
• The Conscious Brain
  This allows us to decide what food we eat - fish and chips or a fresh salad. This is a deliberate choice.
• The Subconscious Brain
  This determines what we want to eat, among many other functions. Some actions, like body temperature regulation and heart rate, are entirely outside our conscious control. Others, like breathing, are partially and temporarily controllable.
• The Gut
  This contains trillions of microbes capable of communication, providing genuine intelligence. However, the results depend on the species of microbes present, which can create different "answers" - a complication akin to having a computer with conflicting outputs. Having a computer which gives different answers does not make life easy.
  

Awareness

When I suggest that we store fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store fat I am not suggesting that we can think ourselves thin.

We are obviously aware of what is happening in our conscious brain but our conscious brain is only a small part of our intelligence system and is very slow and clunky in comparison with our subconscious brain.

Look at catching a ball. Our conscious brain may decide we want to catch but is just too slow and clunky for us to catch the ball.

Our subconscious brain is much faster, looks at the speed and direction of the ball and works out where our hands must be to catch the ball. This takes the speed of our subconscious brain and a lot of learning and storing of information so it is available in the fraction of a second needed to catch the ball.

Our gut brain

We have even less idea what is happening in our gut brain which is not even us.

We know that there are trillions of cells in our gut and they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence similar to a computer.

But we have no idea of the code that drives this super computer.

Science may be the art of managing truth, understanding how our intelligent control system works needs that art of managing ignorance.

The human brain is very good at that - just watch a baby in a pram swiping away at a mobile phone or electronic toy. They have no idea how it works but they can still have fun playing with it.

Fat and skinny

We have known for a long time that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat simply by feeding them the pooh from the other mice.

Humans are not in the habit of eating each other pooh but we find the same thing happens with faecal transplants.

Sensors for the irrigation software and us

The irrigation software needs a number of sensors.

It needs a soil moisture sensor to measure the moisture level in the soil. This may give multiple values for different positions in the soil but otherwise is simple.

Our bodies are much more complex, we sense much more than full or empty.

We can sense the level of many different chemicals in our bodies, if we spend time digging in the garden on a hot day we can detect a deficiency in our salt levels so we may have a craving for salted nuts rather than for cheesecake.

The irrigation software also needs measurements of how much water is applied at each irrigation, evaporation and predicted evaporation based on data from the weather forecast, rainfall and predicted rainfall and time of the season or rather the stage of development of the plant.

Our bodies are also receiving a plethora of information about events now and predicted.

Learning and Adaption

The initial trial

When seeds are first planted, the irrigation software has no data about the "crop factor" (the ratio of water use to evaporation). It begins by applying a trial amount of water and observing the results - analogous to taking a sip of unfamiliar food.

Learning begins

The software adjusts its calculations based on the trial, learning the relationship between water applied and soil moisture levels. This is akin to us sampling food to decide if it’s bland and can be eaten with gusto or spicy and requires caution.

Similarly, human babies begin with fat reserves and learn to suckle, sensing fullness and satisfaction. If a baby experiences food insecurity (e.g., no breast appears when hungry), it may develop lifelong food cravings and anxiety.

Understanding and learning

We rarely fully understand the world around us but we manage by a sophisticated process of observation and trial and error.

We may start by making a small change and observe what happens, we then may make a bigger change based on what happened with the small change.

You can see this happening from babies to adults, take a sip to see if the curry it mild or hot, observe the results then take a mouthful or just take a very small serving.

That is the way man made intelligent control system works, we call it predictor-corrector schemes and in our machines, we have developed this to very high levels measuring not only the result, but the rate of change of result and any accumulated errors or offset.

This is the way machine controllers work and is the way our body’s control system work.

Self-Learning and Prediction

I designed the irrigation software to self-correct - predict, apply, observe, and refine. Humans perform this prediction-correction process naturally, from learning to walk to gauging how much to eat.

Processors

• In the irrigation system, there is just one processor. In the human body, we have three:

• The Conscious Brain
  This allows us to decide what food we eat - fish and chips or a fresh salad. This is a deliberate choice.

• The Subconscious Brain
  This determines what we want to eat, among many other functions. Some actions, like body temperature regulation and heart rate, are entirely outside our conscious control. Others, like breathing, are partially and temporarily controllable.

• The Gut
  This contains trillions of microbes capable of communication, providing genuine intelligence. However, the results depend on the species of microbes present, which can create different "answers" - a complication akin to having a computer with conflicting outputs. Having a computer which gives different answers does not make life easy.

Awareness

When I suggest that we store fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store fat I am not suggesting that we can think ourselves thin.

We are obviously aware of what is happening in our conscious brain but our conscious brain is only a small part of our intelligence system and is very slow and clunky in comparison with our subconscious brain.

Look at catching a ball. Our conscious brain may decide we want to catch but is just too slow and clunky for us to catch the ball.

Our subconscious brain is much faster, looks at the speed and direction of the ball and works out where our hands must be to catch the ball. This takes the speed of our subconscious brain and a lot of learning and storing of information so it is available in the fraction of a second needed to catch the ball.

Our gut brain

We have even less idea what is happening in our gut brain which is not even us.

We know that there are trillions of cells in our gut and they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence similar to a computer.

But we have no idea of the code that drives this super computer.

Science may be the art of managing truth, understanding how our intelligent control system works needs that art of managing ignorance.

The human brain is very good at that - just watch a baby in a pram swiping away at a mobile phone or electronic toy. They have no idea how it works but they can still have fun playing with it.

Fat and skinny

We have known for a long time that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat simply by feeding them the pooh from the other mice.

Humans are not in the habit of eating each other pooh but we find the same thing happens with faecal transplants.

Sensors for the irrigation software and us

The irrigation software needs a number of sensors.

It needs a soil moisture sensor to measure the moisture level in the soil. This may give multiple values for different positions in the soil but otherwise is simple.

Our bodies are much more complex, we sense much more than full or empty.

We can sense the level of many different chemicals in our bodies, if we spend time digging in the garden on a hot day we can detect a deficiency in our salt levels so we may have a craving for salted nuts rather than for cheesecake.

The irrigation software also needs measurements of how much water is applied at each irrigation, evaporation and predicted evaporation based on data from the weather forecast, rainfall and predicted rainfall and time of the season or rather the stage of development of the plant.

Our bodies are also receiving a plethora of information about events now and predicted.

Learning and Adaption

The initial trial

When seeds are first planted, the irrigation software has no data about the "crop factor" (the ratio of water use to evaporation). It begins by applying a trial amount of water and observing the results - analogous to taking a sip of unfamiliar food.

Learning begins

The software adjusts its calculations based on the trial, learning the relationship between water applied and soil moisture levels. This is akin to us sampling food to decide if it’s bland and can be eaten with gusto or spicy and requires caution.

Similarly, human babies begin with fat reserves and learn to suckle, sensing fullness and satisfaction. If a baby experiences food insecurity (e.g., no breast appears when hungry), it may develop lifelong food cravings and anxiety.

Understanding and learning

We rarely fully understand the world around us but we manage by a sophisticated process of observation and trial and error.

We may start by making a small change and observe what happens, we then may make a bigger change based on what happened with the small change.

You can see this happening from babies to adults, take a sip to see if the curry it mild or hot, observe the results then take a mouthful or just take a very small serving.

That is the way man made intelligent control system works, we call it predictor-corrector schemes and in our machines, we have developed this to very high levels measuring not only the result, but the rate of change of result and any accumulated errors or offset.

This is the way machine controllers work and is the way our body’s control system work.

Self-Learning and Prediction

I designed the irrigation software to self-correct - predict, apply, observe, and refine. Humans perform this prediction-correction process naturally, from learning to walk to gauging how much to eat.

Anticipation

Both the babies and the plants now have a common situation - they are both starting to grow and need more food or water.

In addition to the predictor-corrector capability the irrigation software also needs an anticipation capability.

This has to operate at several levels. Based on the weather forecast for rainfall and evaporation the software anticipates how much water needs to be applied but that is not enough.

The plants are continuously growing, so basing the water demand on the last irrigation is always going to mean that less water is applied than is actually needed.

This has to be allowed for by building in a method of looking at the rate of change of the crop factor so the amount of water applied is increased to allow for the increased growth of the plants.

If this sounds complicated let me tell you that the human brain is absolutely superb at this.

Just watch a three year old kid on a bike. They have absolutely no understanding of gyroscopic couples and stability factors. They learn that they have to steer in the direction they feel the bike is falling, which is inherent with gyroscopic couples and they don’t fall off.

By the time they have reached adulthood, they have acquired an incredible range of anticipatory skills. Catching a ball is a classic, you put your hands where you anticipate the balls will be when it get near you.

Observing our intelligent control system

Understanding our intelligent control system should be central to combating chronic diseases. Despite advances in computing, artificial intelligence, and biochemistry, research into this system remains sparse. This neglect may stem from its perceived complexity.

Yet, even without sophisticated tools, we can observe patterns. For example, after gardening on a hot day, I crave salty foods, not sweets - evidence that my control system senses deficiencies and responds accordingly.

Maybe it has been put in the too hard basket, but we don’t have to completely understand it, we can do what artificial intelligence does, which has no understanding - look for patterns.

That is what I do as I try and work out how my intelligent control system works. It does not take any sophisticated scientific equipment, I don’t need any complex scientific equipment to tell if I am hungry, I can tell if I am hungry or satisfied or if I am craving some specific food.

Blood Sugar Regulation

If I spend time digging away in my garden on a hot summer day I come inside craving for some salty food.

That tells me that my intelligent control system does more than tell me if I am full or hungry but can sense deficiencies in my body, has learned over time which foods remedy that deficiency and send out signals so I want to get stuck into a packet of salty nut and not a slice of sugary cheesecake, which I normally gobble up at speed.

Just by digging in my garden, I have already learned a lot about my intelligent control system.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I do wear a continuous blood sugar monitor and compare this with what I eat and other events.

We know that when we eat food it is first processed in our gut and then enters the blood, largely as sugars to power our muscles and our bodies.

That will create a blood sugar spike which our intelligent control system treats as an error in a predictor-corrector system.

Our intelligent control system can detect blood sugar levels and as soon as they start to rise beyond an acceptable level will send out messages to convert these sugars into fats which are then hopefully stored where fat should be stored, in our bums.

Again our intelligent control system senses when our blood sugar levels drop and will send out messages to turn some of that fat back into sugars to power our muscles.

Using a continuous blood sugar monitor I can watch this process of my intelligent control system shunting sugars and fat backwards and forwards so I don’t drop dead from lack of energy or make my blood so viscous with excess sugars that it can no longer flow into the fine capillaries throughout my body.

My intelligent control system is continuously learning

But I see much more - every morning just as I am waking up my blood sugar rises. I have not eaten anything so I know that my intelligent control system can learn and I have taught it, without thinking, that I go for a walk before breakfast so will need extra energy.

As I walk, or ride my bike, I might expect that my blood sugar levels may drop as I am burning up energy, but that is not what happens, it maintains or increases the level.

Intelligent Control Software

When I used to write software for intelligent control systems I looked at graphs which would tell me how well (or otherwise) my software was working.

The responses I see from my blood sugar graphs bear an uncanny resemblance to the graphs I used to see from the machines.

But there are even more surprises in store.

I expected to see the graphs fluctuate up and down as it tried to balance the energy coming in from the food I ate, basically in three pulses a day at the main meal times and the energy I was using from my morning walk, my sitting at my terminal reading all those emails and the sporadic energy burst as I worked in my garden or lugged out the rubbish bins.

That is what I saw and it was working pretty well with relatively minor fluctuations as you would expect from a well functioning control system that was under control.

Expect the unexpected

What I did not expect is that there would be much larger variations which I could not relate to any food or energy load.

Mostly there were high peaks soon after I had eaten with the graph often going above the allowable range for a short period indicating that my intelligent irrigation system is working as expected.

Unexpected lows

It is natural to expect that eating food will lead to a blood sugar spike, it makes common sense.

However, I do many experiments trying to understand the link between food and blood sugars.

I was therefore very surprised to see my blood sugar levels dropping below the minimum bar when I drank a green smoothie made from selected vegetables.

My explanation is that it takes a certain amount of energy to digest food. Drinking a smoothie made from vegetables with no fruit takes more energy than is readily available from the vegetables to my blood sugar levels drop.

An even bigger surprise

I was looking for connections between food and blood sugar levels. It was no surprise that stress also caused a significant increase in blood sugar although the extent was surprising.

We live in a high stress society but it may well be that our high stress lifestyle is having a big impact on the chronic disease epidemic as the highly processed food industry.

Watching videos with music and dancing

Sometimes I get tired and just want to relax so watch videos with music and youngsters dancing.

I am not doing anything, just sitting and watching so it would be reasonable to expect my blood sugars to be at equilibrium levels.

But that is not what happens, and what happens is what happens, regardless of what the theory says.

My blood sugar levels rise, presumably because my intelligent control system, with its build in anticipation effect that is essential to all intelligent control systems, is anticipating that I will jump and start leaping around in that crazy gyroscopics I delude myself is dancing.

You just cannot seperate body and mind.

The punch line

Chronic diseases are now the greatest health issue across the globe. We need to move on from thinking that this can be cured by the simplistic calorie balance theory and even our high levels of sophistication in biochemistry - that is just the “how” and start thinking about the “why” which means understanding how our intelligent control system works.

Action plan

1. Shift the Paradigm
   Move from focusing on calorie imbalance to understanding and optimising our intelligent control system.
2. Focus on Gut Biota
   Support appropriate gut microbes, as emphasized in Gbiota technology. This is the aim of the Gbiota technology which is well described in the following articles.
3. Train the Control System
   Develop a sense of food security to reduce lifelong cravings and stress-related eating habits. We must learn how to train our intelligent control system, particularly focusing on creating a feeling of security.
4. Foster a Supportive Society
   Address societal stressors contributing to chronic disease and mental health crises, such as suicide among vulnerable populations. The epidemic of chronic disease is bad enough but we also need to recognise that suicide among young girls and middle aged men is the commonest cause of death.

Summary - Rediscovering Gut Health

Not so long ago, our gut health thrived naturally.

Beneficial microbes from the soil entered our food, replenishing our gut biota effortlessly as we consumed fresh plants. These microscopic allies worked together like a supercomputer within us, communicating and releasing hormones to regulate hunger and maintain balance.

It is very simple, our intelligent control system, a subconscious brain formed from our head and gut-brain decides how much sugar we need in our blood and how much fat we need to store in our bodies.

This is subconscious, it decides based on the current situation and learning from the first suck on mum’s breast to that last slice of cheesecake you scoffed.

It sends out signals to regulate our blood sugar and fat levels. We can’t stop these signals - we have no control over our subconscious brain.

But we can restrict our food intake which certainly can work in the short-term but may make matters worse in the long term.

It is only by understanding how this intelligent control system works that we have any hope of preventing the epidemic of chronic disease.

Back then, overeating was rare, and while infectious diseases were a concern, chronic conditions were virtually unheard of.

Medical science has since made remarkable strides in combating infectious diseases.

However, modern food systems - while more hygienic - have inadvertently stripped away the essential microbes our bodies depend on.

The result? A global surge in chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and dementia, far outweighing the threat of communicable illnesses.

Introducing Gbiota Technology: Nurturing Gut-Brain Health

Gbiota technology breeds beneficial microbes in the soil under carefully controlled conditions avoiding the harmful microbes, leading to a healthy and intelligent gut-brain so we feel full and naturally satisfied and no longer want to overeat.

Simple, Affordable, and Life-Changing

This is gaining momentum among health-conscious individuals who are ready to grow their food in microbe-rich, living soil.

But to make a real dent in the chronic disease epidemic, we need visionaries - people and businesses committed to bringing this solution to their communities.

Join the Movement

Whether you're looking to improve your own health as a home grower or interested in building a profitable business that benefits the community Gbiota is your opportunity to make a difference.

Let’s work together to create healthier communities and a brighter future.

Reach out to us today at colin@gbiota.com. Your health - and your community - will thank you!

When Colin's wife, Xiulan - a dedicated medical doctor - faced a dire health crisis as her diabetes spiralled out of control, leading to a threat of amputation, Colin knew something had to change.

As a celebrated engineer recognized for his groundbreaking work in Computer Aided Engineering, Colin's expertise in adaptive systems sparked a revolutionary idea: What if chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and dementia stem from a malfunctioning intelligent control system within our bodies?

Drawing inspiration from swarm intelligence in nature—like the collective behaviour of birds, insects, and even slime moulds - Colin realised the key wasn’t about fully understanding this intricate system. Instead, it was about nurturing it, much like feeding and training a loyal puppy.

This breakthrough led to Gbiota technology - a transformative approach to feeding and training your body's internal "puppy" for lifelong health.

Learn how Gbiota can revolutionize your life. Read on to discover more!

The Game Changer: Rewrite Your Future

Chronic diseases aren’t just bad luck—they’re the result of the wrong kind of fat ending up in the wrong places. For years, we’ve been sold the idea that “eat less, exercise more” is the magic fix.

Sure, it might work for a while, but here’s the truth: it trains your body to fight back with relentless cravings, making the problem worse in the long run.

Short-term success. Long-term failure.

The smarter way? Training your body’s intelligent control system—your gut-brain connection—to work with you, not against you. This means fueling yourself with the right kind of food that addresses deficiencies in today’s diet.

When your body gets what it actually needs, cravings disappear, and self-regulation kicks in.

It’s not about eating less. It’s about eating better. Once you realise that eating more of the right foods eliminates the urge for junk, the whole “calorie-cutting” myth falls apart.

But here’s the kicker: this change - the real paradigm shift - depends on you.

Young people like you, who aren’t weighed down by outdated thinking, are the ones who can make it happen. The future is in your hands. Get it right, and you’ll rewrite not just your life, but the health of an entire generation.

Are you ready to lead the way?

The Real World: A Call for Change

What’s happening in the real world? By middle age, many of us face the consequences of poor health choices - weight gain, illness - and only then attempt to undo the damage with calorie-restricted diets.

These efforts often fail because they miss the root cause: our bodies’ "intelligent control system" has already been hardwired by years of unhealthy habits.

The tragedy is greater still for the next generation. Young people witness their parents’ struggles and, driven by societal pressure to look like “broomsticks” to attract a mate, adopt calorie-restricted diets themselves - not for health, but for aesthetics.

This vicious cycle sets them up for long-term harm, training their control systems for a lifetime of scarcity and imbalance.

This isn’t just a health issue; it’s a societal crisis. Walk through any shopping centre and witness the evidence.

Magic diets and pills won’t fix it. True change will come from forward-thinking individuals who challenge the status quo, rally communities, and drive the energy needed for societal transformation.

Eventually, governments, burdened by the escalating costs of chronic diseases, will recognise the urgency and lead preventative measures, starting with public education.

The path forward starts with the young. By teaching them that their bodies’ ultimate regulator is an intelligent control system - not fad diets or quick fixes - we can revolutionise health.

This includes understanding the vital role of gut microbes, nurtured by plants grown in microbe-rich, mineral-rich soil. But let’s make no mistake: this isn’t about promoting “boring” diets.

Through the creative use of herbs, spices, and innovative cooking, we can turn these plant-based foods into exciting, delicious meals.

Yes, change will challenge the food and drug industries, but it also presents an opportunity to redefine their roles in a healthier future.

Together, we can consign the chronic disease epidemic to history - a time when humanity learned from its mistakes and transformed the earth into a better place for all.

Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes

Gbiota beds and boxes are systems designed to grow nutrient-rich plants while enhancing soil health through the cultivation of beneficial microbes. These systems utilize compost, organic waste, and rock dust to create a living, sustainable environment that mimics natural ecosystems. Below is a concise guide to building and maintaining Gbiota beds and boxes.

1. Setting Up a Gbiota Bed

• Location & Preparation:

  • Select a suitable area and determine the size (recommended size is around 5 meter long and 0.5 meters wide).

  • Dig out the topsoil and set it aside. Create a sump box at one end for water drainage and nutrient collection.

  • Line the base with compacted clay, silt or if needed plastic film to prevent excessive water leakage (add clay if the soil is sandy).

• Base Layer & Irrigation:

  • Install ag (agricultural) pipes for irrigation. The pipe should allow water (or “soil blood”) to seep into the soil but also drain out excess moisture.

  • Create a “leaky dam” near the sump box to ensure slow drainage and prevent stagnation.

• Layers of the Bed:

  • Organic Waste Layer: Fill the base with organic waste, such as kitchen scraps or grass clippings (about 100mm deep).

  • Nutrient Layer: Add a mix of manure (e.g., chicken manure), rock dust, dolomite (to balance pH), and blood and bone fertilizer.

  • Topsoil: Return the reserved topsoil to the bed. If the soil is sandy, mix in clay to improve its structure and water retention.

• Planting:

  • Thoroughly wet the top layer to create a moist surface for seed germination.

  • Sow a diverse mix of seeds to attract various beneficial microbes and fungi. Include sunflowers for optimal growth of mycorrhizal fungi.

2. Setting Up a Gbiota Box

• Box Selection:

  • Use a UV-stabilized container, such as a 30-liter storage box. Depth should be between 200-300mm for efficient water wicking.

• Installation of Swivel Tube:

  • Drill a hole near the base of the box and install a swivel tube with a grommet for drainage and water level control.

  • Fit a piece of ag pipe at the bottom for water distribution.

• Layering the Box:

  • Add one-third of the box’s depth in organic waste at the base.

  • Top with a nutrient mix (manure, rock dust, dolomite, and trace minerals).

  • Finish with a layer of Wickimix (a microbial-rich soil blend) or good-quality garden soil.

• Compost Tube:

  • Insert a compost tube vertically into the box to allow for easy addition of organic waste. Cover the tube with soil or Wickimix to keep pests away.

• Planting & Germination:

  • Wet the soil thoroughly before seeding to ensure good germination.

  • Cover the seeds with a light layer of Vermiculite or Wickimix.

3. Key Maintenance Practices

• Flood and Flush Irrigation:

  • Regularly flood the base to provide moisture and nutrients to plant roots while expelling stale air.

  • Drain excess water (soil blood) to prevent stagnation and aerate the soil.

• Soil Blood Reuse:

  • Collect drained soil blood, dilute it, and use it for irrigation or as a foliar spray to enhance plant and microbial health.

• Worm Integration:

  • Introduce worms to aid in organic matter breakdown and nutrient cycling. Red wrigglers are particularly effective.

• Regeneration:

  • Periodically move the compost tube to distribute nutrients evenly. Add new organic waste and nutrient layers during reseeding cycles (every three months).

4. Benefits of the Gbiota System

• Improves soil fertility by fostering microbial diversity and nutrient recycling.

• Produces plants rich in beneficial microbes that support human gut health.

• Provides a sustainable solution for home gardeners and urban dwellers.

These systems prioritize eco-balance, combining practical design with the principles of natural ecosystems to grow healthier plants while reducing waste.

The trial that changed the world’s health

What we know for sure, and don’t know

We know that the world’s biggest health issue is the epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia and that these are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

We think we know how to fix it, eat less and exercise more but we have been trying that for decades and we know for sure that it has not worked, people are getting fatter and diabetes is the fastest-growing disease on the planet.

We live in an age of hyper-activity. Everyone is heads down with busy work but maybe it is time to take a break and have a bit of a think.

Conventional wisdom

The conventional wisdom, the current paradigm, is that we get fat and sick because we eat more than we burn - the calorie balance theory.

This is based on the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy which no one is saying are wrong. Eating more than we burn is essential for us to store more fat than we need, it is what I call the enabling factor. It enables us to store more fat than we need but it is not the reason.

It is the ‘how’ we get fat not the ‘why’ we get fat.

Why we get fat and sick

We get fat and sick because we have an intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, we have known this for the best part of 200 years, the idea of an intelligent control system was first proposed in 1849 by Claude Bernard.

He had no idea how it worked and we still don’t fully understand how it works - but we can make some smart guesses.

We know that our gut has trillions of cells that communicate with each other to provide real but short-term intelligence. We can see that working in swarm intelligence we see in many insects and birds.

We know that our head brain provides long-term intelligence and memory and that it is learning and remembering about food from the first suck on mum’s breast and onwards every time we eat something, for better or worse.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I can see this working on my own body by wearing a continuous blood sugar monitoring device.

I understand that my body has two ways of storing energy, large amounts are stored as fat which is not readily available for use while my blood contains very small amounts of energy as sugars in my blood. My body can readily transfer sugar in my blood to fat and vice versa when I need to use or store energy.

I see this on my blood sugar graphs every morning. During the night my blood sugar levels are low but at dawn, even before I wake up my blood sugar levels rise in anticipation of a need for energy, even though I have had nothing to eat.

I go for a brisk walk before breakfast which, if you followed the simple conservation of energy rule you would expect to lead to a drop in my blood sugar levels as I burn energy.

But that is not what happens, my blood sugar levels rise and the only feasible explanation is that my intelligent control system is sending out signals to convert fat in long-term storage into sugars for immediate energy.

When I eat breakfast, particularly if it is serial my blood sugar levels spike, as you would expect but then drop back to normal. Again the only feasible explanation is that my intelligent control system is sending out instructions to convert the sugar in short-term storage into fat in long-term storage for use later.

Two opposing solutions

There are two opposing schools of thought on how to tackle the world’s epidemic of chronic disease.

They start from a common understanding that chronic disease is a major worldwide problem, overloading our health system while costing billions of dollars and causing immense personal suffering with eight million people a year suffering a limb amputation from diabetes.

There is also agreement that the basic cause is the wrong fat in the wrong place, in our Pancreas for diabetes, in our arteries for heart disease and in our brain for dementia.

The divergence in thinking is in the solutions.

The calorie balance school says the solution is to eat less and exercise more which sounds logical.

The intelligent control school says this could be the worst possible approach and is making the situation worse. Instead of eating less, we should be eating more, certainly not more sugary fatty food, that is stupid, but food that will both feed and replenish the beneficial microbes in our gut and provide a consistent supply of the right sort of food so our head brain sees no need to store large amounts of fat.

This is certainly less instinctively obvious but could still be right and if it is right it could save a lot of suffering for the global population and a lot of money for the Governments who fund the health system.

Which one is right - how to find out, a story

How to find out? Let me tell you a story which may seem to have nothing to do with health - but does. Just bear with me for a moment and I will show you how.

Many years ago, when computers were becoming available I realised that they would change the way engineers went about their business.

Moulds often fail to fill so I wrote some software which solved the problems of a hot plastic flowing into a cold mould by solving the simultaneous equations of heat transfer and fluid flow.

Flow balancing - analogous to food balancing

From my simulation, I realised that some areas of a mould were very easy to fill while others were more difficult. By the time the easy parts were filled the plastic entering the more difficult area had frozen so the mould never fully filled.

The conventional approach was to make all flow channels bigger which rarely worked.

With my simulation, I realised that the solution was to make the flow channels to the easy-to-fill area smaller thus diverting flow to the more difficult-to fill areas - a process I called flow balancing. Sounds ridiculous but it works.

What does have to do with food?

We all agree that we are eating too much sugary fatty food, the obvious solution is to persuade people to eat less sugary fatty food. We have been trying that for decades and it has not worked, in the way that making flow channels bigger did not work.

The reason why simply eating less does not work is that we need food that replaces our body parts as they age and wear and food that feeds and replaces our gut microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in these foods. Our intelligent control system senses this and sends out signals for us to eat more food. The result is we eat more sugary fatty foods and get fatter and sicker.

To keep to the analogy with flow balancing we could call this food balancing. If we eat more replacement food and food that feeds and replaces the beneficial microbes in our gut we will feel satisfied and naturally eat less sugary fatty food.

Sound ridiculous? You’re getting fat and sick but instead of eating less eat more food - but not just any food the right sort of food.

Three tanks not one

A common view is that our bodies are like a single tank, as it gets empty we feel hungry and want to eat. That is not the way our bodies work.

We have three tanks, one for fuel or energy food - sugars and fats, one for replacement food - all those complex minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients and a third tank to replace and feed the microbes in our gut.

Our intelligent control system can sense all three tanks and if just one is empty it will send out ‘eat more’ signals, even though the other tanks (typically fuel) are overflowing.

That is the core of the epidemic of chronic diseases, we need to balance all the tanks so they equally full.

That is why I call it food balancing and why it is so analogous to my experiences with flow balancing.

It wasn’t me

How did I convince the world’s industry about the importance of flow balancing and how am I going to convince the world about the importance of food balancing?

Here comes the crunch. I went around the world giving lectures about the importance of flow balancing, (just as I now write hundreds of articles about food balancing).

I was jeered and heckled as some nutter from down under telling us that the way to fill a mould is to make the flow channels smaller.

What they missed was that I was not saying make all flow channels smaller, just the select critical flow channels.

Which one is right - how to find out, a story

How to find out? Let me tell you a story which may seem to have nothing to do with health - but does. Just bear with me for a moment and I will show you how.

Many years ago, when computers were becoming available I realised that they would change the way engineers went about their business.

Moulds often fail to fill so I wrote some software which solved the problems of a hot plastic flowing into a cold mould by solving the simultaneous equations of heat transfer and fluid flow.

Flow balancing - analogous to food balancing

From my simulation, I realised that some areas of a mould were very easy to fill while others were more difficult. By the time the easy parts were filled the plastic entering the more difficult area had frozen so the mould never fully filled.

The conventional approach was to make all flow channels bigger which rarely worked.

With my simulation, I realised that the solution was to make the flow channels to the easy-to-fill area smaller thus diverting flow to the more difficult-to fill areas - a process I called flow balancing. Sounds ridiculous but it works.

What does have to do with food?

We all agree that we are eating too much sugary fatty food, the obvious solution is to persuade people to eat less sugary fatty food. We have been trying that for decades and it has not worked, in the way that making flow channels bigger did not work.

The reason why simply eating less does not work is that we need food that replaces our body parts as they age and wear and food that feeds and replaces our gut microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in these foods. Our intelligent control system senses this and sends out signals for us to eat more food. The result is we eat more sugary fatty foods and get fatter and sicker.

To keep to the analogy with flow balancing we could call this food balancing. If we eat more replacement food and food that feeds and replaces the beneficial microbes in our gut we will feel satisfied and naturally eat less sugary fatty food.

Sound ridiculous? You’re getting fat and sick but instead of eating less eat more food - but not just any food the right sort of food.

Three tanks not one

A common view is that our bodies are like a single tank, as it gets empty we feel hungry and want to eat. That is not the way our bodies work.

We have three tanks, one for fuel or energy food - sugars and fats, one for replacement food - all those complex minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients and a third tank to replace and feed the microbes in our gut.

Our intelligent control system can sense all three tanks and if just one is empty it will send out ‘eat more’ signals, even though the other tanks (typically fuel) are overflowing.

That is the core of the epidemic of chronic diseases, we need to balance all the tanks so they equally full.

That is why I call it food balancing and why it is so analogous to my experiences with flow balancing.

It wasn’t me

How did I convince the world’s industry about the importance of flow balancing and how am I going to convince the world about the importance of food balancing?

Here comes the crunch. I went around the world giving lectures about the importance of flow balancing, (just as I now write hundreds of articles about food balancing).

I was jeered and heckled as some nutter from down under telling us that the way to fill a mould is to make the flow channels smaller.

What they missed was that I was not saying make all flow channels smaller, just the select critical flow channels.

Flow and food

It is the same with food, I am not promoting that we eat more food but just certain select foods and then we will naturally feel satisfied and eat less sugary fatty food.

So how did I convince the industry about flow balancing and how am I going to convince people concerned about health and food balancing?

The answer is it wasn’t me then and it won’t be me now.

When I gave my lectures, among all the heckling and jeering there were a few people quietly sitting at the back and they heard the magic word ‘some’ flow channels.

Why we need the risk takers

I won’t claim I convinced them at the lectures, but they thought there was a possibility that I might be right and they were risk takers, so they went back to their companies and their labs and tried it and, fortunately for me, it worked.

But these were influential people and they convinced the other members of the industry who were not risk takers and now flow balancing is the norm - the accepted paradigm.

I managed to survive and was later recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

Changing the food and health industries

So how am I going to change the Health industry, the simple answer is I am not. However many articles I write, however carefully I present my arguments it will have no impact in the modern world of misinformation and pointless busy work.

But I know, by shear probability, that there will be some freethinkers out there, maybe in my local University in Brisbane or maybe in some research institute in some country where obesity and diabetes are major issues like the US, India or China who will say ‘well I am not convinced as yet but he may just he right about food balancing so I will take the risk and find out for myself by running a trial’.

I am here - waiting

And if you are one of those free thinkers and this article just happens to land on your desk then here is my email colin@gbiota.com and I will be more than happy to hear from you.

My formal qualification may be in engineering rather than medicine but since I was a toddler in WW2 when I was used as child labour I have been dunking flower pots into tanks of foul-smelling fowl manure tea.

This is the basis of the modern Gbiota flood and flush system used to breed the beneficial microbes which eventually form our gut biome and are integral to fighting the modern epidemic of chronic disease.

The real cause of chronic diseases

Summary

Chronic diseases are the result of the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The new paradigm is to focus on our intelligent control system, which regulates our bodies. We do this by feeding our gut-brain by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste to form biologically active soil, growing and eating plants while fresh to feed our gut-brain, and training our head-brain that food is secure.

This leaves us satisfied so we no longer crave food.

This contrast with the conventional paradigm of restricting calories which has not been effective as it leaves us craving food.

The failure of simple calorie restriction

The remedy which has been promoted for decades is eat less and exercise more. This has not been successful. The calorie theory is a valid explanation of how we get fat but does not explain why we get fat. The right answer to the wrong question.

We have an intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite. If it decides we need to store more fat it sends out hormones that make us feel hungry and eat more.

With determination we may be able to override that for a short time, but not for long.

If we want success in overcoming chronic diseases we have to learn how to change the signals coming from our intelligent control system.

Adaptive or self-learning controls

We have yet to fully understand how this intelligent control system works but engineers have a good understanding of the complex intelligent control used to control difficult engineering problems which we can use as a model.

They work on the principle of adaptive control. The controller makes a small change to the system and observes the results. Based on the result it will compute an improved change to the system and again observe results.

This can happen hundreds of times a second and as all data is logged rapidly acquires a comprehensive understanding of the operating characteristics of the system.

This is the way humans manage complex tasks like riding a bike or catching a ball. It all happens in our subconscious brain at speeds far higher than our conscious brain can operate so we are not even aware it is happening.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

Our bodies appear to work in a similar way as I see from wearing a continuous blood sugar monitor. I can see the changes in my blood sugar and the loads on my body which demonstrates the similarity between our bodies and mechanical intelligent control systems.

Our intelligent control system has two parts, the first in our gut which provides short-term intelligence while our head brain provides long-term data storage or memory.

Swarm intelligence

We can understand the intelligence in our gut from swarm intelligence which we can study in many insects, birds and slime moulds. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with their neighbours providing this swarm intelligence.

For this to work effectively we need the appropriate species of microbes in our gut and we have to feed them.

The long-term memory in our head allows us to train the control system.

Functions of food types

We need relatively simple food for energy, complex chemicals to replace our body parts as they age and wear and food to feed the microbes in our gut.

The control system will only send out signals to make us feel satisfied so we want to stop eating when it senses that all these three types of food are available.

Changing paradigms

If we are to resolve the epidemic of chronic disease we have to recognise that the current paradigm of calorie balance is simplistic and learn how to direct our inbuilt intelligent control system.

Gbiota is a social movement of people dedicated to the prevention of chronic diseases by ensuring that the community has viable access to food, at an affordable price, which will correct for these deficiencies by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste, then growing and eating plants while still fresh.

We aim to either teach people, or local growers, how to grow these plants themselves.

Dynamic situation

The change from the calorie-restricting paradigm to the new paradigm of managing our intelligent control system is dynamic.

This web is dynamic, we publish a new article most weeks but you can read the older articles by following the links at the bottom of each article.

To follow sign up and click the link  ‘Notify me of new posts by email’ at the bottom of every article.

The community benefits of gut-brain food

Colin Austin © 2nd May 2024 This document is published under the Creative Commons system which means that it can be copied and republished without further permissions but the author Colin Austin at gbiota.com must be recognised.

The black foot and avoiding amputation

My wife Xiulan, a medical doctor and surgeon became diabetic, the professional medical advice given to us was that diabetes is an irreversible chronic disease, it will steadily get worse, we will put you on progressively stronger medicines but eventually, you are likely to end up with insulin injections and you will probably die young from some complications arising from diabetes.

We accepted that advice as an honest attempt to make us aware of the harsh reality.

But when her foot started to turn black we were advised that she would probably need to have her foot amputated.

We were not happy to accept that advice, searched all the relevant scientific literature we could find as it was quite clear to us that there was a big difference between what the leading researchers were saying and the advice being offered at the retail level.

So what did we see? Now let me be upfront, my wife may be a medical doctor but I am an engineer and engineering is really about the generation, transmission and application of power. So I naturally tend to look at the human body as a thermodynamic machine - like a steam engine.

The body as a thermodynamic machine

Thermodynamic machines have three components, they have a source of energy, in the case of a steam engine a boiler which burns fuel.

As long as the fuel burns in the boiler it does not matter much what the fuel is, coal, oil, gas, that old piano, table or chair that is never used, as long as it gives off heat that is all that matters.

It is the same with the human body. The energy food we eat, whether chicken

wings and chips or organic produce, is simply burned off as fuel.

There is widespread concern about the reliability of food supply yet our modern food system produces enough fuel, energy food to power the entire human population (if it were equatable distributed) now and for years to come.

As long as the sun continues to shine and some dictator with no social conscience and access to rocket technology, and who happens to have a palace on the shores of the Baltic Sea which is in danger of flooding, does not decide to blanket out the sun, there is, and will not be, a shortage of fuel.

Yet nutritionists seem obsessed with calories - lack of calories is not the is not the issue. They should just forget about calories. There are much bigger issues at stake.

That great clanking machine

Our hypothetical steam engine has a structure which must be built and maintained, oils and lubricants applied to keep the machine running smoothly and parts replaced as they wear. In our steam engine, this is done by humans but our bodies are much more sophisticated.

From very conception the fetus, weighing just a few grams, is supplied with food which enables it to grow to a few kilograms and after birth continues to consume food to grow to full size.

Even then our body parts may look pretty much the same but most of our body parts are being replaced, some like our skin very rapidly while others like our teeth much slower.

We could say, in round terms that every three months we need to build a new body and for that we need food, not as much volume as for fuel, but still significant. For some two thousand years this happened from our basic diet, largely from the complex chemicals, phytonutrients in plants grown in living soil and eaten straight after picking.

These phytonutrients are incredibly complex - a single tomato will have some thousand different phytonutrients and no one really knows what they do.

Our modern food system lacks these phytonutrients and this is where nutritionists shine. They use their skills, and sophistication of modern technology, to produce a range of  Pills and supplements to overcome these deficiencies.

By and large, it works - at least sort of.

The intelligent controller

But then we come to the last bit of our steam engine. All machines has some sort of controller, it could be a simple on/off switch or it could be a highly sophisticated intelligent control system.

Now it just so happens that my first job as an engineer was working for a company that made controllers for power stations which happen to be highly relevant to the human body.

So let me tell you a funny story about power station controllers - and believe me it is relevant.

Most of the time this is pretty easy, you just monitor the load on the system and adjust the input energy with some fairly basic technology. The controller measures for any error and if the energy input is too low or high it simply cuts back in proportion to the error. This is called proportional control.

But as the error reduces the correction reduces so it never completely corrects so the controller measuring the error over time which it integrates and adjust accordingly. This is called integral control.

But sometimes things change very rapidly so the system also measures the rate of change so the controller applies damping so the system is stable. This is called derivative control. This may not seem to be connected to how our bodies work but we have a much better control system which I want to tell you about.

On many Saturday afternoons, there is a football match and the power consumption is low until the interval when a sizeable proportion of the population will get up and switch their kettles on for a quick cuppa creating a huge surge in power consumption.

This completely overwhelms the control system which by the time it gets the power plant up to the power setting the play has restarted. How do struggling engineers like me manage this crisis - and no cuppa at halftime is a real crisis.

We all have an intelligent control system

This is really important because this is what our bodies do exceptionally well.

We call it adaptive or self-learning software (which was among the software I wrote).

The way it works is that you think you know that there will be a power demand at 3.30 and it will take 30 minutes to get up that extra pressure so you write software so at 3 it schedules the power station up to number 6 on the dial and sit back and see how big a goof you have made.

At 3.30 you (or the system) find out that you had made a big goof and it was no where near big enough so in the software you have written code which say big goof increase by 50% so next Saturday it dials it up to number 9 and wait and see what happens.

And what happens is pressure relief valves blowing off all over the place because number 9 is far too big so the software says 6 is far too small and number 9 is a bit too big so next week it tries number 8 and this goes on and until it works out that 7.352 works really well.

How does this relate to the human body? This is the way the human body works, we have an intelligent control system which is regulating every aspect of our bodies. This is the way our bodies work. But even though I used to be what was called a gun coder (like a gun shearer pretty good at the job) I have absolutely no idea of the code and nor does anyone else.

But that does not mean it is not happening.

At the shopping centre

Next time you go to a shopping centre you will see many obese or overweight people and assume they are just fat little piggies stuffing themselves. And you would be wrong. There is a chance it could be genetic, some people are just naturally fat, but not that many. It could be that the body is sensing that there are deficiencies in the diet, such as a lack of essential phytonutrients and goes into panic sending out signals to eat more so it can stuff fat anywhere and everywhere it can ready for a rainy day.

Or it could be a fault in the supercomputer in your gut-brain or more technically the wrong species of microbes in your gut. Either of these is easily fixed by adding gut-brain   food to your diet. I may not know the code in your gut-brain but at least I know how to feed it gut-brain food which automatically includes the phytonutrients.

You can read the technical details in this post - it is straightforward growing plants in Wickimix, the special soil, and maintaining the Goldilocks moisture level. But the plants must be eaten shortly after picking which means it must done at home or at least locally. This is not an operation for mega industries But how do I let people know that this  technology exists?

The disinformation age

When the internet and its search engines came out I thought this was one of the greatest innovations of all time giving all people access to that vast pool of knowledge which previously was only available to a limited few. What a great equaliser.

And I was wrong, we are just saturated with dis-information with companies collecting our private details so they can sell that information to anyone who wants to sell us something.

I know this from personal experience. My interest is in gut biology and we get our first gut biology from mum at birth and later while breastfeeding. So naturally I use the internet to search for information about birthing and breastfeeding.

AI or GS?

As a result, I get bombarded with companies trying to sell something that a pregnant lady may want to buy. Now I ask you what is the probability of an 84 year old male being pregnant - answer sweet FA. That’s why they call it Artificial Intelligence AI or as I prefer GS Genuinely Stupid.

What this means is that instead of the Internet being this wonderful innovation where people can get information out it is a blocker of information transfer.

But it is worse than that. Disinformation is such an important issue that it has received a staggering amount of research with some rather unsavoury conclusions.

What this research says is that we naturally form groups and are far more likely to believe what our group says than the facts.

Whether we are aware of it or like it the software on the internet naturally forms us into groups with common views. They call it the echo chamber. Right or wrong is irrelevant, it is what the group thinks that matters.

This even happens in science where the greedy piggy theory dominates the intelligent control system theory for being overweight.

Social conscience and the food industry

The modern food industry does an amazing job of providing us with energy food. It also does an equally amazing job of supplying us with an enormous variety of food choices - a variety of foods from all over the world in and out of season.

This is just so different to when I was a kid when food was just plain boring, toast for breakfast, meat and two veg for lunch and bread and butter and cake for tea.

But almost everyone would grow some fruit and vegetable in naturally living soil which supplied the phytonutrients and gut-brain food essential for health. True there were some fat people but there was no epidemic of chronic diseases, that is man-made as a result of our food system.

We can buy vegetables from the supermarket but they will have been grown in soil with synthetic fertilisers so even at picking will be low in phytonutrients and beneficial microbes.

By the time they have been transported and arrived our table these will have died - hence the food deficiency and chronic disease epidemic. There is no point in trying to  change the existing food industry which is dominated by megacorporations whose focus is on profits rather than saving people from having their limbs amputated from diabetes.

And in any case, the issue is the deficiencies of phytonutrients and beneficial microbes in their food.

If their product contained any ingredients that were harmful they would be legally liable but how can a company be legally liable for something that is not in their product? We have to think of a new way in which we overcome group think which has led to a lack of confidence in what people see on the web and is a major obstacle to the adoption of any new technology.

Creating a new local gut-brain industry

At this moment members of the Gbiota movement understand the importance of the technology and are prepared to make the boxes, collect the waste and basically do  verything themselves - it is a ‘do it yourself ‘movement run by and for the community.

I have spent a lot of time working our ways that people, living in a flat can collect their waste and turn this into Wickimix, the soil in Gbiota boxes, and a key ingredient in the   Gbiota technology.

It works, but does require a bit of dedication and is not for everyone. But think how much easier it would be with Government support. We should try and persuade local  councils to collect food waste and process this into Wickimix.

Most councils have land available even in the centre of cities that could be used but they all have some form of recreation land or parks. Every flower bed in every park could be  used to prepare Wickimix and they have horticultural expertise.

It just requires burying the rubbish, covering with soil, growing plants that exude the sugars which attract the beneficial microbes then and managing the moisture levels.

After a few months, the WickiMix could be dug up and sold to local growers who could use the Wickimix to prepare Gbiota boxes with plants ready to harvest, which they could sell, on a swap-over basis, to local people who have little to do other than water and harvest their plants and supply clean kitchen waste to the council collection service.

This is a social issue project but just look at the economics.

In Australia, 4,400 people a year have a diabetic amputation which costs about $40,000 in total cost to our health system.

That works out at $176,000,000 per year.

This money could be better spent in other areas of our health system but some of this money should be used to help the local councils who would provide the waste collection and processing.

It just needs coordinating all these activities to make it happen.

We must create an ecosystem, a food ecosystem in which humans can thrive.

Charles Darwin taught us that creatures evolve to thrive in their local environment. Humans now have the technology to change our environment, we must use our technology to create an environment where humans can thrive.

Sure our immediate focus is combating the current epidemic, but we won’t do that with some-short term fix.

We have to create the ecosystem, the food ecosystem in which humans can thrive.

Join us in this community benefit movement putting people ahead of profits.

The real cause of chronic diseases

Chronic diseases are the result of the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The remedy which has been promoted for decades is eat less and exercise more. This has not been successful. The calorie theory is a valid explanation of how we get fat but does not explain why we get fat. The right answer to the wrong question.

We have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite. If it decides that there is a need to store more fat it sends out hormones so we are hungry. With determination we may be able to override that for a short time, but not for long.

If we want success in overcoming chronic diseases we have to learn how to change the signals coming from our intelligent control system.

We have yet to fully understand how this intelligent control system works but engineers have a good understanding of the complex intelligent control used to control difficult engineering problems which we can use as a model.

Our intelligent control system has two parts, the first in our gut which provide short term intelligence while our head brain provides long term data storage or memory.

We can understand the intelligence in our gut from swarm intelligence which we can study in many insects, birds and slime moulds. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with their neighbours provide this swarm intelligence.

For this to work effectively we need the appropriate species of microbes in our gut and we have to feed them.

The long term memory in our head allows us to train the control system.

We need relatively simple food for energy, complex chemicals to replace our body parts as they age and wear and food to feed the microbes in our gut.

The controls system will only send out signals to make us feel satisfied so we want to stop eating if it senses that all these three types of food are available.

Gbiota is a social movement of people dedicated to the prevention of chronic diseases by ensuring that the community has viable access to food, at an affordable price, which will correct for these deficiencies by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste, then growing and eating plants while still fresh.

Our aim is to either teach people, or local growers, how to grow these plants themselves.

Join the movement of other people wanting a better world to live in.

Disruption

The bad news

Humanity is approaching a period of massive disruption, maybe not annihilation, but certainly disruption on an unprecedented scale.

The combination of climate change and degradation of our soil will create difficulties in producing enough healthy food, our intense city lifestyles leaves us exposed to the next pandemic but that will be small compared to the epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases.

This will create tension resulting in waves of displaced people trying to migrate and the continued increase in conflict and killing of civilians on an industrial scale. See Society and Community Health and Jenny and Recycle and Serious Think about Food

The good news

We know how to avoid this massive disruption, our technology and understanding have increased on a scale which would have been unbelievable even a few decades ago. See Food - we love it and Friendly bugs

But technology can be a force of good or bad, it can work for the benefit of the community or it can increase the division across society creating a handful of people with unimaginable wealth and power while the bulk of the community suffers from ever-increasing hardships.

See prevention better than cure and Health Prevention first

Busy work

Our technologies give us the potential to solve these problems as long as we take action. We can produce all society’s needs in a couple of days work,

Sadly, a system of busy work has evolved so instead of taking action to resolve these problems we live in a state of overwork and stress leaving us exposed to the approaching disruption.

You can hide under the bedclothes but it does not make the monster go away see My Teddy

The train is at the station

While the worst is yet to come the chronic disease train is already at the station. Chronic or non-infectious diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia are largely man-made, here now but avoidable, as long as we take action. See The Plan and The Riddle and Disease

If we overcome the busy work and take action we can resolve the curse of chronic diseases.

Start by taking action and read my article Health Paradox then follow the trail.

People get fat and prone to chronic diseases because our modern food system is deficient in gut-brain food so we never feel satisfied, overeat, get fat and so are prone to chronic diseases.

We want to change the system, but we don’t go on street marches, spend money on manipulative marketing or other aggressive actions.

Our plan is simple: Form local clusters of people who grow their own gut-brain food, see for themselves that they now feel satisfied, are no longer craving food, and do not get fat.

They tell their friends and contacts and as the movement grows we change the system so all people have access to food that will keep them healthy.

We are a dedicated bunch of people committed to making the world a better place in a time of chaos.

Join us - we are a bunch of decent people who want to live in a decent society.

First thing, before you start to look at the contents of this web is to read Health Paradox , Chronic Disease,  Prevention better than cure,  then  Health - prevention first  These are published under the creative commons systems for anyone to read and copy free of charge.

I appreciate that there is a fair bit of heavy reading here, but saving humanity from massive disruption is not trivial.

But if, after all this heavy reading, you are prepared to join me in preventing this massive disruption then email me, say Hi and introduce yourself, then sign up to join a group of dedicated volunteers.

Preventing the Chronic Disease Epidemic

Gbiota is a community benefit organisation aiming to prevent the current epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

These are all caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

We all have a highly sophisticated intelligent control system, our gut-brain, which regulates our appetite so we don’t overeat and get fat. It works incredibly well but we need to feed it gut-brain food - plants eaten while fresh, grown in soil teaming with beneficial microbes.

Gbiota shows you how to either grow or buy gut brain-food.

Modern food does not feed our gut-brain so getting fat and sick is normal with three out of four people dying prematurely from a chronic disease.

Trying to cure a chronic disease is stressing our health system to the limit, costing our Governments billions of dollars and worst of all does not work.

Prevention by eating gut-brain food costs very little and works.

Join the Gbiota movement and increase your chance of living a long and healthy life.

Why are some people fat and others skinny?

Because we have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies.

It decides on a set point for how much fat we should store. It is like a thermostat in a house, it will try and keep the temperature (or fat store) to this set point.

The conventional wisdom is to override our control system, ignoring the set point and reducing fat using the principle of eat less exercise more.

It is the equivalent of setting the thermostat to 40ºC and opening all the doors and windows rather than turning down the thermostat.

It does work, at least after a fashion, but the costs to the community and the health system are massive, fat in the wrong place is the cause of all chronic diseases.

We need a paradigm shift to adjusting the set point on our inbuilt natural ‘fat’ controller.

That is what Gbiota is all about, changing the set point by eating so we feel satisfied.

You can read about changing the fat set point here  on our website www.gbiota.com

Gbiota is a social movement to combat the ever-increasing epidemic of chronic disease. Our focus is on prevention.

Curing a patient suffering from a chronic disease such as amputating a foot which is turning black from diabetes or having a triple bypass to relieve a blocked artery or bariatric surgery to reduce weight is a medical problem.

Preventing chronic disease is a societal issue - having a park where you can walk or play ball with the kids, a local grower who can supply genuinely fresh vegetables, an effective system for recycling waste, above all it is about having the right sort of food readily available at an affordable cost.

Prevention is far more effective and costs a fraction of the medical cost of cure.

If you think you may be interested in joining a social movement to combat the epidemic of chronic diseases by prevention then start by watching this short video (2 mins) and then read the article Health - prevention first  (20 mins) then Prevention better than cure.

It is free, you don’t have to sign any forms or register it is shared under the Creative Commons system for everyone and provides you with the information for you to decide whether you want to join the Gbiota club, the social movement of combat by prevention, of the epidemic of chronic disease.

If it is not for you that is fine - have a good life - we wish you well.

If it is for you then welcome aboard, sign up and become part of a group committed to making the world a better place to live for us humans.

First thing, before you start to look at the contents of this web is to read Health - prevention first   then Health - prevention better than cure These are published under the creative commons systems for anyone to read and copy free of charge.

The health paradox

Colin Austin © November 2024 Published under the Creative Commons System, it can be republished without further approval, just recognition of source.

Preface

Chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia cause a great deal of personal distress and cost Governments billions of dollars.

They are very difficult to cure but can be prevented relatively easily and at low cost. But that requires a change in the way our Governments, our health systems, and society operate to one with a focus on prevention rather than cure.

The underlying cause of all chronic diseases is the wrong fat in the wrong place.

So how does the fat get in the wrong place? We could give a simple answer - because more food (actually carbon) goes in than comes out.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of all chronic diseases.

So why do so many people get fat now, at epidemic proportions, when fifty years ago there were only a very few fat people?

We need to store some fat, no one likes to talk about it but that is what our bums are for and is essential for both health and survival. But why do we now store fat in the wrong places, our tummies, pancreas, arteries and brain?

Why do we store fat in the wrong places?

The simplistic answer is a bit like asking how Donald Trump got elected and answering because more people voted for him. True but not the answer.

The real question is why more people voted for Trump and that is complex and will no doubt be the subject of much deep analysis.

We know how we get fat, input is greater than consumption, but what we want to know is why we eat more than we need.

A simple answer may appear to be that modern food is cheap, convenient and tasty so we just pig out.

But that is not the real answer, we have to dig deeper and put more emphasis on prevention which takes the pressure of cure.

Why do we overeat?

We should start by recognising that the epidemic of chronic disease is a new phenomenon that started only a little over fifty years ago. True there have always been fat people, genetics play a part, but predominantly the epidemic is a modern phenomenon.

How we get fat is easy to answer - if more carbon goes into our bodies than comes out we get fat. But that is not an answer, we need to know why more goes in than comes out.

We have not all turned into little piggies so saying eat less and exercise more is not the solution, we need to understand why we eat more than we need.

There are sound scientific reasons why we overeat and if we are going to fix the chronic disease epidemic we need to understand why.

Our bodies - a thermodynamic machine

I find it useful to think of our bodies as a thermodynamic machine like a car.

Every machine has some form of control system, even if it just an on/off switch but today we have some extremely sophisticated intelligent control systems as I discuss in Health - prevention first

A car needs fuel, typically a simple hydrocarbon. We need fuel for our bodies and that is typically some combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the form of a sugar or fat which we burn to form carbon dioxide, which we breathe out and water which we use internally or pee out.

As burning carbon to form carbon dioxide always releases the same amount of energy it has become fashionable to talk about the conservation of energy, the calorie balance but it is the excess carbon we don’t breathe out as carbon dioxide which makes us fat and that is governed by the indisputable law of the conservation of mass.

So why do we store excess carbon (as fat)? That is when it get really interesting.

Cars and our bodies both need fuel

A car needs more than fuel, it needs a whole range of quite complex chemicals, oils for lubrication, water for cooling plus a whole range of components that wear out and need replacing from windscreen wiper blades to engine bearings, brake pads and batteries.

Typically the owner driver will take the car to a mechanic who will check the car over and replace bits that need replacing.

Our bodies are similar. We need a range of complex chemicals to survive and replace our body parts as they age and wear. We get these complex chemicals largely from the phytonutrients that plants produce, either directly by eating the plants or indirectly by eating animals that eat the plants and pass on the phytonutrients.

The car driver and our gut-brain

As the driver of the car, you are like a brain for the car telling it where to go, what route, how fast etc. and you like to be fed.

Our bodies similarly have a gut-brain which controls our bodies, deciding every aspect of our body’s operation, maybe subconsciously but it is still a decision and one of the most important decisions is what and how much we want to eat.

Our gut-brain likes to be fed too.

Three sorts of food

So we need three sorts of food - food for energy, food to replace our body parts as they age or wear and food to feed our gut-brain which controls our body.

In round figures about 80% of the food we eat is burned as fuel, 15% is used to replace our body parts and only 5% is needed to feed our gut-brain.

Historically energy fuel was in short supply while replacement and gut-brain food were abundant, so by the time we had gathered enough energy food for fuel we had an ample supply of replacement and gut-brain food.

Humanoids have been on this earth for some million years and in all that time we have been short of food for energy. Even today we are obsessed with energy food.

Then we changed the food system so there was an abundant supply of cheap energy food - fuel.

Who can blame the food industry for providing us with cheap energy food?

Our intelligent control system needs three ticks

Our intelligent control system can send out a complex variety of hormones to make us feel hungry or full, eg satisfied.

We don’t need any complex piece of scientific equipment to tell us we are satisfied - our bodies tell us we feel full and satisfied.

But despite eating large amounts of modern food we still don’t feel satisfied.

Why?

The key to solving the epidemic of chronic disease

The answer to that question is the key to solving the epidemic of chronic disease.

Before our intelligent control system sends out signals to say we are full or satisfied it must have three ticks, one tick for enough energy, another tick for replacement food and the last tick to feed the gut-brain.

When, and only when, it senses that all these needs are satisfied will it send out hormones saying enough - stop eating. The food cravings stop and we feel satisfied and stop eating.

We may have all the energy food we need but if either we don’t have enough replacement food or enough gut-brain food we will not feel satisfied.

The hormones will create food cravings, we will not feel satisfied and whatever our dietitian tells us we will eventually be overcome and eat more energy food than we need.

That is how 8 million people a year end up in the operating room having a limb amputated. Bad for them, bad for our health system - we need to fix it.

How our food system has changed

In times gone past energy food was on the critical path so by the time we had eaten enough energy food it had received ticks for both replacement and gut-brain food so it sends out the hormones to say we are full or satisfied so there was no epidemic stemming from the wrong fat in the wrong place.

In our modern food system, there is an abundance of energy food so we very easily eat enough food to get a tick for energy food but we will still not have created a tick for replacement or gut-brain food.

So our intelligent control system does not send out signals saying you are satisfied, instead, it sends out signals saying eat more.

While we are eating more food to generate a tick for replacement and gut-brain food we keep on eating which results in us eating more energy food than we need and as a result, we end up storing more fat and creating the epidemic of chronic disease.

Our bum, the natural storage for fat becomes overfull so our intelligent control system, faced with a surplus of energy food starts storing the fat anywhere it can in our tummies, thighs, arteries and brain so now we have an epidemic of chronic disease.

It is critical to understand this process to create the societal change we need to reverse the epidemic of chronic disease.

Fortunately, it is very easy and inexpensive to increase the supply of replacement and energy food and save billions of dollars in medical costs.

Getting the message out

But we have to get the message out to not just the Governments who fund the health system and the medical practitioners who run the health system but also the population at large to create the needed societal change.

The Health Paradox

This is so important to reversing the chronic disease epidemic allow me to emphasise this critical point even if I repeat myself, if we are going to fix the epidemic of chronic disease we all need to understand this simple paradox.

The paradox is, with our modern food system, loaded with energy food, that even though we have eaten enough energy food we still have not satisfied our need for replacement and gut-brain foods.

Our intelligent control system is smart and detects that we are still short of replacement and gut-brain food so it sends out signals saying you are not satisfied so eat more food. However determined we are to stick to some diet it is very hard to resist our intelligent control system sending out hormones that say you are still not full so keep on eating.

We don’t feel satisfied and keep on eating.

That is why we get fat, not just fat but fatter and fatter - we are losing the battle.

Why we need a prevention strategy

There is no suggestion that we should stop caring for people that are fat and sick but by the time they have reached that stage, it is a bit late.

If someone has reached the stage where they are on the operating table to have a limb removed from diabetes it is a bit late and anyway removing the limb will not cure diabetes.

That is why we need a health system that focuses on prevention, it won’t cost much money to run a prevention program and will save a far greater amount of money in expensive medical care later.

Our sophisticated intelligent control system

We won’t get far in making these changes unless we recognise just how sophisticated our intelligent control system is.

Engineers know a lot about intelligent control systems, just look at the sophistication that is used in power stations and rockets which can now navigate back to Earth and re-dock.

But we don’t have to look at these exotic applications, your car sitting in your driveway is an excellent example of intelligent control at work, which has remarkable similarities to our human bodies.

Short and long-term energy

It has a fuel tank for storing fuel - the equivalent of our bums for storing fuel in the form of fat. It just sits there, doing nothing until there is a call for action eg you start the car so it needs fuel to keep the engine running.

It does this by transferring a tiny amount of fuel from the tank to the fuel injection system where highly sophisticated sensors work out precisely how much fuel needs to be injected into the engine.

If you, as the driver of the car and part of the intelligent control system, want to accelerate or go up a hill the system works out how much extra fuel needs to be injected.

Our bodies work in a similar way.

We fill up our fuel tank, our bum, by eating food.

Initially the food, as sugars, goes into our bloodstream but the amount of energy we can store in our blood is minute so our intelligent control system sends out hormones to transfer this energy into our fuel tank, our bum.

When we start some activity which requires a lot of energy our intelligent control system will at first use the energy which is in our blood, but that is tiny so it sends our signals to transfer energy from our fuel tank, our bum, back into the bloodstream where it can power our muscles.

Our intelligent control system is continuously managing our energy supply, converting fast-acting sugars into fat for long-term storage and back from fats to sugars in our blood for immediate energy.

Watch it in action

You don’t have to believe me, you can watch this in action on your own body by doing what I do and just buy a continuous blood sugar monitor and watch.

This is what I see every day.

At night my blood sugar will be relatively low and stable (apart from a bit of a bump when I get up for a pee).

But as soon as the sun gets up my blood sugar will rise. I have not eaten anything but my intelligent control system has learned from experience (what engineers call self-learning) that when it starts to get daylight I will soon be getting up and need energy so it takes energy out of my long-term storage (my bum) making it readily available for short term use as sugar in my blood.

It is smart and has learned this over time using the same process of self-learning that I used in the intelligent control software I used to write.

Then I will eat my breakfast, the microbes in my gut, which is part of my intelligent control system, will digest my breakfast releasing the energy as sugars into my bloodstream.

This is sensed by my intelligent control system (and I see from my blood sugar monitor) as a blood sugar spike so my intelligent control system takes a decision that it needs to send out instructions to take this short-term energy supply - sugars in my blood and store this in my long term storage tank, my bum.

If the preferred storage vessel (my bum) is full it will find somewhere else to store the fat and wherever that is is not good news.

A highly sophisticated process

This is a highly sophisticated deliberate process which is occurring 375/24. It does not happen by chance and if we want to get on top of the epidemic of chronic disease we have to gain an understanding of how our intelligent control system works.

Sadly we only have a limited understanding of how our intelligent control system works a the code level.

However, we can get some inspiration from the intelligent control system that we have developed for our machines.

Take a trip to the local BMX track and see for yourself our intelligent self-learning control system at work.

Learning to ride a bike (or catch a ball)

I am an engineer. When I was at Uni I learned about gyroscopic couples and self-balancing systems, the basis of how a bike stays upright, and to be honest I found it difficult to get my head around.

But I had been riding bikes for years with no understanding of self-balancing gyroscopic couples - how come I could still ride a bike without falling off?

When I had kids and they wanted a bike for Christmas did I sit down with them and give them a long lecture about self-balancing gyroscopic couples?

No way! Take them out to the lawn so they won’t hurt themselves too much and let them learn by trial and error, falling off a few times but within a couple of hours they have the knack, never to be forgotten.

I have this somewhat crazy-sounding idea that as part of a nutrition course, the students should spend an afternoon watching the kids at a BMX park.

There will be the beginners who get halfway up the ramps and run out of speed and fall off and the experts who fly to the top of the ramp, flip their bike in mid-air and zoom back down the ramp - truly amazing.

That is our intelligent control system at work, you can see the kids learning about anticipatory control, learning the art of measuring the rate of change without a mention of self-balancing gyroscopic forces or differential calculus.

For the best part of a million years, we applied this expertise in self-learning to control our appetite so we did not get fat and sick.

Not being fat is singularly important if you don’t want to be that snarling beast’s dinner and need to nip up that protective tree. Evolution is a cruel, but effective system.

Maybe we have to change from being our modern high-tech-twenty-first century science specialist to an eighteen-century natural philosopher understanding how systems work as a whole.

We need to become modern-day Darwins.

Changed the rules

Now we have changed the rules by having cheap, convenient high-energy food readily available.

If we want to resolve the chronic disease epidemic we have to learn how to retrain our intelligent control system to adapt to these new conditions.

This requires a societal change.

Societal change

This is the aim of the Gbiota social benefit movement.

There are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

There is the technology of how to grow replacement and gut-brain food and that is just straightforward technology. This can be cheaper than buying food from the supermarket but does mean that people have to do it themselves or we change the design of our cities so local growers can supply genuinely fresh plants.

With the threat of climate change having cities with green spots to reprocess organic waste seems highly desirable.

The difficult bit - creating societal change

The second part is the difficult part, how do we change both our health system and our society so the focus is on prevention rather than cure?

How do we do this in the misinformation age where the internet is saturated with marketing crap?

People learn from other people that they trust. My experience as an innovator is there are three types of people,

- the pioneers, the change makers, or early adopters who see the need for change and make it happen,

- the puddings who agree logically that there is a need for change but there is always some reason to procrastinate, the busy work brigade,

- and the crusties who will never change but who eventually die.

Start with the pioneers

Pioneers can be found anywhere, they can be just highly motivated private individuals who see the need for change, they can be from within the scientific system, the Universities and research establishments and there are even pioneers within Governments.

I can’t change the world myself, but I can try and get the message out to the pioneers of the importance of understanding our intelligent control system and training it to change our eating habits so we stop stuffing ourselves with energy food.

I am continuously amazed by the modern world we live in, how mega companies put profits ahead of community benefit, the disinformation which saturates the internet and even the election of Donald Trump.

But even that shows one thing - there is dissatisfaction with the current system and the world is ready for change.

Let us make it happen. Email me colin@gbiota.com

Our Intelligent Control System

Food - we love it. But it is making us fat and sick and growing it is destroying the soils and planet on which we all depend.

What has gone wrong and what do we do about it?

Some experts say it is because we eat too much so we should eat less and exercise more. Other experts say it is our modern food with too much fat and sugar.

The truth is so simple that no one believes it.

Our bodies have evolved to have an intelligent control system which says stop eating when you are full.

We call it the gut-brain.

Our modern food system, profit before people, is simply not feeding the microbes in our gut so they send out hormones so we crave food, overeat and get fat and sick.

Solution - just feed your gut-brain.

Breed beneficial microbes in the soil under controlled conditions so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes, grow plants in this living soil and eat the plants.

A green smoothie in the morning works wonders - the food cravings will stop and you will be fit and healthy.

The solution is so simple and inexpensive that no one believes it.

I can show you how but it needs a social movement with people feeding their gut brain and showing their friends and contacts that this works for real.

From bad news to good news

No one likes bad news. It is bad news that three out of four people will die prematurely from a chronic disease but you can still believe that you will be the lucky one in four.

But not for us, my wife, a medical doctor became diabetic, her foot started to turn black and the doctors were talking about amputation.

I am not a medical doctor, I am an engineer, I like to know how things work so I have spent many years trying to work out what is the basic cause of diabetes, and the other chronic diseases, and the first level answer is the wrong fat in the wrong place.

But that is not an answer, the second level I needed to answer was what causes us to store the wrong fat in the wrong place. The conventional answer is that we are little piggies and eat too much - the calorie balance theory.

The conventional solution is ‘eat less and exercise’ more. There may be some truth in that, we can’t ignore the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy.

But people have been trying that for decades and it does not work, chronic diseases keep on getting worse. So we need to go to level three and ask why we eat too much.

The answer to that appears simple, there are deficiencies in our modern diet, we all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. It senses these deficiencies and sends out hormones so we feel hungry and eat more than we need.

This is where you have a choice.

Look at the blood sugar graph - we need to keep the line within the band, this is what engineers do all the time with their control systems, the techniques we use apply to both our machines and our bodies.

I have explained that in a number of articles as listed below. You can spend an afternoon reading these articles and then a week using the long-forgotten art of thinking to understand the control system inside your body.

Then you will have a good chance of avoiding chronic diseases. Prevention is better than cure.

These are all free in the public domain, published under the Creative Common system, you just read and think, but you will need to sign in with a genuine email. I got fed up with dubious companies using my web to sell even more dubious magic pills.

That is the cost of avoiding having your foot chopped off from diabetes or the other nasties of chronic diseases.

The solution is simple feed your gut brain.

The web is full of magic solutions with very clever marketing strategies, all you have to do is wave your credit card, money will disappear from your account but you will still be prone to chronic disease.

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

I understand how control system works and have spent decades trying to understand how the human body’s intelligent control system works.

The global mega-companies that dominate the food and drug industries benefit greatly from the current system - profits before community benefit.

I think that focusing on profits when eight million people a year have a limb amputated is just plain wrong, it is certainly not the sort of society I want to live in.

But these industries are trillion-dollar industries, they have almost unlimited budgets that spend billions of dollars per year on dubious promotion and Government lobbying to protect their financial interest.

I am just one person, an 84-year-old engineer, not a marketing guru or social activist, still fit and healthy but still just one person.

I try to help people stay fit and healthy through my research and making the results available by running this web and publishing articles, but one person can only achieve so much.

Everybody has to eat and the bulk of the world’s population of eight billion people are suffering from an intelligent control system that is not working as nature intended.

If I can create a social movement then many people across the globe can benefit from a fully functioning intelligent control system.

So why not join the movement? Start by reading the articles highlighted below and if you decide you want to make the world a better place for us humans to live then join the Gbiota movement.

There are over 300 posts and 150 videos on this site.  It may be an indepth study of food and health but it can be a bit overwhelming.

I have made ashort list of the key posts below in a suggested reading schedule.  I suggest you start having a look a these posts, at the end of each post just click on Home in the menu or main menu in the footer at the bottom of each post which will bring you back to this page and then you can look at the next post.

You can see all post at blogs

If you have question of want to chat I am available for email or video chats.

Not little piggies

We don’t get fat and sick because we have turned into little piggies.

We get fat and sick because our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain which regulates our appetite and immune system.

The solution is to feed your gut-brain.

We cannot do this for you - there is no magic pill, but we can show you how.

It is not trivial, takes a bit of effort and must be done right but other people are doing it.

It is your body, your life and your choice.

Diabetes and insulin resistance

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic that ensures the brain has a continuous supply of sugars.

When sugars are in short supply insulin resistance restricts the flow of sugars to the muscles so sugars are available for the brain.

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic for our survival. If the brain dies we die. It is the way our intelligent control system keeps us alive.

When our intelligent control system is fully functional the system works fine. When our intelligent control system is not  functional we get diabetes.

Our intelligent control system operates in our subconscious brain, we have no control or even know what it is doing but it regulates our bodies.

Temperature is a classic example of our intelligent control system at work, it makes us shiver when cold or sweat when hot, we have no control over it but it regulates our temperature to a fraction of a degree.

Our gut biome is a critical part of this intelligent control system, playing a major part in our appetite, how much and what sort of food we want to eat and also our immune system protecting us 24/7.

From the moment we are born, it is learning and adapting to the current conditions, as described in more detail later.

It works to keep us alive protecting us from both infectious and non-infectious diseases and can only be described as a marvel of the human body.

But, at times it fails and then we have serious problems.

Unfortunately, the importance of our intelligent control system is not widely recognised so we fail to feed and train it with disastrous consequences.

The modern diabetes epidemic is caused by failure to feed our gut brain so our intelligent control system no longer functions properly.

Eating a diet rich in vegetables may improve our gut-brain and intelligent control system but only if the vegetables are grown in soil containing the beneficial microbes.

This is well understood in enlightened scientific circles but unfortunately, the popular press is fixated with the calorie balance theory which is overly simplistic so we rely on magic pills or diets, which are highly profitable when the real problem is we are not caring for our intelligent control system.

Sadly we have switched from being Homo-sapiens to Homo-profitus.

Profit or Health

Our intelligent control system

I experiment. I breed microbes in the soil, grow plants in that soil and then eat them. I eat different foods and measure my blood sugar levels to see what happens.

We do not appreciate how sophisticated our bodies are.

We have an intelligent control system in our gut which regulates our appetite - what and how much we want to eat.

It works like the intelligent control software I used to write. It senses our blood sugar has an error, it looks at how rapidly it is changing and applies a correction, it looks at how well that correction worked, learns from that and creates a new correction.

I feed my gut-brain so I have an effective intelligent control system.

Piggy me

I look at my blood sugar reading and it is fine.

But then I am naughty and go to a restaurant and pig out.

I see that I get a blood sugar spike from eating naughty food but the microbes in my gut are here to look after me and protect me from my naughty habits.

They communicate with each other, just like in a computer to provide real intelligence.

They work out that something is wrong and make hormones to bring my blood sugar level down and within a couple of hours my blood sugar is back to normal.

Feed our gut-brains

All I have to do is feed my gut-brain and make sure it has the right microbes. There is nothing new about this, we evolved this way and we have been feeding our gut-brain for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then we stopped. Why?

Because our modern food system puts their profits ahead of our health.

But you and I can fix that.

Microbes breed like crazy, they make teenagers at a drunken party look like a pack of nuns.

There is no problem in breeding microbes all we have to do is to manage the conditions so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs a process we call Eco-balance which again has been going on for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota is all about, it is a social movement that puts health before profits and shows people who want to live a long and healthy life how to feed their gut brain.

Read on - then sign up and join the movement.

The good gut bugs are here to protect us

Beneficial microbes, the good bugs, in our gut control our appetite and immune system leading to a long and healthy life.

Our modern food system is deficient in these, good bugs, so we have an epidemic of chronic non-infectious diseases - overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Three out of four people will now die, prematurely from chronic diseases.

Our health system is creaking at the joints, not enough doctors and health care professionals, ambulances ramping outside overfull wards, billions of dollars spent on avoidable care and amputations.

All because we don’t have the protection of the good gut bugs.

We know how to fix it - we just have to do it.

Our intelligent control system

People often think our bodies are dumb and we get fat and sick because we eat too much.

Our bodies are very smart and we can see this by looking at the blood sugar level throughout the day.

Imagine that you are controlling your blood sugar level and have to keep the level within limits, you have two buttons one to increase blood sugar levels and the other to reduce it.

How, as an intelligent creature, would you manage those two buttons?

At night there is not much to do so just a little push on the down button is all you need.

But then in the morning, you know there will be a need for energy so you press the up button at wake-up time and the blood sugar levels rise.

We can see that our intelligent control system does exactly this our blood sugar rises between wake-up and breakfast.

Both you and our intelligent control system know that at breakfast time there is going to be a big surge in blood sugar levels as your body gets stuck into all that toast and marmalade so you are both on standby.

As soon as you see the blood sugar levels rising both you and your body’s intelligent control system start pushing the down button to bring the blood sugar level back under control.

Message - your body is smart not some dumb machine that works on a crude calories in calories out basis.

Of course, the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy apply so we have to eat to get fat and sick but the reason why we overeat is because we have are not looking after our intelligent control system not because we are little piggies.

Blood sugar and fat are pretty much interchangeable.

Before I even wake up in the morning my intelligent control system anticipates that I will need extra energy so it draws down on my fat stores so I have energy available.

When I get around to eating breakfast there is a surplus of energy so my intelligent control system stores some of this sugar as fat.

I used to write intelligent control software which had self-learning and anticipatory functions. Our intelligent control system seems to have these capabilities built in.

This is a natural human capacity. If we wake up and see a blue sky we may go and water the garden. We have learned that blue sky means a probability of being hot and dry so we anticipate a high water use by our plants.

If there are dark clouds we may put of watering for now.

This is a natural human capability so we need to assume that this is how our intelligent control system is managing our blood sugar and fat storage.

What we can say for sure is that the calorie balance theory, which looks as our body like a water tank, with flows in and out and the water level is determined by these flows is a simplistic model which is leading us to major errors.

This is serious as three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease which is caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

How have we got ourselves into such a mess?

We know how to breed the beneficial microbes, the good bugs. Just collect organic waste, mix with soil and volcanic rock dust, add inoculants, grow plants and eat them while fresh.

How do I know this, for a start I study the work of experts in the field like Professor Tim Spencer and Bill Bulsiewicz, but then I collect organic waste and grow gut-brain food.

Then I test it on myself.

I wear a continuous blood sugar monitor. If I eat modern food my readings go through the roof, I am not diabetic but would soon be if I just ate modern foods  that are deficient in beneficial microbes.

So I eat gut-brain food adding it to my regular diet and see my reading drop down to healthy levels.

This is not rocket science - anyone can do it.

We can't do it for you but we can show you how.

So why haven’t we fixed the chronic disease problem?

Most Governments have Health and Welfare departments whose job is to prevent these chronic diseases. Why aren’t they promoting that we all eat gut-brain food full of the good bugs?

It is a simple question of profits versus health and at this moment profits for big food and big pharma are winning while Governments stand back and procrastinate with busy work.

Market power

Profits! Big food and big pharma make a lot of money from the current system, they have immense marketing power to protect their profits while there is no money to be made showing people how to collect their kitchen waste to breed the good bugs and grow the plants that will feed the good bugs in our gut.

Join us

What can you do about this? Join the Gbiota movement for social change.

The first step is to register, stand up and show you care, the more people that show they care the better able we are to get people to eat gut-brain food.

You can join for free and read the many articles on food and health, later when you are convinced that all people should be eating gut-brain food you can learn how, we do ask people to contribute but it is a pittance and you will end up saving money (and maybe your foot).

We are a social benefit organisation, but it costs money to develop technology to learn how to grow gut-brain food and we have to cover our costs. If you can’t afford to contribute we have a needy membership for $1 for those that cannot afford to pay.

Join us and change the world so people can have a long and healthy life with a sustainable food system based on recycling waste.

Want to live a long and healthy life?

DIY breed your own gut bugs? Your immediate reaction may be no thanks I am not a microbiologist.

Well, let me tell you, right now you are breeding your own gut bugs, whether you like it or not.

Microbes, I prefer to call them bugs, are everywhere, in the air, our drinks, our food and they breed like crazy doubling every twenty minutes 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 …. trillions.

You can kill them all off with powerful disinfectants but they will be back.

You can’t stop them breeding, the only choice you have is what sort of bugs live inside you.

There are good bugs which make you fit and healthy, not-so-good bugs which make you fat and sick, and bugs that kill you.

You don’t need to be a microbiologist to tell what species of bugs are inside people.

Just go to any shopping centre and you will see people that are fit and healthy, they have the good bugs.

People with wobbly bums and tums, they have the not-so-good bugs.

If you want to see the people with the bad bugs you will have to go to the mortuary to find them.

You can’t stop bugs breeding but you can choose what sorts of bugs are breeding inside you.

If you have the conditions that benefit the good bugs they will out-breed and out-compete the not-so-good and bad bugs.

It has been going on for millions of years and we call it Eco-balance. We can use Eco-balance to select what sort of bugs live inside us.

That is what Gbiota is all about, we can’t breed the bugs for you but we can show you how to create the conditions that will favour the bugs you want, which we assume is the good bugs so you can look forward to a long and healthy life but you have to do it yourself - we show you how.

Our intelligent control system

Our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

Our gut is an integral part of this control system. If we have the right blend of species in our gut we can expect a long and healthy life, if we have a poor blend of species we get fat and sick.

The blend of species in our gut is the result of a long chain, starting in the soil with the nutrients and moisture, the microbes in the soil, the creatures of the soil, the plants that are grown, how quickly the plants are eaten after harvesting and how they are processed.

We have to look at all these factors as an integrated system, which may be complex but we can easily tell if we have it right, we feel satisfied and stop craving more food.

This may seem complex but the final answer is simple, grow your own gut-brain food. Anyone can do it and look forward to a long and healthy life.

We need the microbes

We don’t eat rocks to get our nutrients, we need microbes and fungi to break down the rocks into nutrients we can digest.

Similarly with energy, we need photosynthesis from plants on land or algae in water to capture the sun’s energy.

Our lives are dependent on these micro-organisms.

But they do much more than provide a path to nutrients and energy, they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence which regulates our bodies. We see this with insects like bees and ants, birds that live in flocks, slime moulds and even human society.

We call this swarm intelligence and it is what regulates our bodies which controls our bodily functions particularly our appetite and immune system.

Microbes are essential for life. However, there are beneficial microbes that keep us fit and healthy and harmful microbes that make us fat and sick.

Over millions of years, nature has evolved a system with trillions of microbes and many thousands of species but with the right conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes, we call this ecological balance and it is how we exist today.

Generally, microbes breed and die incredibly fast with cells dividing within twenty minutes of formation, we may see the same species over time, they are not the same microbes they are their great, great grand kids, we call this dynamic equilibrium.

There are trillions of microbes in our gut comprising many thousands of species. Initially, these microbes come from our mum but later they come from microbes that breed in the soil, move into the plants we eat and then into our gut biome.

Our health depends on the dynamic equilibrium of the microbes in the soil and in our gut biome.

Our modern food system, centred on chemical industrial agriculture and highly processed foods is lacking these beneficial microbes which has led to a global epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

To overcome this we need to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes in the soil by carefully controlling the conditions, growing plants and eating them while still fresh before the microbes die.

This is not difficult, virtually anyone can do it. We cannot do it for you but we can show you how to do it by having a Gbiota box of plants growing at your home which you pick and eat.

The two side of Gbiota

We teach how to grow plants as pre and pro-biotics. That is the easy bit, understanding and applying the science of breeding beneficial microbes in a special soil, Wickimix largely made from organic and rock dust, and using the principle of Eco balance to create the condition so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is straightforward but must be done right so we provide technical support to our members.

I answered a question for Jenny, one of our members which turned out to be one of the most important articles on how to sustainably grow healthy food and combat the epidemic the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, over-weight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Normally an article like this would be restricted to members but this is such an important issue that I am making it available under the Creative Commons system which means it can be re-published without further approval, just acknowledgement of source www.gbiota,com

I have just released a major article on community health Here is the link

Here is the link to Jenny

Dangerous ideas

Have you ever thought why, when you go to the shopping centre there are so many wobbly bums and tums and people hobbling around with a foot chopped off?

The real answer is not because our modern food has too many fats and sugars, we have to go back a few hundred thousand years for the real answer.

A bunch of humanoids were sitting around their campfire when someone asked ‘What’s for breakfast?’

Some one said it would be a few hundred thousand years before someone invented Wheaties for breakfast so how about a Mastodon steak?

Feeling hungry they worked out a plan on how they could kill a Mastodon, it worked and humans became addicted to ideas, in this case cooperating was better than no breakfast.

We becames addicted to ideas from learning how to kill Mastodons and have a good breakfast - that's unless you happened to be a Mastodon.

If you want agreement never invite the loosers to the decision making process.

Since then we have had all sorts of good ideas, less good ideas and some terrible ideas which has led to us becoming a highly cooperative creature and the second most successful creature on the planet after cockroaches who will be the last remaining creature on Earth in a few billion years.

One of those less good ideas and in my opinion terrible ideas is that the sole role of companies is to make as much money for their shareholders and in the case of the food (and tobacco and fossil fuel) industries who cares about the collateral damage of people getting fat and sick and having their legs chopped off from diabetes.

My idea, which I am trying hard to sell, is that companies, food companies in particular should accept that they have a social responsibility and become community benefit companies.

It is pointless my saying that unless I can offer a technology that will benefit the community.

That is the Gbiota technology for growing plants.

I can’t change the world, I am just one old man so if Greta struggled to change the world on climate change then what hope do I have with food? My name is not Greta Foodberg.

But I do know how to grow food that will reduce the number of people with fat and wobbly bums and tums and with one foot missing.

That is what Gbiota is all about.

What is Gbiota?

Gbiota is the technology of breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste under controlled conditions such that they outbreed any harmful microbes using the principle of Ecobalance.

The result is a soil teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients (Wickimix).

Plants are grown in the soil, the microbes enter the plants and then our gut which form part of the intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite.

This could help reduce the modern epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is a simple and inexpensive process, the challenge is to get widespread adoption in a world dominated by a lust for profit, disinformation and clever and effective manipulative advertising. Tobacco, fossil fuels, food - profits ahead of community benefit.

Gbiota is a community benefit organisation.  We beleive the idea that company'y sole responsibilty is for shareholder profits is a great failure of modern society.

All companies have a duty to the community and be a community benefit organisations.

Support us please by keep on reading.

There are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

The easy bit

The first is the Gbiota technology. By serendipity, luck, hard work and maybe a bit of talent I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering in computational fluid flow for which I was recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators and a world leader in fluid flow.

Gbiota technology is about creating the conditions so the good bugs outbreed the bad bugs by creating what I call Goldilocks moisture. To be honest this is straightforward engineering to someone with my background.

The difficult bit

The second is to create a better, more human-orientated and stable society.

My long-term aim is to create a new industry of local growers that supply Gbiota boxes to their local community.

These would be community benefit organisations that accept that a company is not in business purely to make money for their shareholders but has a responsibility to their community.

This comes naturally with a local business where the business owners are in regular contact with their customers.

The opposite is true for a multi-national company where the directors are under pressure to maximise returns by whatever means possible.

This does not lead to a good society with gross inequality and the losers suffering. Eight millions people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes so mega corporations have super profits.

That is not good society.

Hopefully you will support this movement, the first step is to read Rethinking food, my dynamic E-book. I decided to make a nominal charge of $Au15 ($Us10) so I can pay the people who are working on this project a fair wage.

We are not a charity, we are a community benefit organisation.

I am advised by smart people who know about internet marketing never to start a web page with bad news.

This ridiculous idea that bad things go away if you pretend they don’t exist provoked me to write ‘My Teddy’ about hiding under the bedclothes

and ‘The Great Food War’ which is hopefully a bit of a wake up call to those how think life is wonderful.

There are many more controversial articles in my E-book ‘Rethinking Food’ which is a must read if you worry about sustainable and healthy food production.

Well, I am 84 years old, fit and healthy and am horrified by the number of wobbly bums and tums, and people hobbling about with a leg amputation whenever I go to the local shopping centre.

So next time you go to the shopping centre take off your virtual reality glasses, think about what you see and ask yourself why.

I don’t mean a little why like there is too much sugary fatty food on the shelves or too much disinformation on social media, keep digging until you get to the real answer.

If you are like me, lucky enough to have a technical background and old with the time to spend hours each day reading technical papers you will see that it is not a technical problem. If you don’t have the time then you can read the articles on the web.

You will see that we have the technology to stop this epidemic of chronic infectious diseases while having a sustainable food system.

If we have the technology to fix it then why has it not been fixed?

It is a battle between profits and public benefit and profits won, for now.

But if you and your friends and your friends friends work together this can be changed.

It won’t be easy and it will take more than the attention span of a moth.

I created this web to tell the story of food that will make us healthy. It is devoid of clever marketing gimmicks and we don’t sell magic pills that don’t work, we just tell the story about the world’s food system as it is and more importantly what you can do about it.

We are in the front line in the battle of the modern web, clever manipulative marketing versus facing the world as it really is.

The first step is to understand the issues, for example, why is it that people in the blue zones live to a ripe old age, fit and healthy to the end with only a basic health system while we in so-called high technology countries with a sophisticated health system get fat and sick and die well before the age of natural death?

I have written ‘Rethinking Food’ what I call a dynamic E-Book which is a collection of articles about food and health I have written over the last thirty years.

None of the popular magic slogans ‘like eat less exercise more’ and instead gets down to the underlying causes of the modern health epidemic and yes it will take a bit of time and thinking.

If there was a simple punch line it would be that the cause is the way we grow our food so it is lacking the beneficial microbes which form the intelligent control system in our gut biome and the lack of critical trace minerals.

Don’t blame the modern food industry for what is in our food, it is what is not in our food that matters.

You then have two options, you can learn to grow plants with the beneficial microbes in Gbiota boxes yourself - not that difficult and you can do tomorrow - instructions are on this web

or you can help us in creating a new industry where local growers supply Gbiota boxes to their local community as a viable business.

We are a social benefit organisation that thinks beyond making a profit.

Community Health

Colin Austin© 2024 Published under the Creative Commons system. This article may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source www.gbiota.com

The essence

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

It is a problem for almost everyone, three out of four people will die prematurely from a chronic disease, it is the great health challenge of our time.

We know chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place but what makes us store more fat?

Just take a look around your local shopping centre and see the number of wobbly bums and tums and people with a diabetic amputation.

But why are so many people getting fat?

Changing paradigms

The current paradigm is the calorie balance theory, we eat more more calories than we consume. We get fat because we are little piggies and overeat.

This is a popular theory with the powerful food industry because it means it is not their fault, it is your fault for being a little piggy.

They are very good at manipulative promotion so the calorie imbalance theory has become the accepted paradigm and that has to change.

Partial truth

The basic laws of physics, like the conservation of mass and energy, are valid. To get fat and sick we need to consume more than we burn. This is what enables us to get fat but is not the reason.

The calorie balance theory may be convenient, popular with big food and have some elements of truth but it is only part of the story.

So what is the real reason?

Our intelligent control system

Our bodies have a built-in intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

We have known this for 175 years but still struggle to understand exactly how it works. Just because we don’t fully understand how it works does not mean it does not exist.

There is ample observational evidence showing that it exists and works. Without our intelligent control system, we would not survive, it is essential for life.

Our gut-brain, the microbes in our gut communicating with each other, creating intelligence so are an essential part of this control system.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we fed our gut-brain so there was no epidemic of obesity or chronic or non-infectious disease - we died mainly from infectious diseases.

But our food system changed and no longer contains gut-brain food so our gut-brain senses this deficit and sends out hormones to make us crave food and overeat.

Despite all efforts to apply the calorie balance, the epidemic gets worse day by day.

Social and technical challenges

The social challenge, however difficult it is to create a paradigm shift from the calorie balance paradigm to the intelligent control paradigm.

The technical challenge is to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes. This must be simple and economical enough to be done at scale so the population as a whole can live a healthy life.

Health should not be a luxury for the wealthy.

Feed your gut-brain

We know how to feed our gut brain, it is straightforward and inexpensive, but must be done right - breed the beneficial microbes in a special growing medium controlling the conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially outbreed any harmful microbes, grow plants and eat the plants shortly after harvesting.

Changing paradigms is always a bloody business but with the vested interests, this will be a particularly bloody battle.

Here we tell the story of this bloody battle.

Preface

I would rate climate change as the biggest existential threat to humanity and food and the epidemic of chronic diseases as the second.

However, there is one fundamental difference.

With climate change we know what needs to be done, we may not like the idea of stopping burning fossil fuels and there are very powerful companies using very clever but manipulative tactics, to protect their profits, but we at least know what we should be doing.

The technology we need to apply is not disputed - the problem is the social one of how to make the change happen.

This is not the case with chronic diseases. We know that before 1940 there were people who suffered from chronic diseases but it was not an epidemic.

Since the modern food system developed after the war, it has transformed into a global epidemic. Diabetes is the fastest growing disease with 8 million people a year suffering from a limb amputation.

It is a global phenomenon with every country struggling to learn how to deal with it, and failing miserably.

No country has solved the epidemic of chronic diseases.

It is not just rich countries, poor countries have suffered far more. In these countries, when fed using their traditional agriculture, there was no major issue with chronic diseases.

However many of these countries swapped from their own food production to the far more profitable system of growing for the rich countries while importing the supposed more convenient modern processed foods which has led to some of the worst cases of chronic illnesses.

This is powerful evidence that this epidemic of chronic diseases is linked to our modern food system.

The epidemic is man-made, it will not be solved by some magic pill or wonder plants. We certainly have to look at the technology but if we are going to be successful in combating the chronic disease epidemic we have to look at the society which allowed the epidemic to evolve.

A pretty hot topic.

Introduction

The widely held view, simplistic and wrong, is that this epidemic is caused by our modern foods, full of sugars, fats and flavourings (often addictive) which has led to the view that this can be resolved by the calorie balance, eat less exercise more and the problem will be resolved.

We have been trying that formula for half a century, it has failed miserably.

If I can quote the old adage - the difference between a wise man and a fool is that they both make mistakes but the fool continues with the same approach while the wise man tries to understand why he failed, and learns from the experience to develop a new approach.

Climate change is the sister problem to the chronic disease epidemic and they have a lot in common.

We can learn a lot about how to combat chronic diseases by comparing the history of climate change and chronic diseases.

Comparing climate change and the chronic disease epidemic

Studies in both areas started around 1850.

Early climate change

With Climate change the early pioneers were Fourier in 1824, but it was in 1856 that Eunice Foote demonstrated the warming effect of the sun is greater for air with water vapour than for dry air, and the effect is even greater with carbon dioxide.

Despite her pioneering work climate change is typically associated with Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

We had to wait until 1938 for steam engineer Guy Callendar to do the grunt work of calculating the expected rise in temperature from various levels of greenhouse gases. Working with pencil, paper and slide rule he came up with pretty much the same answer as our modern-day supercomputers.

Early intelligent control

But so we keep to the same era let me switch to the history of Intelligent control.

The work on what we now call the intelligent control system is similarly dated starting with the concept of what was then called ‘the regulation of the internal environment’ was described by French physiologist Claude Bernard in 1849, and the word homeostasis was coined by Walter Bradford Cannon in 1926.

Basically, we are talking about how the body naturally self-regulates - a topic critical to combating the chronic disease epidemic.

In both cases we are not talking about some magic innovation but with a history going back the best part of 200 years.

The Social Side of Modern-day Climate Change

You may wonder why in an article on the chronic disease epidemic I am talking about climate change.

The answer is simple, we will never resolve the chronic disease epidemic purely by technology, it is man-made and the result of social issues so we have to understand these.

Climate change is further down the road than battling the epidemic so we can learn a lot by studying the climate change battles.

The climate change area got really interesting with the work of Charles Keeling in 1958 with the production of what we now call the Keeling curves which showed a steady increase in greenhouse gas levels.

In the early 60’s he presented his work to Congress to warn the world of the dangers of climate change.

It would be wrong to say that the Government took no action as the National Science Foundation withdrew its funding. If that does not make you stop in your tracks with your mouth wide open I don’t know what will.

But why would they do that?

We know that the oil industry, particularly Exxon were fully aware of the threat that climate change presented to their profits.

Their approach, learned from the Tobacco industry was to promote the idea that climate change has occurred naturally throughout history with periods of intense cold and other periods when the world was much warmer than now.

There were periods when the poles were enjoying a period with a temperate climate with forests and animals just like in modern temperate zones so there is no problem.

That’s if you don’t consider the millions of climate change refugees fleeing their homeland as it becomes uninhabitable.

Presumably, that was the week when mega-fences were on special.

Manipulative promotion

This is the classic technique used in manipulative promotion.

It is no good denying something that is supported by undeniable evidence (like the Keeling curves) instead you provide partial information which is equally valid, like the fact that climate has changed over time but never provide the full information which would reveal your hereditary as a snake oil salesman.

This gains confidence, but only providing partial information gives the impression that the idea you want to deny is either incorrect or irrelevant.

It is very effective.

Watch out, small girl approaching with cardboard placard.

But all this very clever and no doubt expensive manipulation of the Government and the public thinking was thwarted by a little school girl - Greta Thunberg.

Now let us stick to the facts, Greta did not develop solar panels or wind turbines or any new technology, she just read the information that was widely available on climate change, translated it from techno-jargon to everyday English and sat outside the Swedish parliament with a grotty cardboard sign and after a bit managed to convince a few people that this was a real threat that the Government should be doing something about.

And what did the Governments do, just what they had done before - procrastinate and do nothing.

And then more nothing - until

So what happened next? An unprecedented increase in floods, drought, fires and storms that were completely out of the normal so no normal intelligent thinking person could ignore just leaving a few die-hard deniers.

In my life as an innovator, I have had to fight many battles and I used to divide people up into activists - people who would go out on a limb and actually do something, puddings - people who would agree with everything you said but never do anything and crusties - who would just deny anything on principle - the good news is they die off, eventually.

These climate disasters led to protests, with Greta, not so much as the organiser but the symbol that the climate change movement could centre around.

But climate change cannot be averted by demonstrations or even a few dedicated people putting solar panels and batteries on their houses.

It can only be averted by Government action. It is only Governments that can achieve the massive transformation of our society from one based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable resources.

But what those protests did was to show to the Governments that Climate change was not just the interest of a few dedicated climate activists (who could safely be ignored or locked up) but was a serious issue for much of the population.

So the Governments quickly worked out that unless they responded they would be voted out of office and the procrastination evaporated.

What has this to do with the epidemic of chronic disease?

No one disputes that chronic diseases start with the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The question is what is causing this increase in fat?

It is very convenient to say that it is because we eat too much and don’t exercise enough so the solution is to eat less and exercise more. The law of the calorie balance.

This is a very convenient partial truth for the food industry and any procrastinating Government. It takes the responsibility away from them and puts it onto the public who, with a wave of some witches wand, have suddenly turned into little piggies.

It is not my fault

Partial truths are the key tool of those wishing to manipulate the real truth for their benefit and are certainly a bonanza for the food industry - it is not our fault that you get fat and sick and maybe have a leg chopped off from diabetes it is all your fault because you eat too much and don’t exercise enough.

It sounds so reasonable and logical and it is not untrue, it is a partial truth which can be just as harmful as a miss-truth.

We have known for the best part of two hundred years that our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite or what and how much food we feel we need to eat.

Control systems

Regrettably, we do not know it works, at least at the code level, but we have ample experimental evidence to give us a pretty clear picture of the way it works.

I am an engineer, and engineers make machines and every machine has some form of control system, even if it is just an on/off switch.

My first job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations, later in life I wrote software to manage irrigation systems, which I refer to as self-learning software.

This is not that different to our internal control system which decides how much food we need.

The plants are growing and they need different amounts of water at the various stages of growth, just like humans need different amounts of food as they grow and age.

The conditions are continuously changing, sometimes it is hot and dry and other days it rains, just as some days people go for long walks or are stuck in an office with maybe a lot of stress so each day we need different amounts of different types of food, sometimes energy food and other times comfort food.

In an intelligent irrigation system, we can monitor these conditions, and learn how to apply the right amount of water. We may not know the code in our bodily intelligent control system but we can observe and with an understanding of how intelligent control systems work have a pretty good idea of how our intelligent control system works.

What we see is that if our bodies sense a deficiency in our diet it will respond by sending our hormones to make us feel hungry so we may end up overeating.

If we are on a diet we may manually override these hunger desires, but that is difficult to do for any length of time.

The most common deficiency in modern food is lack of the beneficial microbes that power our gut, but we can also sense deficiencies in trace minerals.

The food industry would much prefer you to think that you are fat and sick because you are a little piggy rather than the real truth that modern food is commonly deficient in both beneficial microbes and trace minerals and that is the true cause of the chronic disease epidemic.

But it is not always the food industry’s fault, as anyone who has spent a hot sweaty day in the garden and craves something salty to eat. This is our intelligent control system doing its job of regulating our food supply to meet current conditions.

Only fools keep on repeating their mistakes

For the best part of fifty years, we have followed the calorie balance approach and every year the epidemic of chronic diseases has increased. Yet we say that it is because people are not trying hard enough and they need to eat even less and exercise even more.

It has the logic of the farmer who was trying to train his donkey to eat less and got it down to one bean a day when the donkey died.

Instead, we need to focus on ensuring our intelligent control system is working properly, which means feeding it gut-brain food and then training it so it learns what type and how much food we need.

Health and the New Capitalist System

We have come a long way since the days of Adams Smith and his perfect market philosophy.

We now live in a new era of mega-corporations with Neo-monopolistic powers that control not just products but also the flow of information. They operate on the principle of profit first, certainly profits before people.

Naturally, the general population look to their Governments to protect them from any potential abuse of power but this is becoming less effective.

Governments themselves are not immune to pressure from these mega organisations which have the power to influence Governments directly by a level of access to Government not available to the general voter but in this age of disinformation, they have the power to influence voter behaviour.

This unwillingness of Governments to exercise control over this market power has led to a widespread disenchantment with the political system and the rise of so-called populist Governments even in countries which have enjoyed a stable moderate Government such as the Scandinavian countries and dare I say Australia which despite its apparent conflicts has been a comparatively well run and stable country.

But despite this Australia is still among the leaders in the epidemic of chronic disease.

So what can we do about it?

Learning from Greta

We can learn from Greta.

The world’s leading scientist were warning their Governments of the dangers of climate change, and they just procrastinated and did nothing.

The fossil fuels companies had a very simple argument, climate change is natural, it has changed many times before from hot to cold. A simple statement of fact with the implication that there was no problem with climate change and we could go on burning fossil fuels (and making profits for the fossil fuel companies).

The Governments were happily under the influence of the fossil fuel companies.

Then along came Greta Thunberg and still nothing happened until the effects of climate change were undeniable (except to the crusties).

Then Greta gave a speech, to my mind one of great speeches of all times. It was not a particularly sophisticated speech, but one only an emotional young girl could give.

Not the sort of speech that Charles Keeling (or I for that matter) could give but what she said changed the world forever.

What she said was ‘You have stolen my future with your Blah, Blah, Blah’.

No sophistication really just one word Blah repeated three times.

No long words like procrastination just Blah, Blah Blah.

I very much doubt if Charles Keeling had ever heard of Greta before but together they changed the world.

Charles Keeling, and all his associates, with all their sophistication and respect as scientists failed to change the course of history unaided.

Greta was not a scientist, did not develop any new technologies or insights into existing technology and would have done nothing without the expertise of these dedicated scientists.

But she took the sophistication of these scientists and made it clear to the world that it was time to stop procrastinating with just three words Blah, Blah Blah.

From Climate Change to the chronic disease epidemic

Combating the chronic disease epidemic is analogous. I am not without standing in the world of technology. I was a pioneer of Computer-Aided Engineering, I solved complex coupled non-linear equations to solve difficult flow problems and was recognised by the Australia Institute of Engineers as one of Australia leading innovators and recognised as a wold expert in fluid flow.

I (and a few other respected scientists) have been saying for decades that the root cause of the epidemic of chronic disease stems from the failure of our internal intelligent control system because we are not feeding our gut brain.

I have spent years experimenting with ways of growing food to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes to create a technology which can be economically applied at scale.

But like the partial truth, which benefits the fossil fuel industry, that climate has always changed there is a similar partial truth, which benefits and is profitable for the food industry, that calorie imbalance is the cause of the chronic disease epidemic.

People are just little piggies and eat to much - we are not to blame.

But sad to say I am not Greta, I recognise that I talk about osmotic pressure, hydrophobic and hydrophilic soil and the peculiar inter molecular forces of water which makes life possible and that sort of talk can be incredibly boring.

But I do know that somewhere out there is Greta Foodberg. She may be a mum with two babies on the other side of the world and worried about their future and she will tell the world in her own language like it is.

I am not Greta Foodberg so can only guess what she might say it may be ‘You have stolen my health with your Fib, Fib, Fib’.

I just hope that when she says these words that people will respond and demand an action plan. So that is what I have prepared.

Action plan

As you may have guessed solving the chronic disease epidemic is going to take a bit of thought.

It is in two bits the easy bit and the hard bit.

The easy bit is developing the technology, I did that in comfortably under eighty-four years and I now I know the answer I could do it all again in an afternoon.

But as I have said the chronic disease epidemic is man-made and a result of the way society works, how do we change society so it works for the benefit of the community and not just a few greedy people - got you there ChatGPT - you haven’t a clue either.

But humans are sometimes smarter than even ChatGPT and the solution is doable - a nice word meaning you will end up old and drained, a bit like me, but you do win eventually.

Thomas Edison had a nice formula for innovation, work out what you want to do, read everything you can find to read on the topic, throw all the books away and start from scratch.

What do we want to do?

We want to feed our gut-brain.

We can do that by breeding beneficial microbes under preferential conditions (so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs) in soil made from organic waste minerals and a few starter bugs, (Wickimix) grow plants in this soil so the good-bugs and nutrients go into the plants, then eat the plants before the good bugs die.

Technically straightforward.

The catch is that last phrase ‘before the good bugs die’. Breeding the good bugs is easy, they are a randy lot and are breeding within twenty minutes, putting teenagers at a drunken party to shame.

But they do die equally quickly and the best way of doing that is having the plants growing in boxes at home.

There are people, keen gardeners with a bit of time who are more than happy to do the entire process themselves but if we are going to feed the eight billion people on earth with gut-brain food we need more than a few gardening enthusiasts.

We need to create a new industry of local growers producing Gbiota boxes with plants already growing and ready to pick and eat.

Logistics

There are a few logistical issues here. In a big city, we need to have areas for what are essentially urban farms, they need not be big, just a normal house block size but that needs approval from the local council.

Then we need a collection system for the organic waste which is an integral part of the process and that means clean waste not just the kitchen bin with all last night’s beer bottles and plastic pizza boxes.

This is all good, recycling waste leads to a sustainable food system and local food ensures a resilient food system should nasty things happen.

Just to make a quick point, we are not aiming to replace the entire food system just supplement the existing food system with gut-brain food.

Making it happen

If all we had to do was to feed gut-brain food to the couple of hundred people in upper Woopwoop life would be easy. But there are eight billion people who need to be eating gut-brain food.

How do we do that? Create allies.

Combating the chronic disease epidemic is a major operation and no one organisation can be successful.

The key allies we need are

The Government

Governments are the only organisations with the power to make the change.

They also have the most to benefit. The health costs of chronic diseases are massive running into billions of dollars and worse they are clogging the health system.

Governments have many roles to play but the most important is educating the public that the underlying cause chronic disease epidemic is that our intelligent controls system is not working as it should. We should stop worrying about calorie balance and focus on feeding our gut-brain.

Health and Wellbeing

The majority of people now live in an urban environment.

If the design of our towns and cities were left to for-profit private enterprise we would see a continuation of the trend to high-rise apartments and smaller blocks with larger houses - this makes the most profit in the short term.

But a concrete jungle with no open spaces does not make for better living. We rely on our Governments to ensure that our cities are livable with green spaces where people can relax, kids can play, and generally have access to the infrastructure which makes for a better life.

This is the cost of living in a democracy, citizens need to be active in promoting what sort of life they want and not leave it to what is the most convenient.

Governments have many specialist departments with their areas of expertise and it may seem initially that the planning department should be the centre of attention. I would suggest that the Health and Wellbeing Department should be the focus of public attention.

Look at our modern food with food produced in mega-farms, possibly thousands of kilometres away from where it is consumed, shipped to factories for processing then further shipped to warehouses then supermarkets.

This structure is a prime cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic.

Now think about a better structure from the viewpoints of both health and quality of life.

We would set aside areas within the city for micro-urban farms so some food would be fresh.

We would collect organic waste and process this locally within the city boundaries in Gbiota beds where decomposition is underground so there are no smells.

But better still we would use these beds as recreational areas, with either plants or lawns.

Many people with environmental leaning criticise lawns as wasteful but this is not valid.

Lawns act as solar panels capturing the sun’s energy while at the same time capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

But they do much more, they also are giant evaporative coolers helping to reduce urban temperatures, often using grey water.

But they can also be used to produce Wickimix, the soil that is needed to grow gut-brain food.

Having a multi-use area for recreation is a good use of valuable space. Somewhere for the kids to play, people to have a picnic or just generally enjoy being part of nature as well as being part of the process of growing gut-brain food.

These are normally managed by the Parks department who may not see they have a critical role in the production of healthy food, recycling food waste to create a more resilient food system, controlling city temperatures, and capturing greenhouses gasses.

Multi-functional operation is not generally a strength of government departments who tend to be specialists but it may well be that the Departments of Health and Wellbeing may provide that coordinating service.

But as we have seen from the history of Climate change this needs social pressure from the community.

Research centres

Research centres, particularly the Universities are important as governments will turn to their specialist expertise for advice but also there are multiple facets to this project so we need access to a range of expertises.

Dietitians and doctors

Most doctors are not trained in diet and refer patients to a professional dietitian, but they need to be aware of the technology to make the referals.

Dietitians are key but many have been indoctrinated with calorie doctrine so they will need not just information but re-education to adopt different ideas.

Experience has taught us that paradigm shift are most difficult with people expert in the old paradigm.

Growers

Growers will become the core of the project, producing Wickimix (the special soi), processing waste organics and manufacture of Gbiota boxes which will be recycled regularly.

Growers are local so naturally are community benefit organisations.

The Consumers

Our modern society has adopted the view that food is something you throw into the shopping trolley and if you get sick just take a pill.

This is a paradigm that needs to be changed with the new paradigm that health starts in the soil.

Educating the public about the basic cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic is the critical part of the project and is something that can really only be done by the Governments, by direct promotion but also ensuring it is built into our education system.