Colin Austin © 29^th June 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.  

Our intelligent control system

That great mystery of life

We all have an intelligent control system that regulates our bodies. How it works is one of the great mysteries of life. It is not one single organism but is a collection of sensors, intelligence, hormones and electric signals which work together as an integrated system.

If we see a pretty girl offering pieces of cheesecake it will make us feel hungry, if we smell the morning fresh air in a forest it will make us want to get up and walk, if we hear the sound or rhythmic drumming we will want to move our body in synchrony.

Continuous learning

It is continuously learning, if we get invaded by pathogens it will do its best to fight them off and during the battle, we may feel very ill but next time it may deal with them without us even noticing.

Every time we eat, it will learn about the taste and how it affects our bodies later and remember this for life.

Our gut-brain

Our gut is an integral part of this intelligent control system which is particularly focused on regulating our appetite, deciding what and how much we need to eat and converting that to what we want to eat by a complex system of hormones.

It is also a major host to our immune system, every time we eat and breathe we ingest both beneficial and harmful microbes which it identifies and deals with.

Thanks mum

Our gut-brain is made up of trillions of cells of thousands of different species that communicate with each other, just like in a computer, to provide real intelligence.

We get our first burst of these cells from mum during birth and later her breast milk feeds these cells so they grow.

But these cells have a very short life span, they start breeding within twenty minutes but they quickly die, an hour in their life is equivalent to a human year.

But if we feed them the right sort of food, which we refer to as pre-biotics, they will breed inside us but we also need to regenerate the strains which we do from our food. The microbes in our food we call pro-biotics and they largely come from the soil.

Health starts in the soil

Virgin soils are full of life. Some microscopic bacteria, fungi and viruses live by directly consuming organic debris. Others, the recyclers like the worms, beetles, slaters and pill bugs eat the organic debris which is digested in their gut and the microbes in their gut digest and pooped out. Into the soil.

Plants also exude sugars from their roots to feed the soil life in return for providing minerals.

Micro-organisms enter the plants which, if we eat while genuinely fresh, create our gut biome.

Infectious and non-infectious (chronic) diseases

Hunter-gatherers, whose diet incorporates plants, grown in soil teaming with microbes and eaten fresh have a healthy gut biome.

Modern man may have overcome many infectious diseases but has an unhealthy gut biome. This is sensed by our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies which sends out hormones to make us feel hungry so we overeat and get fat.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases.

How the world has changed

Our ancestors may have had a healthy gut but they died from infectious diseases, the majority of babies born would die before they reached adulthood from an infectious disease but if they reached adulthood they would have a reasonable life span.

But humans are intelligent creatures and we made major improvements in fighting infectious diseases both by medical science but also improvements in hygiene, particularly modern sewage and water systems. Even the modern bed has saved millions of lives by avoiding the harmful bugs that live in the ground.

But this improvement in health led to an explosion in the human population and we all needed to eat.

Again human intelligence came to our help and we made major improvements in food production by a combination of synthetic fertilisers, chemicals to control pests and diseases and plant genetics.

The increase in energy food production has been faster than the increase in population and we now produce enough energy food to feed the current world population, if it was distributed fairly.

But there has been a downside to this system of chemical industrial agriculture, the soil is no longer breeding the beneficial microbes needed to replenish our gut biome.

 

The modern epidemic of chronic disease

As the health of the gut biome has deteriorated our intelligent control system has responded by sending out hormonal signals to make us want to eat more.

Many people have tried to resist this by adopting restrictive diets, which work in the short term but in the long term, they are just training our intelligent control system to send out yet more hunger-inducing hormones which we just can’t fight long term.

The net result is an epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia – all caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

That’s bad but it gets worse

These diseases may be terrible and contribute to the majority of deaths and reduced health span but there is an even greater threat to our species.

We may be over-eating but we are undernourished, which is noted by our intelligent control system which keeps on sending our hormones so we feel hungry.

The really bad thing about feeling hungry is that it also makes us angry. We have a name for it ‘hangry’.

It is impossible not to notice the increase in stress levels and tension in modern society, we are changing the very nature of humanity into an aggressive species, this is the greatest threat we face as a species, and we will destroy ourselves in a progressive increase in aggression.

The reasons why we are the most successful species on the planet are that we are an intelligent and naturally cooperative species. But if we change ourselves into an aggressive species there is a real threat to our species, far worse than the threat of climate change and the destruction of the natural resources of our planet on which we all depend.

What is the solution?

The solution is in two parts, the first part is the easy bit. We just have to modify our food system by supplementing with food that feeds our gut biome so we stop feeling hangry.

That is relatively simple, it is just a question of developing the technology of breeding the beneficial microbes, which form a healthy gut biome, without breeding the harmful microbes lead to infectious disease.

This is a technical problem and humans are very good at solving technical problems and we already have the technical solution.

But there is a much more difficult problem to resolve, that of gaining widespread adoption.

It may appear that with the internet and the modern communication system that this would be easy to resolve but it actually makes it worse.

The internet has become the home for dis-information. It is now saturated with information which has little basis in reality and is used to promote ideas for short-term benefits of money or power.

How to get the attention of the population to create the longer-term social change when humans are becoming hangry, demanding short-term gratification and have developed the attention span of a butterfly is indeed a major challenge.

But let me first deal with the simple problem of technology.

Eco-balance

The Gbiota technology is based on the principle of Eco balance. We control the conditions, specifically nutrients and most importantly moisture and air so the beneficial microbes in the soil out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is a problem of fluid flow – my day job.

Gbiota beds and boxes

The majority of people now live in cities, often in apartments with no garden so the Gbiota system is a two-stage process.

Stage 1 is to produce Wickimix, a growing medium or soil full of beneficial microbes and nutrients in raised garden beds.

Stage 2 is to load the Wickimix into Gbiota boxes where plants can be grown in a modern dwelling, even a flat with no garden, so people can pick and eat plants while still fresh.

Dynamic population

All the individuals living in a city a hundred years ago have now died, but they bred to create a new population. It is similar to microscopic life but the time scale if very different. An hour in the life of a microbes is equivalent to a human year so plants must be picked and eaten while genuinely fresh.

There is a big difference between being genuinely fresh, with the microbes still alive, and not gone rotten.

Growers and consumers

The Gbiota movement has growers, maybe just urban micro-farms which produce the Wickimix which they may load into Gbiota boxes and plant ready for the consumers so they have growing plants ready to harvest at home.

Gbiota boxes may be clean skins, eg loaded ready to start growing so the consumer looks after all the seeding and growing or with plants grown to the stage where they are ready to start picking.

Typically the plants are tipped, eg the tips of the plants are cut off where they regrow, often called cut and come again.

The boxes may also have a spectrum of plants, this is partly to achieve a wider spectrum of beneficial microbes but also they have a staggered growing period with slow and fast-growing plants giving a longer harvest period.

At the end of the cycle, the boxes would be returned to the grower for reloading with fresh Wickimix and its beneficial microbes.

 

Sustainability

An important benefit of this system is that the inputs are organic waste and rock dust (to provide the essential minerals). Fortunately, these are in abundant supply and sustainable.

Swapping from a system of exploitation to recycling is essential for the survival of our species.

We may be rich now but it will stop when we have used up the readily available resources. Look at Nauru, once one of the wealthiest countries in the world mining guano, then one day the thing happened that everyone had been predicting but done nothing about, they ran out of guano.

It will happen to us first with phosphorous, an essential mineral for growing plants.

Gordon Brown, once Prime Minister in the UK warned us we face massive migration, extremism and environmental destruction. We have been warned. Are we dumb donkeys that will just sit around waiting for that to happen?

How to make it happen

Creating social change

We know what we need to do technically, it is simple and not expensive so what is the problem?

How do we create a social change so people can have ready access to gut-brain food when the internet is saturated with a sea of dis-information?

We can be sure it will not happen overnight by just having pretty websites with clever images darting across the screen. Techy gimmicks may be great for selling T-shirts (or pills) but not that great for protecting us from our inability to act when needed.

We have to look at what makes people change their minds, what we call a paradigm shift.

Paradigm shifts

Change does not happen by logic alone. We need to be right but that is not enough.

We are a social animal, we have our tribes and we are influenced by what members of our tribe think and do.

We have to go through a series of waves, small at first then building up into a Tsunami.

First, we need to establish an inner circle of people who start eating gut-brain food and experience for themselves the benefits. Fortunately it is very easy to feel the benefits, there is no need for super complex data and statistical analysis that is rarely convincing.

All that needs to be done is to experience that feeling of satisfaction, of not feeling hungry or hangry.

Then we move on to the next stage. People need certain basics, we need somewhere to live which is secure, we need food but then we need to be part of a community – our tribe.

Our tribes

Belonging to our tribe is a powerful instinct for humans, despite what the advertising moguls say, we are not dominated by immediate self-interest, we are quite prepared to put effort into our tribe and creating a viable community.

We belong to many tribes, so this inner circle of gut-brain food eaters will be able to influence people who are in these different tribes and so the tribe of gut-brain food eaters will expand to an outer circle.

Revolutionary stuff this, we should put down our mobile phones and start talking to each other again, if we have not forgotten how.

This can continue until we have the Tsunami of gut-brain food eaters.

We create our society

People simply do not want to live in a society full of stress, aggression and hangry people. We are naturally a cooperative species and will go to great lengths to live in a peaceful and harmonious society and that is how we will survive as a species and not destroy ourselves and the planet we live on.

 

Join the gut-brain social movement

Out gut is part of the intelligent control system which regulates what and how much we want to eat.

In the past we had a very healthy gut-brain but died young from infectious diseases.

Modern food may be hygienic and full of energy food but does not feed our gut-brain so we get fat and sick from non-infectious diseases.

Now we know how to get a healthy gut without getting infectious diseases.

We just have to make it happen.  Only we the people can make it happen, we decide what we eat, not big business or the Government, it is up to us.

Microbes breed in the soil, enter the plants we eat and form part of our gut-brain which determines whether we are fit and healthy or get fat and sick – our choice.  It is not rocket sciencce.

We need to create a new industry of growing gut-brain food with local growers and consumers working together. Gbiota aim is to bring consumers and local growers  together by community action.

We train local growers (and skilled individuals) to breed the beneficial microbes that form our gut brain and supply their local community.

Whether you are a consumer who wants a healthy gut-brain or a potential grower sign up to our free membership and become part of the action. You will receive our Newsletter and learn about gut-brain health.

Join the movement for community health and take control of your health.

Feed your gut bugs

Feed your gut bugs, they are your friends, your mates. They look after you, digest your food, house much of your immune system, and make all sorts of complex chemicals your body needs.

You provide a nice warm home for them but you do have to feed them. You would not have a dog, cat or bird and not feed them and they are pets, your gut bugs are your mates and look after you, you just have to feed them in return.

They just need plants, eaten fresh and grown in living soil full of beneficial microbes and nutrients.

They like to party (and breed) with other bugs, it’s called biome diversity.

But if you don’t feed them they get grumpy, just like a human mate would and they send out hormones that make food cravings so you overeat and get fat and sick, you may get diabetes and have a leg chopped off, die from a heart attack, or worst of all get dementia.

So feed your gut bugs, they are your mates, living creatures just like your human mates.

This website shows you how to grow gut food at home but if you are too busy or just can’t be bothered then go to your local farmer’s markets, preferably with a bunch of human mates, and find a local grower – just copy them on this web site and we will take it from there.

They will deliver Gbiota boxes to your door with plants already growing, all you have to do is water in the Gbiota way and pick and eat.

So simple, so inexpensive, less than buying ageing plants from a supermarket, just plants grown in living soil and eaten fresh before the good bugs die.

Why our gut-brain matters

Most people know that our gut is important for health – but do they know why?

Our gut-brain is the command centre for our bodies

Our gut contains trillions of cells which communicate with each other – just like in a computer.

It is the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, in particular how much and what we want to eat.

We don’t get fat and sick simply because we eat too much. We get fat and sick because our gut-brain senses deficiencies in our diet so decides it need to store more fat, send out hormones so we overeat, then we get fat and sick.

We can choose – do we want to live a long and healthy life, fit and active to the very end or do we want to get fat and sick and die young.

We must feed our gut-brain

If we want to be fit and healthy then we need to feed out gut brain so it works properly. This is not a total guarantee, our genetics play a part but if we don’t feed our gut-brain then the odds of living a long and healthy life are remote.

Gbiota™ is not a product you can buy at a chemist shop – it is a way of growing food – plants that contain the beneficial microbes and phytonutrients that your gut-brain needs to work properly and you intelligent control system. Gut-Brain Food.

If you have the space and gardening skill you can do it yourself but for most people, particularly those living in a flat you will need to buy Gbiota boxes with plants already growing from a local grower.

Put your name on the waiting list

First step is to register here with with your general location so you are on the waiting list. When there is a group we will look for a local grower in your area who can supply Gbiota boxes.

The wrong fat in the wrong place

Overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia all have a common underlying cause – the wrong fat in the wrong place.

This is not because we have turned into little piggies and overeat, it is because our modern chemical industrial food system is deficient in phyto-nutrients and beneficial microbes.

Our gut-brain, our intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, senses this deficiency and send out signals creating food cravings so we overeat and then we get fat and sick.

You can easily solve this by growing your own gut brain food, even if you live in a flat with no garden.

That is what this website is all about – we show you how.

 

Save 100,000 legs from diabetic amputation

This looks at the changes we must make to our food system to reduce the impact of chronic diseases like diabetes and ensure a sustainable supply of food that will keep us healthy.

Read more here

Colin Austin © 29th June 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.

My Teddy

If you think everything in the world is fine then you are either a hermit or smoking some pretty strong stuff.

The heartless massacre of ordinary people by powerful militia and the possibility of World War 3 cannot go unnoticed.

Neither can the waves of hungry refugees moving across the globe looking for a safe place to live.

We could say that is just ‘The News’ but look at one of the wealthiest countries in the world, good old Australia. Homeless people sleeping under bridges because there are not enough houses while we have plenty of land while the builders who could build more houses are going bankrupt.

If that is not crazy I don’t know what is. Actually, I do – a food system which is making us fat and sick while we are a major food exporter.

One solution would be to take our teddies and hide under the blanket until mummy says it is safe to come out – but there is not a factory capable of making 8 billion teddies in time.

So who is going to save us? Could it be big business? Unlikely, big business has learned the trick of Neo-monopolies so we now have autocratic capitalism which seems not that much better than the worst of autocratic Governments.

Nice to think that our Governments are coming to save us, but it is not looking good. They are struggling as much as us to come to terms with the new world order as the over-exploitation of our natural resources begins to bite.

So what do we do? We do what made humans the dominant creature on earth, we use our intelligence and cooperate.

But how. Well, look at climate change. For decades scientists were telling us that things were going to get bad, but the delaying tactics of the fossil fuel industry and the lack of public pressure meant that Governments learned the ancient art of procrastination.

Then along came a school girl with Asperger syndrome, a grotty cardboard sign and determination and it totally tipped the balance. Now let us be clear, she did not change the world by herself, what she did was convince a few people that uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels was not the greatest idea, and they convinced the next tier who in turn convinced the next tier.

And before you could say Greta Thunberg the social pressure was so great that no Government could resist the social pressure. She formed a tribe that was unstoppable.

Now we need a food tribe. A tribe that understands that we need more than energy food, we need a food system that both makes us healthy and is sustainable.

To be healthy we need a healthy gut. Our gut does more than digest our food, the trillions of cells in our gut communicate with each other, just like in a supercomputer, to form a brain with real intelligence. This gut-brain decides what and how much food we want to eat and also hosts much of our immune system.

We simply cannot be healthy without a healthy gut-brain and that means feeding it gut-brain food.

And that is why we call it Gbiota and we use the slogan ‘Feed your gut brain’.

Our next job is to form a tribe with people who understand the importance of the gut-brain and want to live a long and healthy life and growers who can grow gut-brain food and see that this is providing both a community service but also an ethical and profitable business opportunity for those with a pioneering spirit.

So be smart, join the Gbiota social movement and be part of a social movement to create a food system that makes us healthy and is sustainable.

 

The Great Food War

Colin Austin © 13^th June 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.

Who will win the Great Food War?

Will the power of mega-corporations that control our food system reign supreme leaving the community fat and sick and destroying civilisation as we know it as the supply of essential minerals is exhausted or will the community rise up and unite so common sense prevails?

Let me start with the story of the mouse and the elephant.

The mouse

I sat down to eat my breakfast, a bowl of muesli and there was a cute little mouse on the table watching me. Actually, a virtual mouse rather than a real mouse, but still cute.

I am very fond of this little mouse, it is what I do, working out how to grow food that will make us healthy. That is a bit different to knowing what food will make us healthy. Take that wonder vegetable that some people swoon over, Kale.

Kale can actually be what the trendies call a super-food but if you don’t grow it the right way in the right soil it is pretty useless.

The selfish gene

I know from Richard Dawkins and The Selfish Gene that I, like everyone else want to keep our human Genes going long after we die and that needs males and females doing what they do – a bit of the good old hanky-panky.

Females have a problem with lack of iron but they can’t just go down to the local scrap yard and start munching on a wrecked car, apart from breaking their teeth that iron is not what we like to call bio-available which means it can get into her bloodstream.

Now that is my day job, finding some microscopic bugs which can convert the iron in a wrecked car to make it bio-available so it can go into a plant which she can eat, or maybe an animal that she can eat, so she gets a good dose of iron into her blood.

Males have a different problem, zinc. One good night of hanky-panky and there goes his supply of zinc. Again no use munching into a pile of zinc-coated roofing sheets, instead find some rock that contains zinc and the appropriate bugs, create some soil with bio-available zinc, grow some plants and bingo he is ready for another night of hanky-panky.

All good fun and I am really quite happy messing around with what some people may think is just yukky soil full of rotting stuff to feed a few bugs and grow healthy food and telling people stories about what I learn.

The elephant

But then I went to go outside and there was this huge elephant, a really big one that was just too big to come inside so could not be the elephant in the room but is seemed quite happy to be the elephant just outside the room.

It has a big label on its trunk saying ‘Modern food system’.

Anyone with experience with elephants knows they are vegetarian which means they shit a lot, big steamy piles, so I was concerned that this elephant, although virtual, might still dump piles of shit in my patio.

And my fears were justified which is the point of this story.

Just in case you think I am making this all up just to spin a yarn can I recommend a couple of really good books.

Eating the Earth by Justyn Walsh

Food for Life The New Science of Eating Well by Tim Spector

 

What a magnificent creature!

Of course, the elephant is just an avatar for our food system but what a magnificent creature.

Let us look at it in reality.

We can go to the supermarket which is stacked high with foods from all over the world.

It may be a national pass time moaning about the cost of living, but that is because the increase in wealth from our ever-developing technologies goes into the pockets of a few ultra-rich people.

Compared with times past food is incredibly cheap and is a much smaller fraction of our weekly budget than not so long ago.

Households now spend only around a tenth of their disposable income on food compared to a third before 1950.

Food needs to be cheap or else we would not be able to afford tickets to the world’s favourite billionaire songstress, Taylor Swift. Let’s get our priorities right (or wrong).

But are we on the edge of a Titanic moment, nothing can go wrong until it does.

People who predict disaster with our food system do not have a good record.

Malthus the one-time predictor of food disaster became the butt of jokes. Paul Ehrlich did not do much better. So it seems that the best way of predicting the future is just to wait until it happens.

But predictions would make a really good disaster film with millions of starving people, hungry and angry (they even invented a word for it hangry) crossing the globe causing mayhem and disaster.

We can say that that won’t happen with the same assurance that people said the Titanic was unsinkable.

So forget about predicting the future, it is too unpredictable, and instead, look at what is happening right now and look for the trends. A lot safer.

Overfed and undernourished

There is a very nice phrase, overfed and undernourished and if you want to see that in action just go to your local shopping centre and count the number of overweight people with wobbly bums and tums and the people in wheelchairs or hobbling about on crutches with a leg chopped off.

It is what the experts like to call an epidemic of chronic diseases but to me that does not seem a good term, these are not infectious diseases they are a condition.

You can’t cure being overweight but as sure anything is in this world you can change your diet and not be overweight. But not by eating less and exercising more, we have been trying that for decades and it has not worked so we try eating even less and exercising more and it still doesn’t work.

Reminds me of the story of the farmer who was training his donkey to eat less. He got it down to one bean a day when the darned animal died.

This is where the current paradigm on weight is just so wrong. The common paradigm is that we get fat and sick because we are little piggies and overeat and that is just not the way it works.

The man on the bridge

Our bodies are smart and detect there is a deficiency in our diet, either of beneficial microbes or critical nutrients. The captain, the man on the ships bridge bangs his bell shouting emergency, emergency store any food you can lay your paws on.

Then the man on the bridge bangs his bell again and tells the gut down below to make up some of those hormones that make us hungry and squirt them out into our bloodstream so we end up just craving food, then the other crewmen pick up all this food that is streaming in and poke it neatly away in our bums and tums so we end up looking like a circus doll.

 

The not-so-free market

The number of people who claim to be religious has dropped but there is one religion that is doing extremely well.

This religion says that the free market will solve all the world’s problems and we don’t have to do anything, the invisible hand of the free market will fix everything, just go out and spend money on whatever we fancy (and if we can’t afford it then just borrow).

That may have been a workable religion many years ago when people lived in villages with a Saturday market and the power of the buyers and sellers was balanced and there was a good range of both suppliers and customers and there was no internet to spread disinformation.

What actually happens

But that is not the way the modern food system works. The food industry is riddled with Neo-monopolies.

Let us just talk about what a Neo-monopoly actually is. Governments don’t like monopolies, they are so clearly bad that they get spurred into action and do something about it.

In nature species become extinct (it could happen to us). But nature is smart so a new creature may evolve which is pretty much the same as before but does not get killed off.

That is exactly how Neo-monopolies evolved. Instead of one single company becoming a genuine monopoly which would attract the attention of the Government a new system has evolved.

Several companies maybe with one or possibly two lead companies with a handful of followers so they escape the actions of the marauding Government out to kill off monopolies but this little group know the rules.

There is no need for clandestine meetings in dark parks after night or popping secret messages into holes in the wall like in spy films, just follow the well-understood but unpublished rules, and watch the money pour in.

Eating the Earth (a must read)

Let me give you a few quotes from Eating the Earth.

Volume, efficiency and profits, rather than the health or needs of the local population tend to be the drivers of the industrial food economy.

Industrialised agriculture favours quantity over quality.

The food Fordism of gigantic farms and processing plants has been complemented by increasing monopolisation at both ends of the agricultural supply chain.

At the pre-farmgate stage, 40% of the world’s commercial seed market, four companies account for more than 60% of global pesticide sales and just four corporations comprise a third of global nitrogen fertiliser production.

At the other end of the supply chain, the purchase of international bulk commodities is dominated by just four privately owned companies who together control around 90% of the global grain trade.

Big agriculture has defeated the competitive dynamics with a contrivance to raise prices while leveraging overwhelming bargaining power to drive down payments to the far more fragmented production sector, the actual farmers, squeezed in between.

Industrial agriculture’s high input, high output business model requires more fossil fuel-based fertilisers, pesticides and pumped water.

Thanks, Justyn Walsh for your revealing book

Sounds bad? Well, it is nothing compared to the damage done to the soils which are degenerating to little more than dirt to hold up the plants which are fed chemical input.

Whoops, I almost left out climate change. Sorry Greta. What a combination, climate change and destruction of our soils. Is there something wrong with our species that we have a death wish?

How is it that there are such amazing people like Zomi Frankcom, who worked for World Central Kitchen, risked her life, and was killed, trying to get food to starving people in Gaza, yet we have such atrocities as the deception in the Tobacco industry, copied by the oil and food industries.

Woke green nutter

The executives at these mega food companies, on their multi-million dollars-a-year salaries, and whose decision lead to 8 million people a year having a limb amputated from diabetes are regarded as pillars of the community.

Why are we so fixated with money? It is obvious that on a finite planet, we cannot continue to grow at an exponential rate and that at some point in time we must move from exploitation to recycling, a clever creature like us humans should be able to understand that simple message.

All these terrible things and people don’t even seem to care.

I care, I care about the life my two great-granddaughters will have, and all the terrible things I talk about that will happen in their lifetime, yet I get classified as a woke green nutter.

There have been times in my life when I have been poor and others rich. I have no delusions that being rich is more pleasant but money should not so dominate our thinking that we do things that make people fat, sick and have their legs chopped off from diabetes.

I can’t quite find the word, at least a polite word to describe that but there is no word for destroying the planet on which human life depends just for the sake of money.

What is wrong with us as a species, how are some people so dedicated to helping society while other seems intent on destroying us as a species? If you know the answer please email me colin@gbiota.com

 

It keeps on getting worse

But it gets worse, this reliance on chemicals results in food which is deficient in the beneficial microbes needed to replenish our gut biome and critical trace elements that are essential for our bodies but not essential for plants to grow into what looks like but isn’t healthy food.

The net result is the epidemic of non-infectious diseases which are here right now.

But what happens when we have used up all those minerals that power modern industrial agriculture? We only have some fifty years of phosphorous left.

Prediction is a dangerous business

If we don’t change from a society based on the exploitation of natural resources to one based on recycling then life is going to get real shitty, and I mean really shitty.

Malthus and Paul Ehrlich may have got their timing wrong but were spot on in predicting oncoming chaos.

 

Shit Happens

Human beings are weird creatures. We are the most successful creature on the planet yet, in war, we kill each other with gay abandon, but also in peace with food that is equally effective as an AK-47 in killing people.

Why do we do that?

The answer to that lies in another great book. Facts and Other lies, Welcome to the disinformation Age by Ed Coper.

Let me give you my version.

Human beings are not physically well equipped for life in the wild, being a bit challenged in the claw, teeth and beak departments.

True an adult human can survive in the wild for several episodes of Alone, cheered on by a television crew with a backup helicopter and support vehicles.

Species survive by breeding

But that is not really survival, for the species to survive we have to be able to breed.

The hanky-panky part of breeding we do incredibly well, any aircraft toilet, dark alley, back of the bike shed or if we are boring a bed will allow the job to be done.

But then 9 months later appears this totally useless baby whose only survival apparatus seems to be a good pair of lungs to attract attention and a powerful suck when mum wakes up.

But it takes a couple of decades before this baby can enter the Alone competition.

It takes a village to raise a child

So we have that nice African phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ which neatly says that if we are to survive we need the support of a village, our tribe or group – we just have to belong to survive.

To belong we have to conform which means adopting the views or our group. This is really the essence of ‘Facts and other lies’ we think what our group thinks regardless of what the science of the real facts tell us.

If our group thinks that we should all go out and massacre the next tribe along because they have adopted a silly hairstyle or wear their headgear back to front we will happily go out and massacre them, and maybe even get a medal from our tribe.

Think for yourself

Thinking for yourself seems an incredibly difficult operation which is of course discouraged by our education system.

The kid who repeats the conventional wisdom is rewarded with an A while the kid who thinks for herself and gets it wrong gets punished with an F.

And the ‘Fact’ yes real fact, is that if you think for yourself the odds are that you will be wrong.

Failure

Failure should be a curriculum item in our education system, first session every Wednesday. I don’t mean we should be teaching our kids to fail, but that failure is an integral part of life and we should learn to learn from failures.

I know this well from my day job of experimental growing of plants. My experiments rarely work – they fall into that category of ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’.

Now let me tell you the secret, as long as you don’t tell anyone. When an experiment fails, as is statistically probable, then just put it in the back of the shed and don’t tell anyone.

If you tell them about the failures they will think you are some dumb clot.

When something actually works, like my development of Wicking beds, then you tell the world and everyone thinks you are really smart.

Rubbish theory

I experiment to find out how well food works, using my body. I was getting a bit of a tum so I thought I would try a calorie-reduced diet. It did not have much effect on my tum but I was thoroughly miserable and grumpy.

But when I caught sight of my face in a mirror and saw an intern from a World War Two concentration camp I decided the calorie theory was total rubbish and what really mattered was the quality not the quantity of food.

Am I right? Well for me yes, I am 84 and fit and healthy. But I am not your fairy god mother so try for yourself and find out. Life is on big experiment.

Eating a diet deficient in key elements, such as living microbes, and trace minerals just does not work so it is time to admit failure and try a new approach.

But when the experts are all saying reduce calories this is not so easy which is why we have this epidemic of chronic diseases.

We must learn from failures, failures are a necessary part of life.

Failures of societies

Within any particular society, there is generally a feeling that this society cannot fail.

Yet the facts show otherwise. Just look at the history of civilisations. European societies think they were the pioneers of civilisation but for some reason I don’t understand, civilisations sprung up across the globe in Asia, India and the Americas at roughly the same time.

Some of these had a long history. Another really good book is Farmers of Forty Centuries which examined why civilisations in China, Korea and Japan had been stable for over four thousand years while so many other civilisations collapsed.

The picture is clear, the civilisations that had long-term survival were based on recycling their waste to provide nutrients in their soils.

The civilisations that failed did it in two stages. They degraded their soils (and sometimes water systems) which weakened their civilisations but did not lead to their final collapse. That happened when they were overrun by other military-aggressive nations.

Change what you are smoking

If you think that our modern-day civilisations, with the combination of climate change and degradation of our soils and water supply, are immune to collapse there are two possible explanations.

That general view among the majority of the people is that our civilisation is immune to collapse (despite history saying that no civilisation is immune) so we just follow along

or

What you are smoking is leading you to a state of delusion.

Failure of our modern civilisation is a real threat, we just don’t know when. But it is likely to be in the lifetime of my two great-granddaughters who have just joined us.

 

So what to do?

So what can you and I do? And we must be realistic about what we can do.

Let’s face reality, you and I are powerless against the might of billion-dollar international companies.

We should be able to look to our Governments, after all, it is their job to protect the interests of the people. But again we have to face reality and their track record in taking on these mega corporations who can afford the very best public relations companies is not a story of success.

I, and probably you, have no access to our Minister for Health. At best I may get a ChatGPT generated letter saying how concerned the Government is about the end of civilised society. The wonders of AI, it should have been called GS genuine stupidity.

But these mega-corporations with a bag of gold in donations have an open door.

But we should at least expect our Government to run educational programs so people have ready information on how food works.

Information is power.

But that is not enough. We must recognise there is a war on.

Back to The Great Food War

On one side of the war is the mega-corporations. Large well resourced and ruthless for short-term profit and on the other side the community is placid, looking for a quiet life and a bit naive.

The mega-corporations are willing to use the power of the disinformation age to convince us their food is healthy for us when in reality it lacks critical components which make us fat and sick and run the risk of having a leg chopped off from diabetes.

But worse, it is destroying the planet on which we all depend, exploiting the finite natural resources which will eventually lead to the collapse of the food system and civilised society as we know it.

This is a war the community must win, but right now we are in the battle of the gut-brain which is the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly what and how much we eat.

This is a battle we must win or we will lose the war – but how?

There are eight billion warriors on our side and we have the ultimate weapon, the power of the wallet, (well lots of wallets) but we are disorganised and therefore ineffective.

A few gallant individuals will fight on, growing some of their own food and we need them, they are the commandos in this war paving the war for the bigger battle to follow.

But we need the full power of the community to win this battle.

That is what the Gbiota club is all about, it brings together the local growers, who have the capacity to grow gut-brain food with the community as a whole who have the numbers.

And how can it work? The growers can produce Wickimix, that magical growing medium teaming with beneficial life and critical nutrients which feed the plants which we eat to feed our gut.

They can supply this in boxes, as clean skins, ready for the more adventurous members of the community who want to take charge of growing some of their own food or they can supply boxes, with plants ready to be picked and eaten genuinely fresh before the beneficial microbes die.

You can learn more about the Gbiota technology at www.gbiota.com or you can join the Gbiota club at www.gbiota.club and meet up with like-minded people on a private secure self-managed social media site.

 

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Growers wanted

At this moment Gbiota is used by a pretty determined bunch who are prepared to the bother of making their own Gbiota beds and boxes. However, it is now clear that while there are many people who want to have the health benefits of eating Gbiota food the majority of people just want to have a box delivered to their home.

So now I am on a campaign of setting up a network of local growers, independent businesses using the Gbiota technology to produce Wickimix the specialist growing media) and Gbiota boxes.

This is described below, this is not a legal document just a lay description of what will be the basis for a formal agreement.

Background

The human body has an intelligent control system, of which the gut is an integral part. This regulated bodily functions, particularly how much and what food we want to eat.

This is referred to as the gut-brain which needs to be fed gut-brain food made up of beneficial microbes and phytonutrients.

Modern food, particularly, highly processed foods lacks these microbes and phytonutrients which traditionally occurr naturally in the soil.

Modern food relying heavily on chemicals does not contain these essential beneficial microbes and phytonutrients. This deficiency is sensed by the gut-brain which produces hormones which create food cravings resulting in overeating that leads to excess fat storage.

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

While the food and pharmaceutical industries have tried to develop various pills to resolve this epidemic these have not provided an effective solution, certainly at an affordable price.

There is no real viable alternative but to eat natural food which contains beneficial microbes and phytonutrients.

However food grown in the traditional process, largely relying on natural fertilisers, like manure and compost can contain both the beneficial microbes but also pathogens which lead to infectious diseases.

Cohort International Pty Ltd is a company focused on intellectual property, rather than the manufacture of products.

They have developed a system of breeding beneficial microbes in the soil with careful control of the moisture and air levels in the soil, to breed the beneficial microbes while the breeding of harmful microbes of pathogens are controlled.

This is a two-stage process with the beneficial microbes being bred in Gbiota™ beds to produce a growing medium called Wickimix.

This Wickimix is then loaded in a container, called Gbiota™ boxes which can be used to grow plants, which contain the beneficial microbes, in homes and apartments.

This home growing is important as the beneficial microbes have a short life so it is important the plants are eaten shortly after picking, hence the name of the website www.pickandeat.shop.

These boxes can be supplied as clean skins, eg just the boxes and Wickimix ready-to-grow plants or as part of a swap over system where boxes with plants grown to the stage of being ready to eat and the boxes swapped over on an exchange basis.

Typically these boxes would be ordered online and delivered by the growing company.

Cohort International wishes to enter into a licensing arrangement with companies who can undertake all or part of the process. In many cases, these companies would already be in the business of supplying conventional vegetable fruit and vegetable boxes and the supply of Gbiota boxes would be in addition to their normal business.

For its part, Cohort International Pty Ltd would provide expertise and training in setting up and managing Gbiota bed and boxes. It would also undertake the promotion of the Gbiota system and the grower as an approved and licensed grower.

The grower would recognise the intellectual property of Cohort International, have the right to use the trade name Gbiota™ and would sell products under the Gbiota name.

For its part, the grower would agree to conform to set quality standards and to sell through the multi-vendor web site www.pickandeat.shop

A sales margin which is currently set at 15% would be charged on all sales.

In addition, the grower would register on the subscription site as a grower, which currently has an annual fee of $40 per annum which allows them to access the technology site www.gbiota.com.

They would also be invited to join the social media site www.gbiota.club a social media site which is free and can be used to communicate directly with customers.

 

 

Feed your gut-brain

Our Gut-brain – decides what and how much we eat.

We need the right sort of microbes in our gut to be healthy. The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to form our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly how much and what sort of food we want to eat.

If we don’t have the right sort of microbes in our gut, which control our appetite, we get fat and sick.

Modern food may be safe but it is inert so we don’t have the beneficial microbes in our gut.

Swarm intelligence

People may say that we get fat and sick because we eat too much but that is not the real reason. We get fat and sick because our gut brain decides that it needs to store more fat and sends out hormones that make us crave food so we overeat.

Our gut contains trillions of microbes of many thousands of species. Each cell can communicate with its neighbours to create what is known as swarm intelligence which we see in many insects, birds and slime moulds. Each cell may be insignificant but together they create a powerful intelligence.

Our gut has evolved to have real intelligence and forms part of the intelligent control system which controls our bodies, particularly our appetite, how much and what sort of food we want to eat.

In the short term, we can overcome this with a calorie-restrictive diet but all that does is train our gut-brain that it needs to store yet more fat.
The solution is to feed our gut brain so it recognises that there is adequate food and sends out hormones so we feel satisfied.

Beneficial microbes essential

Feeding our gut-brain starts in the soil where we breed beneficial microbes in organic waste. These break down the added minerals and make them bio-available to the plants and later us.

Microbes are easy to breed, anyone can do it, we have been doing it for over a million years but so are the harmful microbes, the pathogens which make us sick and kill us.

 

That is what Gbiota is all about, breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful pathogens. You can do it yourself. We breed microbes and then package them in plants.

We also grow a broad spectrum of plants which exude sugars which attract an even broader spectrum of microbes.

We create the conditions of air and moisture, using the Gbiota circulatory flood and drain system, so the beneficial microbes out-breed and out-compete the harmful microbes.

That is why a plant grown using the Gbiota system is so different to a similar-looking plant grown in dead soil with chemical fertilisers.

Soil life matters.

Eating fresh matters

This creates a soil, called Wickimix, teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients.

We load this soil into Gbiota boxes to grow plants so people can pick and eat the plants at home. This is important as the beneficial microbes have a short life – they breed fast and die fast so it needs to be done at home.

We breed the beneficial microbes in the soil, grow plants in the soil and eat the plants – simple.

But we must eat the plant before the beneficial microbes die.

They look just like other plants so what is the difference?

Our modern industrial chemical food system grows attractive-looking plants but the soil and hence the plants are deficient in beneficial microbes and nutrients.

Gbiota plants may not have the look of factory grown plants because we cannot use toxic chemicals to ward off insects and have to use other means but they do contain a full spectrum of beneficial microbes and nutrients.

Do we have to grow all own own food?

No.

The bulk of the food, we eat is purely for energy, various combinations of carbon and hydrogen that we burn giving off carbon dioxide and water plus energy.
The modern food industry does that very well.

Energy food is not a problem

A small amount of the food we eat, around 15%, is used to grow and replace our body parts. This requires a whole range of complex chemicals, some are made in our gut while others, like the minerals and critical nutrients like B12 we have to eat.

The modern food industry barely gets a pass mark on this so is a factor in the Gbiota system.

How much Gbiota food should I eat?

We only need to eat about 5% of our daily food as Gbiota food, just enough to feed our gut.

Although small it is critical, without a functioning gut-brain to provide our intelligent control system we get fat and sick.

Providing that intelligent control system is what Gbiota is all about.

No pills – eat fresh plants

How to buy Gbiota plants?

While we can show you how to grow plants using the Gbiota method it does take some time and skill so most people would prefer to order Gbiota boxes online and have them delivered to their door.

You choose – DIY or buy from an approved grower

You can do everything yourself but you do have to do it right so it does take time and needs some skill or you can simply buy a box with plants ready to be eaten from an approved grower, all you have to do is water and pick and eat.

At this moment we are recruiting local growers to produce Gbiota boxes and we need to link you with a local grower. You do this by filling in the registration form here.

Who should eat Gbiota plants?

Our Gut biome is set early in life so it is important that young people, particularly ladies of childbearing age eat Gbiota food so they pass the beneficial microbes onto their children.

Because of time pressure, they would probably prefer to have Gbiota boxes delivered to their home.

As we age our gut biome and general health tend to deteriorate, largely as a result of our modern food system, but eating Gbiota food can extend health span. Older people, if they have the time and skills, may prefer to grow their own Gbiota food, but it is their choice.

How do I know it is working?

You will feel if your gut-brain is working as you will feel full and satisfied and food cravings will disappear. You don’t need to worry about special diets, your body knows what it needs, you just have to learn to read the messages it is sending.

 

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Colin Austin  © Creative commons this document may be reproduced but the source should be acknowledged. Information may be used for private use but commercial use requires a license.