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.
