Food, Health and wealth for all

Colin Austin ©25 March 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 @ gbiota.com must be recognised.

Summary

I present a plan that will lead to a better life so we and our grandkids can live a happier and healthier life – the plan is about future food which affects us both physically and physiologically.

Right now we are facing a health crisis, both physical and psychological, from deficiencies in our food system. In the future we face an even greater crisis from climate change, degradation of our soils, and exploitation of nutrients.

This article outlines my plan for a food system that is both healthy and sustainable.

Modern societies across the globe are suffering from an epidemic of chronic diseases and social tension from being hangry (angry from hunger). The underlying cause is we are not feeding our gut brain which regulates our appetite and how much and where we store fat.

We know how to grow gut-but plants must be grown at home so plants can be harvested and eaten before the beneficial microbes die.

To make this widely available we need to set up a system where local growers produce boxes with plants growing and ready for harvesting. These could be ordered online and delivered on a swap-over basis.

This will not just happen by itself, we need a social movement to inform people about the importance of gut-brain food which has sufficient momentum to create the new industry of sustainably growing gut-brain food.

Here is the plan.

The creative creature

Humans are incredibly inventive creatures. With our modern technology, we should all be happy, healthy, and wealthy – but we are not.

We are terrible at applying this great technology for the benefit of all.

Modern technology gives us the potential to produce food and goods at an incredible rate. If we were to apply that technology for the uniform benefit of all we would only need to work for two or three days a week and the rest of the time could be spent in any way we choose, taking the kids to the beach, bush walking, dancing and music of whatever takes our fancy.

We did try that once in the sixties with the hippie movement but that was really for the children of the rich and we did not have the productivity that we have now.

So where are we now?

Take a walk around any shopping centre. Look at the people, many are overweight, not just the older people even some young kids are fat.

Look at the shops, supermarkets full of energy food then the other shops selling pills and health foods. Both the food and pharmaceutical industries spend billions of dollars in advertising to get us to buy their products supposedly to keep us healthy but we keep on getting fatter and sicker – what is going on?

There is something missing in our food so we feel hungry and overeat so we end up fat and sick.

Hangry

But food does not just affect our physical state it affects our mental state. There is a well document effect called hangry – when we don’t feel satisfied we quickly get angry.

Look at the state of the world and how it has changed. There was a time when most people lived in relatively peaceful and stable democracies or at least beneficial autocracies.

Now more people live in aggressive autocracies than peaceful democracies. People flee these countries creating the great social challenge of our time – refugees escaping the aggressive autocracies or simply because they are hungry from not having enough food.

This puts great strain on traditionally stable democracies.

Does being hangry play a role? Will climate change and the destruction of our topsoil aggravate this social instability?

It is unlikely to lead to the extinction of the human species see survival but it will certainly create the greatest threat to our social cohesion, see time to act and rethinking food and diabetes and the many other articles at New Posts

Understanding how food affects us both physically and physiologically is critical for the future quality of life.

 

The thermodynamic machine

There is nothing wrong with energy food, it is what is missing in our food that matters.

Think of our bodies as a thermodynamic machine like a car. We fill it with fuel which it turns into energy just like our bodies do with energy food.

But however expensive and powerful the car it will just sit there not moving until a driver comes along and tells it to start up, go forward or backwards, faster or slower, and turn left or right.

The car needs a driver to tell it what to do.

We need a gut-brain to regulate our bodies as much as a car needs a driver.

Our intelligent control system

We need a driver, we are not a jellyfish just going with the flow, we have an intelligent control system sending out instructions to tell our bodies what to do.

Some instructions are fully conscious, we decide whether to go to the footy or the beach, we do not consciously decide our heart and breathing rate, our temperature, or whether to store a load of fat in our bums (which is what bums are for) or elsewhere.

This intelligent control system is a combination of our head brain and our gut brain.

It is what is missing that matters

Our gut brain, working with our head brain, forms forms our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. It regulates all aspects of our bodies, from heart and breathing rates, temperature, our immune system, and most relevant our appetite and where and how much fat we store in our bodies.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.

This is a huge problem, in some countries two-thirds of adults are overweight, eight million people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes, heart attacks are the most common cause of death.

Our gut brain decides

We need fat, it is essential for life so we need to store it somewhere in our bodies.

I guess many people who would like to be able to consciously decide where and how much fat is stored. Move a bit from this area and put it over there and we don’t need this bit of fat at all.

But that is not the way our bodies have evolved, instead, we have a totally automatic system with the gut-brain in control. This worked perfectly well when we were eating gut-brain food which we have done naturally since the very beginning of humanity.

We may think we can manage how much fat we store by going on a highly restrictive diet but all we are doing is teaching our gut-brain that it needs to store more fat for future bad times.

So as soon as we stop our diet our gut-brain piles on the fat.

Would it not be better to feed our gut-brain so it works properly?

Just feed our gut-brain

With all our modern technology we should expect a long and healthy life – but we are not getting it simply because we are not feeding our gut-brain.

The bulk of the food we eat is just used for energy. At this moment our current food system can supply all the energy food we need but is not supplying gut brain food.

We need to supplement our current diet with gut-brain food.

We know how

The tragedy is that we know exactly how to grow food to feed our gut-brain, grow plants in soil full of breeding microbes feeding on organic waste. (See gbiota.com).

It is cheaper than buying plants from the supermarket, the limitation is that the plants must be grown at home so they can be picked and eaten fresh before the beneficial microbes die.

Technology is not the problem, the challenge is how to get the message out to the wider population.

Future vision

It is easy to imagine a system with local growers producing Gbiota boxes, with living plants ready to be harvested, being ordered and delivered on line. Very practical and economic – but how do we make that happen?

 

We’ve stopped believing

Conventional internet marketing is not the solution, I know I have tried. It is simply swamped by the mass of promotions for magic pills which are claimed to resolve all problems – but don’t.

I talk to leaders in Internet Marketing, it is just full of fuzz, special offers, buy two get one free, quizzes – just a box full of manipulative tricks. May be great for selling Tee shirts but no use for changing the food system.

People understand this and have stopped believing what they see on the web – sad but true.

Taking pills does not fix a deficiency in the food. We have to fix our diet and eat gut-brain food.

Leading research scientists are well aware of the importance of gut health but it takes time for this knowledge to permeate to the front line doctors who are chronically stressed for time.

So how do we change the food industry? It won’t be done by manipulative advertising, it needs a social change.

Looking for a model

We can learn a lot from looking at the history of the climate change movement.

Scientist, Governments, and the fossil fuel industry have known that greenhouse gases cause climate change for well over a hundred and twenty years.

The fossil fuel industry, who have great influence on the Governments, tried to confuse the issue by putting climate change into the not-proven category – and it worked. Nothing happened.

It did not seem to matter how many scientific papers were published, the public was not convinced, and without public pressure, Governments continued to do nothing.

Then it all changed, Greta Thunberg – a young schoolkid, entered the scene. She did not write some seminal paper, or some super sophisticated computer program or hold an audience to the world’s leaders, but she was the catalyst for change.

So look for inspiration from the Greta Thunberg story.

If you have not heard the story she sat outside in Sweden’s freezing cold with a cardboard placard for three weeks with people just walking past.

Then a few people started to take notice, and they told their friends and before you could say ‘green house gases’ there was a social movement which pressurised Governments around the world to act.

Greta herself did not do the grunt work to create the climate movement but she did inspire her followers who made it all happen.

Neither the fossil fuel industries nor the Governments would have acted were it not for Greta’s followers creating a global movement.

Greta created a social movement – and it worked.

The food crisis

The climate crisis and the food crisis, are closely linked. The biggest threat to our food supply, long term, is from a combination of the climate crisis and the degradation of our soils.

However, the food crisis is more complex.

At this moment we are producing adequate energy food to feed the entire world but with the combination of climate change and the degradation of our soils that could rapidly change.

The ‘here and now crisis’ is we are not feeding our gut-brain. If we think of the driver-less car analogy it is like the bulk of the population having no control over where and how much fat we store in our bodies which is the cause of the current epidemic of chronic diseases.

That is scary stuff so how do we make the needed change to happen?

Learning from climate change

Neither the food industry or the Governments are going to change the food industry – even though they know it needs changing. It was public pressure from Greta’s followers that led to action – it will be public pressure that will lead to the creation of a local food supplying gut-brain food (using Gbiota boxes).

The message is clear, we have to create a social movement campaigning for a healthier food system.

The Internet advertising executives who tell me about the techniques they use, the special offers, etc say that people will not act for the public good.

They are wrong.

We are the dominant creature on this earth simply because we are naturally cooperative and will work for the public benefit.

True there are some people who operate purely for their own benefit, and although they can cause a great deal of harm, they are very much in the minority.

We just need to figure out how to create a social movement for a better food system.

Show not talk

Fortunately it is easy to tell if a diet incorporating gut-brain food is working.

You don’t have to be a microbiologist or run expensive tests.

If you don’t feed the gut-brain it sends out signals which make us crave food so we keep on eating hoping we will just happen to eat some gut-brain food.

As soon as we eat gut-brain food it is satisfied and stops sending out these food craving signals.

One of the essentials of science is to be able to measure what you are trying to study. There is no scientific measurement for food cravings although you know full well that you have a food craving.

But if you follow your gut feeling you will naturally not eat as much and this is something you can measure. You will just eat less without any fancy diet.

So what is the plan?

Let me work my way through the thought processes of developing the plan.

Scale

The first is to recognise the scale.

There are 8 billion people on this earth and they all have a gut and so need gut-brain food. We used to talk about developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries.

When I was a kid I was living in a modern society but there were still local farms supplying their community.

That has all changed. Now most people live a modern lifestyle with food produced in large and highly industrialised farms, highly processed in a factory system and distributed in global food chains run by mega-corporations.

There is a long delay from time from when food is harvested to when it is eaten. It may be labelled fresh but that is just marketing and really means it has not gone rotten. The beneficial microbes have long since died and that is why we have the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

We cannot go back to the traditional small local farm.

The ultimate aim

I see the ultimate aim is to have small local growers, either inside or close to our urban centres.

They will not be like the old local farms but sophisticated operations producing gut-brain food, using advanced technology which will involve recycling organic waste as a primary input.

Have no doubt there is no way we can support the current level of population unless we recycle organic waste, which is a much more sophisticated technology than the old compost bin in the backyard.

They will produce gut-brain (Gbiota) boxes with both living soil and plants which they will distribute using on-lining ordering and distribution.

People will harvest the plants and swap boxes when finished.

This will supply genuinely fresh (eg with living microbes) food and will probably be more more economic than our current food system.

But that won’t happen overnight, so we have to start from where we are now.

Where we are now

We have a small, but enthusiastic, number of Gbiota growers. I chat with them on a regular one-to-one basis but they are not (as yet) talking amongst themselves as a group.

There is widespread understanding of the importance of gut health to overall health in the general community. But there is widespread promotion that you can fix your gut biome by simply taking a pill or eating some wonder plan. That is not consistent with real-world observations,.

Kale was promoted as such a wonder plant, which it is, but not if it is grown in sterile soil relying on synthetic fertilisers and spends days from harvest to eating.

Such wonder foods will not have much impact on the gut biome – but may be better than eating a packet of chips.

Most people have stopped believing all the marketing hype on the Internet so there needs to be a better and more believable information channel.

Gbiota.club

We already have people who are growing and eating Gbiota food.

The first step is to give the existing Gbiota users a way they can communicate with each other to form an integrated team.

I am asking them to sign up to join the gbiota.club website and start putting up posts (called activity) with a little chat and photos of what they are doing.

Gbiota.club is a private website. When I first set up gbiota.club it was a bit of a mess as it was inundated with scammers and dubious operations trying to sell pills on my site.

I was very discouraged and let the site stagnate but now I can see it could be the solution.

It will remain a free site but people will have to sign in to access. If I get scammers, abusers or operations trying to sell pills I can (and will) simply remove them.

How could be internet, one of the modern world’s greatest innovations deteriorate so rapidly?

But genuine users can send out invites to their friends and contacts to join.

It may be slow going at first but once it gets under way it should build up steam.

Gbiota boxes made easy

People need a way that they can experience firsthand the benefits of eating gut-brain food.

The post Gbiota boxes made easy shows how people, even if they are living in an apartment, can grow their own gut brain food.

This will not lead to mass adoption but all innovations start with a group of entrepreneurial pioneers who do the trailblazing.

Our biggest obstacle may be the disenchantment with the internet as a reliable source of information but our biggest advantage is that it is easy and inexpensive to people to experience eating gut-brain food first hand.