Just published “Where we are at” read first

37863  17/05

This is where we are at

There is a story about a couple touring in Ireland who got lost. They ask a local how to get to Dublin, the reply is ‘If you want to get to Dublin I wouldn’t start from here’

Well, this is where I am at.

My wife, a medical doctor, became diabetic, her foot started to turn black, and our medical advisers told us they needed to amputate her foot.

I have been recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators, I built up Australia’s leading exporter of technical software, which gave me funds to develop high-risk technology that no sensible funding agency would support.

I decided that it was my mission to change that.

It is not about money or profits, it is about right and wrong. It is wrong that eight million people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes when this epidemic is man-made by putting profits ahead of community benefit.

The man-made epidemic

Net result – diabetes and all chronic or non-infectious diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

This is not, as generally thought, a biochemistry problem; it is a control problem. Our gut-brain, the trillions of cells in our gut, communicate with each other to create intelligence.

Our gut-brain decides where and how much fat to store. It then creates hormones to make us want to eat certain types of food or to stop eating when we are full.

Our modern food system does not lead to healthy gut microbes, our control system does not work properly, so we get fat and sick from these chronic diseases.

Creating a healthy gut is easy

If we are going to combat chronic diseases, we need a healthy gut.

Creating a healthy gut is very easy, microbes are a randy lot, they breed like crazy, so there is no difficulty in breeding the gut microbes.

The first problem to overcome is creating the right conditions so we breed the beneficial microbes, that is the easy bit. I am an engineer, once a world leader in computational fluid flow. I have spent the last thirty years, spending my own money on speculative research, working out how to create the right conditions to breed the beneficial microbes.

Breed the beneficial microbes in soil under controlled conditions. Grow plants in the soil and eat the plants while fresh.

Simple, the plants taste better and are cheaper than what people can buy from the supermarket.

Job done.

Adoption – the hard bit

Now comes the second and much more difficult problem. The beneficial microbes that control our appetite have a short life, so people need to breed the microbes themselves at home.

This easy enough, but people have to make a change by having containers growing fresh plants at home.

This is easy enough, but how do you persuade people, who may have no growing experience and may be living in a flat, to grow plants in a specific way so they breed the beneficial microbes and not the harmful microbes?

We need to change the way people think about food. This requires a paradigm shift. This is a marketing problem, I am an engineer, not a marketer, which is not my skill set.

Hands-on creating a paradigm shift

But when I was younger, I did created a paradigm shift by creating a technology which changed the way an industry thought about fluid flow.

Tough time, but I learned a valuable lesson about creating paradigm shifts.

The crusties

There are some people, I call the crusties, who I could never convince. However much scientific evidence I provided they had made up their mind, they weren’t going to change, and that was it.

The only good news was that they eventually die off and are replaced by younger, more open-minded people.

The puddings

The second group I call the puddings and they were the most difficult group to change. They agreed with the technical arguments I put forward, but they did not make the change. Presenting more technical information made absolutely no difference, they accepted the logic, but presenting yet more information made no difference; they were already convinced.

This is where we are at now with changing our gut biota. They all agree that it is better to have a healthy gut biota, no one is saying we should be taking antibiotics to kill of our gut microbes.

They agree but don’t act.

The go-getters

But the day was saved by the third group, the go-getters, the free-thinking entrepreneurs. The people who not only accepted the new technology but were prepared to act.

And when enough of these go-getters adopted the technology, the pudding saw, with their eyes, that not only did it work (which they already accepted) but it worked for other people like them, and then they changed.

Believing it works in general and believing it will work for me are very different things.

When the puddings began to adopt the technology the rate of adoption skyrocketed and soon it became the norm.

Before, not adopting may have been seen as a cautious and hence wise decision, but that changed to being out of date and out of touch.

Thank you, go-getters, but we need you again.

So, what is the action plan?

We need an integrated marketing campaign. Obviously, this must focus on the Internet, and videos which are today’s medium, but also the classic PR.

But it needs to be carefully planned with two stages. Just bombarding a wide audience with the need to have a healthy gut will not be effective. My website gbiota.com, has over three hundred articles on the technology and a similar number of videos.

Stage 1: the go-getters

Stage 1 should focus on the go-getters. But many of these will already be well aware of the importance of gut health and may well be practising these technologies privately.

The technology, and its ease of use need, to be part of the message, but the key to the message should be social responsibility.

Most humans are decent, only a few are arse holes

Watching the news may give the impression that humans are a terrible creature, committing industrial-scale destruction of their fellow humans, and the only thing that matters is profit (for them).

That may be true of a minority, who happen to be in power, but is not true of humanity in general. We are the dominant creature on Earth because of a combination of our intelligence and cooperation.

It is not just me

I am not some isolated individual who happens to think that eight million people have a limb amputated from diabetes, when the epidemic is man-made from the focus on profits before the community.

There are many people who think this is wrong and are prepared to help combat this wrong simply because it is the right thing to do.

The easiest and most effective way for them to contribute is not just adopt the technology but show to others that it is effective and practical and will work for them.

The message to this group must be that gbiota is a social benefit movement; we have to earn money to pay the bills, but the benefits to the community (assuming they think not having feet chopped is a good thing) are just as important as being financially self-supporting.

The puddings

The message to the pudding must be that it is to their benefit to have a healthy gut (by combating the epidemic of chronic disease and not having eight million unnecessary diabetic amputations per year) and that there are lots of other people doing precisely this, so why don’t they join the healthy gut movement?

The crusties

We don’t waste energy trying to convince the crusties, it is a waste of time, anyway they will die before taking any action.

If there is any message for them, it is sorry you missed out, but we did warn you.

37451   24/03

The quiet conflict

Colin Austin 1^st May 2025. Published under the Creative Commons system and may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

The food war

The world is in a state of quiet conflict between those who care about their fellow humans and their future and the anti-woke destructors.

The battleground is food that keeps us healthy.

We have an abundance of food, modern technology has increased, (and continues to increase), the production of energy food faster than the increase in population but it is failing to produce the food that sustains our gut microbes which control our bodies, particularly our appetite.

Without a functioning control system, we are like a high performance car with a drunk at the wheel.

The quality of our food matters and it is deficient in gut-brain food.

Survival

Species go extinct because of food. A few million years ago dinosaurs were by far the most successful creature on the planet. They had dominated the world for many millions of years.

Then out of the blue came an asteroid that wiped them out. It only killed a very few from the impact but it created a dust storm which blocked out the sun so the plants did not grow and the dinosaurs died from a broken food system.

Today we face a similar crisis, not a lack of food but a lack of food that controls our bodies, particularly our appetite.

We see a warning shot from the modern epidemic of chronic diseases but this is just the start. Chronic diseases have the common feature of the wrong fat in the wrong place and that starts with a failure of our control system which regulates where and how much fat we store.

The microbes in our gut are a critical part of this control system, but where do they come from? From the creatures of the soil the worms, ants, beetles, nematodes etc which are the world’s recyclers. They breed the microbes in their gut by recycling organic waste.

We only survive as a species by courtesy of the recyclers.

They are, or at least should be an integral part of our food system but we are destroying them.

This may seem a trivial issue but it determines whether the human species survives and thrives or goes the way of the dinosaurs – not a spectacular end just a slow deciduous decline if the woke destructors have their way.

The mild-mannered caring people of the world must win this conflict.

Microbes and swarm intelligence

The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to form swarm or group intelligence – our gut-brain.

Our gut-brain monitors all the food we eat and the effect it has on our bodies.

This information is shared via the Vagus nerve with our head brain which learns and remembers.

Our gut-brain monitors our bodies looking for deficiencies. If it finds a deficiency it will access our head brain to find out what foods will satisfy that deficiency then send out a complex hormone mix so we want to eat that particular food.

If it finds that we have all the food we need it will send out hormones to tell us we are full so we no longer want to eat.

For the gut-brain to work effectively it needs the right balance of microbes.

These come initially from mum at birth and breed inside our gut and later from the food we eat.

Our food needs to contain a fresh supply of microbes of the right species and food to feed the existing microbes.

Microbes breed very fast but also die very fast, they exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium with old microbes being replaced by new microbes.

We need to eat fibre to feed the existing microbes so they can breed in our gut.

We need to refurbish our microbes by eating plants growing in soil where the microbes are breeding.

Species matter

The species of microbes that breed in the soil depend on the conditions. If the conditions are favourable the beneficial microbes will out breed and out compete the harmful microbes. If the conditions are unfavourable harmful microbes which make us sick will out breed and out compete the beneficial microbes.

Eco-balance

This is called Eco-balance – creating a stable Ecosystem which is in a state of stable balance.

The conditions are a balance of nutrients, water and air.

Nutrients come from was decaying organic matter and plants. Living plants exude nutrients from their roots with different species of plants exuding different nutrients which attract and feed different species of microbes.

Traditionally we ate food that was full of organic waste and ate plants so we naturally had a broad spectrum of microbes.

Infectious vs non-infectious disease

This meant that generally, we had a broad spectrum of beneficial microbes but because there was no control of the conditions there were times when harmful microbes out bred the beneficial microbes. The result was that most people died from infectious diseases, particularly the young.

In recent times we have changed our food system from one relying on organic waste as the source of nutrients by adopting a system of mono-culture so the spectrum of microbes is reduced.

We no longer predominantly die from infectious diseases but die from non-infectious or chronic diseases obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Three out of four people now die from a non-infectious disease. Diabetes is the fastest growing disease with over eight million people having a limb amputated.

But this is just the start.

Rectification

We can rectify this by growing plants in soil with favourable conditions – the correct balance of nutrients in the form of organic waste, and the correct balance of air and water.

Water only moves through the soil when it reaches a critical point often referred to as field capacity when the surface tension forces in the soil balance gravity.

The field capacity of most soils it too high for breeding the optimum spectrum of microbes.

The field capacity of the soil depends on the pore size of the soil.

The creatures of the soil have the secondary benefit of boring through the soil creating flow channels and the microbes they exude lead to the soil aggregating which further increases the porosity of the soil.

The Air and Water Balance

We can achieve a favourable balance of air and water by having a soil with an open pore structure and a process of flooding the soil and then allowing the soil to drain.

When the soil is flooded stale air is expelled and when it drains fresh air is sucked into the soil. We are making the soil breathe.

As the soil drains, we can catch the drainage and recycle. We call this soil blood as it is circulating nutrients air and microbes.

Our modern food system lacks these beneficial microbes so the plants have a very low microbial density and the time from harvest to eating means that any beneficial microbes will have died.

Later the microbial vacuum will be replaced by harmful microbes – it will have gone rotten.

There is a big difference between having beneficial microbes and not gone rotten.

Local v centralised

This process of breeding beneficial microbes is difficult to do on an industrial scale but is very easy for people to do at home, even if they have no garden or growing experience. Just grow plants in Gbiota boxes and use the flood and flush system.

This has many advantages other than enhancing our gut microbes particularly it is a lot cheaper than our modern remote growing system and it naturally recycles organic waste which would otherwise end up as greenhouse gases and food is always available in times of crisis.

Gbiota boxes can be readily made from boxes available at any hardware store together with regular potting mix and seeds.

It does however need a starter or inoculant kit containing a spectrum of beneficial microbes which is easily purchased online and will need replacing preferably twice a year – the microbial Ecosystem is delicate.

Making this happen – creating a social movement

How do we make this happen? It will start with a few far sighted entrepreneurial people getting the message and breeding their own beneficial microbes.

The effects are obvious – a reduction in appetite so you eat less, but if you want to be more scientific then you can wear a continuous blood sugar monitor and look at the correlation between food and blood sugar levels.

These early adopters with their hand on experience will naturally spread the word and create a social movement.

It is only when the community as a whole accepts the importance of the gut microbes that the battle between the mild mannered concerned and caring people and the anti woke destructors will have been won and the human species will survive and thrive.

The essence of life

Everyone has an intelligent control system, it manages our breathing so we have enough oxygen, our heart rate so our muscles have adequate energy, our immune system, our temperature and most importantly our appetite.

This is the result of over a billion years of evolution and is one of the wonders of the world. If we have a fully functioning intelligent control system we can look forward to a long and healthy life, if it malfunctions we may get fat and sick and if it stops working we die.

It could be called the essence of life yet we have very little understanding of how it works. We can observe the result of its actions which gives us some idea and recently humans have developed intelligent control systems for their machines which gives a further insight into how it may work.

Appetite

Unlike breathing and drinking, appetite is very complex, we need a whole range of foods, food for energy which is relatively simple but we need a complex array of nutrients to build and replace our body parts.

Our intelligent control system can sense if we are short of specific nutrients and learns over time which foods supply those nutrients and then sends out a complex spectrum to make us crave those particular foods.

Fat or skinny

Some people are fat while others are skinny. We change throughout our lives, babies are born chubby, but when they learn to walk they lose their baby fat and are skinny until adolescence when the sexes diverge in their fat distribution.

These variations continue into midlife with men developing wobbly tums and women developing wobbly bums until in old age we revert back to being skinny.

But what drives this process?

Genetics play a part but research with twins shows this is not as strong as we may think. Fat people may have fat kids so we may think but they also share a similar lifestyle.

It seems that how we train our intelligent control system has a major influence. Without thinking we train our intelligent control system to learn that certain foods do certain jobs and can create a hormone spectrum to crave those particular foods. It is much more complex than a single hormone that makes us crave food and another hormone that makes us feel full and stop eating.

The role of hormones

Whether we are fat or skinny is decided by our intelligent control system and implemented by creating hormones to control our appetite.

True if we get fat it is because of what we eat and what we want to eat is driven by our intelligent control system sending our hormones.

We may try to override our intelligent control system but this is rarely successful long term.

But we can train our intelligent control system so it sends out the appropriate hormonal spectrum.

We learned this from observing people who have been deprived of food for a period. When food becomes available our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat. A restrictive diet only makes things worse.

To bring weight back to normal we have to re-train our intelligent control system by a nutrient-rich diet.

Mostly our intelligent control system works in our subconscious which we do not control but we can use our conscious brain to retrain our intelligent control system.

Our gut microbes

Even more surprising is that the microbes in our gut, which are not part of us, form part of our intelligent control system.

These microbes communicate with each other to form swarm or group intelligence.

We have known for a long time that we can make fat people skinny and skinny people fat by changing the species of microbes in their gut.

The epidemic of chronic disease

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

These have existed for a long time but been relatively rare – but now the scale has reached epidemic proportions.

We may be tempted to blame the abundance of highly processed foods which are full of sugars and fats blended to the bliss point and containing addictive additives.

No way can we defend these but they are not the prime cause of the epidemic of chronic diseases.

A functioning intelligent control system will create the hormones that make you stop eating, even if your diet is highly processed foods.

But if your intelligent control system is not functioning then you will overeat, regardless of what you are eating.

The root cause is a lack of the beneficial microbes which form part of your intelligent control system – your gut-brain.

That is simply solved by feeding your gut-brain by eating plants grown in soil where the beneficial microbes are breeding.

This is simple, anyone can do it even if they have no growing experience and live in an apartment.

It just needs a Gbiota biobox.

Gbiota what? The essence

The microbes in our gut have swarm intelligence, which regulates where and how much fat we store. It produces a complex array of hormones which regulate our appetite.

Microbes breed and die rapidly in a state of dynamic equilibrium, which extends from the soil where the microbes naturally breed to the plants, the animals that eat the plants and the animals that eat the plant eaters.

This is a system which has evolved over billions of years and is the basis of all life on earth until humans changed the system, which has led to an epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

We know how to resolve this. Beneficial microbes in the soil need a combination of nutrients, water and air which can be achieved by making the soil breathe by circulating what we call soil blood in a series of pulses flooding the soil to expel stale air and draining to suck in fresh air, what we call flood and flush.

This is a simple and inexpensive process which can be applied in the long term and on a large scale to create a new industry of gut-brain food, but in the short term by people growing their own gut-brain food. The process is so simple and inexpensive that it can be done at home even by people with no growing experience living in an apartment.

However, this requires a wide acceptance by the population of the need to modify our food system.

But is it no good just telling people. Logic is not enough; people are strongly influenced by what other people think, so acceptance has to reach a critical mass with people seeing other people they trust adopting the technology before widespread adoption occurs.

This requires the early adopters, the entrepreneurial thinkers who are prepared to pioneer a new technology and so reach this critical mass.

These pioneers are critical for our species in developing a sustainable, healthy food system for the future. Humans are the most successful creature on the planet because we are both intelligent and naturally cooperative, prepared to invest in the long term benefit of our communities.

Join me in becoming a healthy food gut-brain pioneer. Email me here.

Our intelligent control system

The intelligent control system which lives in our subconscious and gut brains is one of the wonders of the world. It regulates our breathing and heart rates, our temperature, our immune system and our appetite.

It enables us to do amazing things: catch balls, ride bikes, and carry a cup of coffee up a flight of stairs while talking on our mobile phones. It does this without us even being aware that it is working away in our subconscious.

We have known of its existence for two hundred years but had little understanding of how it works, we still don’t but with modern computers and engineering control systems we are beginning to get a glimpse of how it might work.

This is more than academic interest; the biggest health problem across the globe is the explosion of chronic or non-infectious diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia, which is the result of failure to feed our gut brain.

Our gut has trillions of cells of thousands of species that communicate with each other to provide what we call swarm intelligence which we see in insects and birds but it controls our appetite so we eat the right amount of the right sort of food.

This is an area where we do have an understanding and know how to resolve the damage resulting from chronic diseases.

But we have to do this we have to abandon simplistic ideas that these problems can be resolved by slogans saying eat less and exercise more which are part of the current folklore. These ideas have to be accepted by the population as a whole and not just a few isolated experts.

How do we do this, not by complex statistical double-blind tests which just confuse people, but by ordinary people eating gut-brain food and seeing for themselves that it does work in real life and particularly importantly showing their friends and contact that it works.

This is the way that we will combat the harm and cost of chronic disease and is something that everyone can participate in so chronic diseases can become part of history like the black death is now part of history.

The Technology Scam

Technology should work for the benefit of the community, not make a few people incredibly rich.

I sort of created a character I call Mary, a single mum living in a flat with three kids and two jobs struggling to pay the bills, living off fast food and going to bed exhausted. I say sort of because she is actually a real person but her name is not Mary. (Not telling)

She is beginning to put on a bit of weight and does not want to end up diabetic like her sister Sue.

Mary is the person who needs this technology and the Marys of this world are going to be the people who get this technology accepted – not some Ph. D in biology who talks a totally different language to Mary.

My job is to convince these Marys that they can use this technology, persuade her to try it and when it works for her hope that she will show her friends.

I can explain all the benefits and try and convince her how easy it is but she won’t believe me. This is my job, I am a trained and respected researcher in this area so she thinks it may be easy for me but it won’t be easy for her.

I can relate to this. I have a bit of an issue with wobbly heights – they scare me.

So an expert bungee jumping instructor can tell me how safe it is, they get hundreds of people a day doing it and they go for weeks without anyone being killed so statistically it is relatively safe.

I am no more convinced by the expert bungee jump instructor than Mary is convinced by me.

But if I could convince a few Marys to try it and they found it worked and was actually easy and inexpensive then these early Marys would soon convince many more Marys and we would halt the current epidemic of chronic diseases.

Not because these Marys are experts but because they are not experts and it works for them.

That is the way that we will slash the horrifying number of eight million people having a limb unnecessarily amputated from diabetes.

Hello Marys – email me so we can chat. Do it for yourself and all the other Marys you will help.  Read my article about “A compassionate society”  there is more to life than selfish greed.

Breed beneficial gut microbes at home

A healthy gut is essential for health as it manufactures the hormones which regulate our appetite so we don’t get fat and sick.

Beneficial microbes start in the soil. You eat plants grown in soil with the essential microbes while fresh before the microbes die.

You can easily do this even if you live in an apartment by buying most of what is required – containers, potting mix, seeds, etc from your local shops.

You will need to learn how to breed the beneficial microbes by creating the right conditions, which you can do by registering as a home grower and buying a starter or inoculant kit that provides the initial microbes.

People breeding beneficial gut microbes at home is a new concept, and our role is to guide you through the process, which is straightforward but must be done right. We do this by email and video conferencing and our many articles on this website.

There are over three hundred articles and a similar number of videos but when we make contact, we can guide you through the process of becoming a successful beneficial gut microbe breeder.

But the first step is to register for our Newsletter, and if you decide this is for you introduce yourself so we can walk you through the process of breeding beneficial gut microbes at home.

   Read letter to Diabetes Australia    important for all diabetics

35351   24/03

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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.

Growing food for health

The Gbiota technology is about how to grow food for better health.

The Gbiota movement is about creating supporting clusters of cooperative people for better health.

A bit of a mess

If you have not noticed at the moment the world is in a bit of a mess.

Humans are the most successful creatures on the planet because we are intelligent and naturally cooperative but that seems to have been overtaken by short-term greed by a few.

Cooperative societies are far more pleasant to live in but that has become too woke.

The dictionary definition of woke is politically and socially aware which does not seem a bad thing to me but is definitely out of fashion among the greed-is-good immediate gratification brigade.

Specific target – save 100,000 limbs from diabetic amputation

So it seems prudent to have a more specific target and we have selected 100,000 people avoiding a diabetic amputation.

This is similar to the JFK mission for a man on the moon in ten years, a clear aim everyone could get behind, except that we don’t want to wait ten years.

The easy bit and the difficult bit

There are two parts to achieving this target, the easy bit of developing the technology of how to prevent amputation. However, this requires a change in lifestyle leaving the much more difficult bit of persuading people to change their lifestyle.

The technology is straightforward.

The microbes in our gut exhibit swarm intelligence – they communicate to provide real intelligence specifically monitoring the available nutrients, learning over time which food provides those deficient nutrients then creating a complex array of hormones so we crave that food and when we are satisfied create other hormones so we feel satisfied and stop eating.

This is well-tested being the basis of life for the last billion years.

It does however depend on having the right spectrum of microbes in our gut.

Our modern food system may be hygienic but it is inert, no longer providing the beneficial microbes however microbes breed like crazy but they need the correct balance of nutrients, water and air.

Eco-balance

It is not necessary to be an expert micro-biologist. However, it is necessary to know how to create the right conditions of nutrients, water and air so the beneficial microbes out-compete and out-breed any harmful microbes.

The microbes start their journey in the soil which is where we need to control the conditions, they move into the plants and then into our gut when we eat the plants.

The technical difficulty is that while microbes breed like crazy they have a very short life, they live in a state of dynamic equilibrium breeding and dying very rapidly but with the appearance of a stable population. The microbes we see today are the great-grandchildren of the microbes we saw yesterday.

But the challenge is that once a plant is harvested the microbes will die so the plants must be eaten shortly after harvesting.

Long term – new gut-brain industry today DIY

Breeding the beneficial microbes is straightforward and in the long term I see a new industry of growing gut-brain food but in the short term, if we are to meet the target of avoiding 100,000 diabetic amputations those people in the early stages of diabetes need to grow their own gut-brain food.

This is not difficult and well within normal capabilities but does require a change in lifestyle and this is the difficult bit, persuading the early-stage diabetics that they need to start breeding beneficial microbes for themselves at home.

This is not a technical problem, breeding microbes is easy the difficult bit is persuading these early diabetics that they can and need to do it.

Damon Centola – Change How to Make Big Things Happen

For that, we have to turn to the seminal work of Damon Centola an American sociologist and the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

His book – Change How to Make Big Things Happen should be compulsory reading for all those interested in changing the health arena so people stop having their legs chopped off.

Before I talk about Professor Centola’s seminal work let me introduce you to a couple of semi-fictional characters who we need to convince.

Fictitious (but real people) – Mary and Sue

Mary is a single mum living in a flat with her three kids, living off fast food and working two jobs in an attempt to pay the bills. She is beginning to put on a bit of weight and is worried she might become diabetic like her elder sister Sue.

Sue is married to a doctor, and lives in a comfortable house with a nice garden but she is a full-blown T2 diabetic.

There is no doubt they are both motivated to change but how do we help them to make that change?

The Gbiota microbe breeding box.  The top box is filled with regular soil and plants.  The bottom box contains organic waste and microbial inoculants.

Soil blood, containing nutrients and microbes, is circulated in a series of pulses so the soil breathes and nutrients and microbes are distributed around the boxes.

The beauty is not that this is a highly sophisticated system but it is so simple and easy to use that Mary, a single mum with three kids and two jobs can breed her own gut bugs which control her appetite so she does not get fat and sick.

It won’t win any awards for sophistication but it will help us achieve our target of avoiding 100,000 diabetes amputations.

Making the change

This is where Professor Centola comes in as he has studied and run many experiments on the process of change and has some nasty shocks in store for us.

The obvious way to create this change, which is widely adopted across the globe, is to employ the service of an expert in this area to run a major public educational program.

This is happening all over the world with well-run public educational programs yet diabetes is the fastest-growing of all diseases.

If things don’t work we need to stop and ask why? We all know the witticism that you don’t make a new hole by making the existing hole bigger.

We can understand why when we see how Mary and Sue react to these well-run and well-intended educational programs probably run by a highly trained and skilled educator.

Mary tunes out first, she has nothing in common with the educator who Mary thinks is enjoying a very comfortable lifestyle with no understanding of the stress that Mary has to endure every day of her life.

Sue stays the course for longer, but she is already receiving a lot of information from her Doctor husband and is already taking many drugs so she also tunes out thinking she is above this level of education.

Damon’s solution

So what is Damon’s solution? His book contains a very comprehensive analysis but the punch line is simple. It is true that people do need education from the experts, that is an essential part, but it is not enough.

The critical part is to form a cluster of similar people who are successfully applying the technology.

That is what I am trying to do right now so if you feel you would like to be a part of a cluster and combat this epidemic of chronic disease and help avoid 100,000 diabetic amputations then please email me.

Why we need a gut-brain food industry

The world needs a gut-brain food industry.

Before you write me off as some sort of nutter let me tell you that fifty years ago, when computers were clunky mainframes coded by punched cards I predicted that virtually every technical product would be designed using Computer Aided Engineering.

Most people thought I was a nutter.

I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering and was eventually proved right and recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

For the last thirty years, I have been studying and experimenting with how the way we grow our food affects our health.

The way we grow our modern food may not be killing us but it is certainly making us fat and sick.

So before you write me off as a nutter just take a trip to your local shopping centre and see how many wobbly bums and tums you see and how many people with a limb amputated from diabetes.

That could all be avoided if we had a gut-brain food industry so whether you think I am a nutter or a food pioneer a gut-brain food industry will emerge.

Some entrepreneurial people will not want to wait for the establishment of a new industry,  have a plan for them read the action plan here

Why we need a gut-brain food industry

Everyone needs to eat gut-brain food. Our gut has intelligence and senses deficiencies in our diet and when we are full.

When we are full, a healthy gut will create hormones making us feel satisfied and stop eating.

If we do not feed our gut-brain, it will not create these hormones, so we will not feel full and satisfied, and we overeat, which leads to the current epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

But, far worse, we will feel angry; there is even a word for it: hangry.

Look at the state of the world, wars, violence, gross inequality and lack of compassion for our fellow human beings.

Do we really want to live in a world of hangry people?

It is not an issue of technology – we know how to grow gut-brain food – that is what my website gbiota.com is all about – it is a social problem. No one person can solve this, it needs a social movement, the people, the Government, experts like dietitians, health departments and researchers and local farmers.

An awareness campaign is needed so people appreciate the harm of not feeding our gut-brain.

So, join this social movement and make the world a more harmonious place to live. Start by showing your support by signing up for our Newsletter. Learn how our gut-brain works to control our bodies and how we can grow gut-brain food.

The movement may start with home growers, but everyone needs to eat gut-brain food and that needs commercial growers so people living in apartments with no garden or growing skills can have the benefit of gut-brain food.

So please sign up here and stop the madness that is infecting our world..

Breed beneficial gut microbes at home

A healthy gut is essential for health as it manufactures the hormones which regulate our appetite so we don’t get fat and sick.

Beneficial microbes start in the soil. You eat plants grown in soil with the essential microbes while fresh before the microbes die.

You can easily do this even if you live in an apartment by buying most of what is required – containers, potting mix, seeds, etc from your local shops.

You will need to learn how to breed the beneficial microbes by creating the right conditions, which you can do by registering as a home grower and buying a starter or inoculant kit that provides the initial microbes.

People breeding beneficial gut microbes at home is a new concept, and our role is to guide you through the process, which is straightforward but must be done right. We do this by email and video conferencing and our many articles on this website.

There are over three hundred articles and a similar number of videos but when we make contact, we can guide you through the process of becoming a successful beneficial gut microbe breeder.

But the first step is to register for our Newsletter, and if you decide this is for you introduce yourself so we can walk you through the process of breeding beneficial gut microbes at home.

35351   24/03

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.

35351   24/03

Warning

We show the process of

– breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste to make soil – Wickimix.

– growing plants in this soil using the flood and flush system so the soil breathes and soil blood (like our blood) is regularly circulated

– the microbes enter the plants which we eat to form our gut biome

– the microbes sense if the available food is deficient, when it will send our hormones to make us crave the missing food, and if there is sufficient send out other hormones so we feel satisfied and stop eating.

Allowing our gut microbes to control our appetite is a natural process which has been tested over millions of years.

It worked well until we changed our food system to produce hygienic but inert foods.

This process is effective and literally dirt cheap, which allows anyone, even if they live in an apartment with no garden or growing skills.

But it must be done correctly so there is no stagnation which leads to breeding harmful microbes.

While you are deciding whether this is for you, can sign up, receive our Newsletter and access much of the site for free.

If you decide it is for you, then you can upgrade your membership. This entitles you to free support by email or video call.

If you have any concerns about the process, then you need to take full advantage of this support so you operate the process correctly.

My message

This website outlines a technology for combating the epidemic of chronic disease.

It is based on the fact that over the last million years, humanoids have developed a highly sophisticated control system that regulates what and how much food we want to eat to keep fit and healthy.

While there have always been people who are overweight and diabetic there has never been an epidemic like today.

The reason is that this control system is a combination of our head and gut brains. In the past, our gut brain was naturally fed by eating plants growing in soil teaming with beneficial microbes.

In the last fifty years, we have changed our food system so it no longer feeds our gut brain – hence the epidemic.

This technology is about restoring the health of our gut-brain.

Technology if well managed, can have major benefits for the community but if mismanaged can lead to gross inequality with a few people having great benefits while the majority gain little or no benefits and can easily go backwards.

Here we look at what we need to do to ensure that the community as a whole benefits. If you agree with this approach and would like to join the movement, particularly if you are a grower with an interest in supplying your local community by running a profitable business we would live to hear from you here

Watch the video

Fit or Fat – Gut microbes create the hormones here or read the text below

Read the text of the video

Fit or Fat, the gut microbes create hormones

What we know for sure

The amount of quality research being conducted by recognised research institutes around the world on diet and health is massive. This is understandable as the epidemic of chronic disease is the world’s greatest health problem causing untold personal hardship and massive costs to our health systems.

There is an overriding consensus that goes beyond dispute.

The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to form, with our head-brain, real intelligence.

If it senses any deficiencies it will send out hormones which make us hungry and if it senses we are full it will send out other hormones to make us feel full and satisfied so we don’t overeat and get fat and sick.

This works fine as long as we have the right microbes in our gut and we feed them.

We get our initial gut microbes from mum at birth and later we feed them from her breast milk.

But after that, it is from the food we eat.

This should come from microbes which breed in the soil.

This should come from microbes which breed in the soil, then enter the plants which we eat to regularly enhance our gut microbes.

All this is well-known and established wisdom of the experts and beyond debate.

The implication

The implication is that we can go along to the local supermarket and load up our trolleys with fruit and vegetables.

This is a trap because while the vegetables may look fresh they are most likely grown using synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays so they contain very few microbes to start with.

But the real catch is that the beneficial microbes have a short life, we are talking a half-life of a day, so they will have long gone by the time we buy them.

They are in a state of dynamic equilibrium, breeding and dying at a rapid rate, at least while the plant is growing but this stops when the plant is harvested.

For the lucky few who have gardens and are experts in organic gardening, this is not an issue but it is incredibly damaging for the bulk of the population.

The Gbiota solution

Gbiota make no claim to be leading the charge in microbiological research but we can read and study the research papers of the experts and make it available to benefit the community.

We have developed a system where anyone, even if they live in a flat and have no gardening skills, can have fresh plants growing at home ready to be picked and eaten.

Let me show you our latest system.

An experienced licensed grower will produce the special soil we call Wickimix which is teaming with beneficial microbes. This is loaded into gbiota baskets.

Nothing special here, supermarket baskets work great.

The basket is seeded with a spectrum of plants.

The householder loads up the base of the box with organic waste.

Often kitchen scraps but grass clippings do a great job.

This fits into a box, again just a regular box but fitted with a swivel tube for draining the soil blood out of the box. We call it soil blood because it does the same job as our blood transferring nutrients and oxygen.

The swivel tube is rotated to the up position and the basket irrigated with soil blood.

Later the swivel tube is rotated to the down position and the soil blood collected for the next irrigation while sucking in fresh air to the soil.

The soil is breathing.

Simple but effective.

Community action

This simple system could have immense benefits to the community but it needs community action.

Local growers are essential so we are running a campaign to recruit local growers.  We canhelp you set up a profitable local business supplying your local community.

But it also needs a major community education program.

Dietitians, suitably educated themselves, should play a critical role but that, by itself, won’t be enough.

It needs Governments to run a major community education program. They have everything to benefit as the epidemic is costing Governments trillions of dollars in paying for a health system creaking under the load.

We need to safeguard our democracy where Governments are sensitive to what the public thinks and act accordingly.

Recap

Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with each other to provide intelligence. It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies – this is our gut-brain.

If our gut-brain senses any deficiencies in our diet it will send out hormones to make us hungry. This is in our subconscious and we have no control over this.

We may try and restrict the amount of food we eat but it is very difficult to overcome those hormones for any length of time – that is why it is so hard to avoid becoming fat and sick.

In our modern diet, we are very unlikely to have a deficiency in energy food which comes from sugars and fats.

The deficiencies that our gut-brain may detect are deficiencies in trace minerals of vitamins, deficiencies in food to feed the gut-brain but by far the most common and important is deficiencies of species in the gut.

We show people how to feed their gut-brain.

Why our gut-brain matters

This is important because our gut has trillions of microbes of thousands of species which can communicate with each other to create genuine intelligence.

It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite – how much and what we want to eat.

We don’t overeat and get fat and sick because we are little piggies, we get fat and sick because our gut-brain senses deficiencies in our diet and creates hormones that make us overeat.

Having a fully functioning gut-brain is the difference between enjoying a long health span and falling prey to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

How it works

Wickimix

It starts with a special soil we call Wickimix. Like all good soils it has an open structure full of the essential nutrients, N,P,K but also the minerals we are generally short of, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper selenium, iodine, chromium, vanadium etc.

But what makes Wickimix so different is that it is full of the natural creatures of the soil – the recyclers, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes, fungi etc plus a high loading of organic waste for them to feed on.

Wickimix is at the heart of the Gbiota process and requires some knowledge and skills. It can be done by an experienced and dedicated gardener but if that is not your is probably best left to a commercial grower who has been trained in the art of making Wickimix.

Soil blood

These creatures of the soil have guts – like us and they exude a complex array of gut microbes into the soil which helps to form soil blood, – that potent combination of water, nutrients and microbes which circulates in the soil to feed the plants.

The plants feed on soil blood so the microbes enter the plants which we eat to enhance our gut biota.

There is nothing new about this, it has been the norm since life first appeared on Earth a billion years ago. It stopped some fifty years ago when we adopted our modern chemical industrial food system.

Dynamic equilibrium

Microbes breed like crazy but have a very short life. This means that to get the benefits of eating plants loaded with beneficial microbes we need to eat them fresh. The most practical way is for people to have the plants growing at home so they can pick and eat them straight away.

This is practical, even in an apartment with the Gbiota box and basket system.

The Gbiota box and basket system

The creatures of the soil that give us the beneficial gut microbes need to be fed waste organic material.

We do that with the Gbiota box and basket system. People just collect all organic waste they can lay their hands on, kitchen waste, grass cuttings, coffee granules from the local shop – whatever.

When sufficient has been collected this is placed in the base of the Gbiota box and the basket, where the plant grow placed, on top.

The basket is full of holes so the creatures of the soil can move freely between the waste and growing areas.

Soil blood is full of nutrients and living microbes so must never be allowed to become stagnant and needs to be aerated which is done by a process of regular flooding and flushing.

The organic waste must be aerated, this is done by making it breathe. The swivel tube in the box is places upright and the base flooded which expels the old stale air.

The swivel tube is then swivelled to the down position so the water (actually soil blood) drains out sucking in fresh air.

This soil blood is full of nutrients and beneficial microbes so is very valuable and so is caught and reused. Effective but simple.

I appreciate that growing your own gut microbes is not for everyone and requires a certain amount of dedication but you are welcome to email me here so we can have a chat about whether this is a fit for you.

Our Intelligent Control System

Our gut-brain comprises trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which regulates our bodies – our intelligent control system.

If our gut brain feels satisfied it will send out hormones which make us feel satisfied.

GLP-1 is the active ingredient in drugs like Ozempic, Seaglitude and Wegovy.

This is a naturally occurring hormone which our body produces automatically to tell us we are full and should stop eating. Our bodies, specifically our gut, normally produce this for free and has done so for a million years or so.

But our modern diet, dominated by ultra-processed food is deficient in the foods to feed our gut-brain. This deficiency is detected by our gut brain so it decides not to produce natural GLP-1 so we keep on eating.

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

The solution is not to take these GLP-1 drugs but to feed our gut-brain.

We know exactly how to do that. We create soil, loaded with organic waste and minerals so the natural recyclers, the worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc breed.

They have guts, just like us and they excrete beneficial gut microbes into the soil. These enter the plants we eat, which is the natural way we, and all creatures, have been replenishing the gut for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota gut-brain food is all about.

Any question email me here

35351   24/03

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

Good gut-bugs create hormones that control appetite naturally – no pills

You can grow the good gut-bugs at home in containers, gbiota baskets – even if you live in an apartment with no garden and no growing experience.

You grow plants which lead to a healthy gut-biome. You change your gut biota by diet – eating plants grown in soil teaming with beneficial microbes and eaten shortly after picking while fresh. We show you how.

If you are a grower we can help you set up a good business supplying gbiota baskets to customers wanting to grow their own gut-bugs and be fit and healthy.

Email me here

Some people appear to be naturally skinny while others appear to be naturally fat.  This is because of the gut bugs which send out hormones which control appetite.

You can’t fight the hormones but you can change your gut bugs by eating plants grown in soil where the beneficial microbes breed, but you must eat them fresh as microbes have a short life so you need to eat them shortly after picking.

That is why you need to grow the plants at home – just pick and eat.

Our gut has trillions of cells which communicate with each other to provide intelligence. It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies – this is our gut-brain.

If our gut-brain senses any deficiencies in our diet it will send out hormones to make us hungry. This is in our subconscious and we have no control over this.

We may try and restrict the amount of food we eat but it is very difficult to overcome those hormones for any length of time – that is why it is so hard to avoid becoming fat and sick.

In our modern diet, we are very unlikely to have a deficiency in energy food which comes from sugars and fats.

The deficiencies that our gut-brain may detect are deficiencies in trace minerals of vitamins, deficiencies in food to feed the gut-brain but by far the most common and important is deficiencies of species in the gut.

We show people how to feed their gut-brain.

Why our gut-brain matters

This is important because our gut has trillions of microbes of thousands of species which can communicate with each other to create genuine intelligence.

It works with our head brain to form the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite – how much and what we want to eat.

We don’t overeat and get fat and sick because we are little piggies, we get fat and sick because our gut-brain senses deficiencies in our diet and creates hormones that make us overeat.

Having a fully functioning gut-brain is the difference between enjoying a long health span and falling prey to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

How it works

Wickimix

It starts with a special soil we call Wickimix. Like all good soils it has an open structure full of the essential nutrients, N,P,K but also the minerals we are generally short of, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper selenium, iodine, chromium, vanadium etc.

But what makes Wickimix so different is that it is full of the natural creatures of the soil – the recyclers, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes, fungi etc plus a high loading of organic waste for them to feed on.

Wickimix is at the heart of the Gbiota process and requires some knowledge and skills. It can be done by an experienced and dedicated gardener but if that is not your is probably best left to a commercial grower who has been trained in the art of making Wickimix.

Soil blood

These creatures of the soil have guts – like us and they exude a complex array of gut microbes into the soil which helps to form soil blood, – that potent combination of water, nutrients and microbes which circulates in the soil to feed the plants.

The plants feed on soil blood so the microbes enter the plants which we eat to enhance our gut biota.

There is nothing new about this, it has been the norm since life first appeared on Earth a billion years ago. It stopped some fifty years ago when we adopted our modern chemical industrial food system.

Dynamic equilibrium

Microbes breed like crazy but have a very short life. This means that to get the benefits of eating plants loaded with beneficial microbes we need to eat them fresh. The most practical way is for people to have the plants growing at home so they can pick and eat them straight away.

This is practical, even in an apartment with the Gbiota box and basket system.

The Gbiota box and basket system

The creatures of the soil that give us the beneficial gut microbes need to be fed waste organic material.

We do that with the Gbiota box and basket system. People just collect all organic waste they can lay their hands on, kitchen waste, grass cuttings, coffee granules from the local shop – whatever.

When sufficient has been collected this is placed in the base of the Gbiota box and the basket, where the plant grow placed, on top.

The basket is full of holes so the creatures of the soil can move freely between the waste and growing areas.

Soil blood is full of nutrients and living microbes so must never be allowed to become stagnant and needs to be aerated which is done by a process of regular flooding and flushing.

The organic waste must be aerated, this is done by making it breathe. The swivel tube in the box is places upright and the base flooded which expels the old stale air.

The swivel tube is then swivelled to the down position so the water (actually soil blood) drains out sucking in fresh air.

This soil blood is full of nutrients and beneficial microbes so is very valuable and so is caught and reused. Effective but simple.

I appreciate that growing your own gut microbes is not for everyone and requires a certain amount of dedication but you are welcome to email me here so we can have a chat about whether this is a fit for you.

Our Intelligent Control System

Our gut-brain comprises trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which regulates our bodies – our intelligent control system.

If our gut brain feels satisfied it will send out hormones which make us feel satisfied.

GLP-1 is the active ingredient in drugs like Ozempic, Seaglitude and Wegovy.

This is a naturally occurring hormone which our body produces automatically to tell us we are full and should stop eating. Our bodies, specifically our gut, normally produce this for free and has done so for a million years or so.

But our modern diet, dominated by ultra-processed food is deficient in the foods to feed our gut-brain. This deficiency is detected by our gut brain so it decides not to produce natural GLP-1 so we keep on eating.

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

The solution is not to take these GLP-1 drugs but to feed our gut-brain.

We know exactly how to do that. We create soil, loaded with organic waste and minerals so the natural recyclers, the worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc breed.

They have guts, just like us and they excrete beneficial gut microbes into the soil. These enter the plants we eat, which is the natural way we, and all creatures, have been replenishing the gut for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota gut-brain food is all about.

Any question email me here

35036   27/02

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://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

Health span or Epidemic

Colin Austin 6 March 2025 published under the Creative Commons system. It may be reproduced without further permission – just acknowledgement of source.

Why is it?

Why is it that some people are fit and healthy, enjoy a long health span with hardly a visit to the doctor while despite the sophistication of modern medical research does the epidemic of chronic diseases continues to increase causing a great deal of personal grief and costing health systems trillions of dollars?

Why is it that some people are slim, fit and healthy and others are fat and sick?

Maybe it is time to take a moment out of the rush of modern living and have a deep think.

Who the (?) are you?

Let me start by saying that I have no formal medical qualifications, I am a successful innovative engineer and was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators for my pioneering work in Computer Aided Engineering.

Innovation requires more than developing new technologies, important as that is, but it also requires challenging long established views often held by experts in the field – not a pleasant process.

However, among all those well respected experts there are those free thinkers, the technical entrepreneurs, who see the need for a new way of thinking, pick up the baton and lead the charge for a new way of thinking.

Change is often born when an isolated individual, often outside the field, without the burden of the conventional paradigms rethinks an issue.

But that isolated individual rarely makes the change. That happens when a few entrepreneurial thinkers within the field see the need for rethinking and lead the charge.

Our intelligent control system

We have a wealth of perfectly valid science helping us understand the biochemistry of our bodies which has led to the development of the so-called wonder drugs like Ozempic based on glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1).

This is based on a naturally occurring hormone which our bodies produce to tell us to stop eating. Development of such drugs is highly sophisticated and valid technology which we must respect.

But the question we need to ask is – “This is a naturally occurring hormone which our bodies produce, why is our body not producing this hormone to stop us getting fat and sick?”

This is the question that the entrepreneurial free thinkers within the health profession should be asking.

The answer lies in understanding how our intelligent control system works.

The change in thinking we need right now is to recognise that our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly what and how much we eat and try and understand how this intelligent control system works, why it sometimes does not work and then how to fix it.

Intelligent control software

One of my activities was writing intelligent or self-learning control software for irrigation control.

This is of course nothing to do with how our body’s intelligent control system works, but understanding the methodology of how human generated intelligent control system works gives us an insight into how our natural intelligent control system works.

Irrigation is a complex problem as the weather is changing, the plants are growing and have different water requirements throughout their lives.

By continuously monitoring soil moisture, past evaporation and rainfall and anticipated evaporation and rainfall it is possible to learn how the ever-changing system works and predict how much water should be applied at the next irrigation to cater for anticipated needs.

Chronic disease

I say I have no medical qualifications but I am married to a medical doctor who is also diabetic, her foot started to turn black and our medical advisers were talking about the necessity of amputation.

However, I did learn that chronic diseases have a basic cause of the wrong fat in the wrong place, in the case of diabetes fat in the pancreas. (nb she still has both feet.)

Out of the Silo

So I asked myself, as an engineer, what is the basic cause of the wrong fat in the wrong place.? The classic answer from the viewpoint of biochemistry is overeating, but as an engineer knowing how intelligent control systems work it seemed that the more valid answer is that it is a control problem.

Why do we overeat?

Swarm intelligence

We know that the gut contains trillions of cells with each cell being able to communicate with neighbouring cells to create swarm intelligence – which is well understood.

We also know that the gut is in continuous communication with the cerebral brain to create an intelligent control system for our bodies.

This is a remarkable system but as it operates in our subconscious brain we are not aware and have no control over its operation.

Subconscious control

But it is still remarkable, it can control our temperature over a range of conditions to a fraction of a degree, it controls our heart and breathing rate to ensure that there is adequate oxygen for our muscles.

But perhaps some of the most remarkable achievements occur with a combination of our subconscious and conscious brains.

We can walk upstairs, carrying a cup of coffee while talking on our mobile phones. Even a three-year-old kid can ride a bicycle which requires the skill to apply the mechanism of self-balancing gyroscopic couples – truly remarkable.

Equally remarkable is the control of appetite. For the last billion years, all animals (and despite our intellect when it comes to scoffing down slices of piazza and cheesecake we are all animals) have been able to manage their appetite knowing what and how much to eat to thrive.

So I suggest that when we face the very real problem of the epidemic of chronic diseases we expand our thinking from the science of bio-chemistry and diet to include the thinking of a control engineer.

Three critical issues – intelligent gut, deficiencies, learning

It seems there are three critical issues where we only have partial understanding, at least at the theoretical level but where we have indisputable, even if empirical evidence.

There is a saying that science is the art of managing truth while engineering is the art of managing ignorance.

Maybe to combat the epidemic of chronic disease we need to learn to manage our ignorance.

Intelligent control system

Unfortunately, we do not have a proper understanding of how our intelligent control system works, at least at the code level but there are certain experimental observations which are indisputable and important.

We have known for many years that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat by changing their gut biota and that is equally true with humans, (although we have not adopted the habit of eating each other pooh).

Specific deficiencies

Empirical evidence shows that the human body is far more sophisticated than the simple calorie theory. Our bodies can detect specific deficiencies, and when it does it will create hunger hormones so we eat more, not just more but more of the specific food it has learned will satisfy that specific deficiency.

If we don’t eat the specific food it will keep on sending our hormones until we do – a somewhat random process which results in overeating.

Again the understanding at the scientific level is limited but at the empirical level, there is no doubt as anyone who has dug their garden on a hot summer day experiences.

Sweating on a hot day leads to a loss of salts which, if our self-learning process has worked, will normally create a craving for salty food – often beer and crisps but not cheesecake.

But again our body will keep on pumping our eat more hormones until the deficiencies are filled.

This is not a new concept, homeostasis was first proposed over two hundred years ago.

Training and long-term memory

We know that from birth our intelligent control system is monitoring the specific food we eat and associating this with our feeling of following satisfaction.

If there is a serious deficiency it will decide that it needs to operate with a higher safety margin for food – a long-winded way of saying the intelligent control system decided we need to store more fat.

We have known this for over eighty years, people who suffered severe starvation in the war became obese when food was later available.

Three-pronged solution

Changing the gut biome of eight billion people

Changing people’s gut biome is already a well-established technology, the issue is how to viably and economically change the gut biome of the eight billion people on Earth. Now there is a challenge.

There is no difficulty in breeding gut microbes, the issue is how to breed the right sort, the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful ones.

We have to step outside the confines of the lab and think on an industrial scale recognising that a healthy gut biome may have over a thousand different species of biota.

The solution, which can operate on an industrial scale is based on the principle of ecological balance, creating the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is not a medical or even a biological issue, it is a straightforward engineering problem – largely based on fluid flow.

By luck I was a pioneer in computation fluid flow and when younger was recognised as a leader in this field. The solution is technically straightforward and well within the capacity of an experienced grower.

But there are two obstacles.

The first is with the scientific community in getting them to accept a simple, pragmatic solution when the underlying science has not matured.

The second is with Governments. It does mean creating what is a new industry of gut-brain food. This really needs Government support, just waiting for economics and the profit motive will not lead to a rapid solution.

But there needs to be a sense of urgency with eight million people having a limb amputated every year and the ever-increasing increase in obesity, now creeping into the younger generation.

The second problem of specific deficiencies is automatically resolved by this technology as breeding the beneficial requires a supply of the trace minerals to feed the microbes.

The third problem of training our gut-brain is more difficult. For years the standard promotion of ‘eat less exercise more’ has become ingrained into the system.

As we learned from wartime starvation a simple restrictive diet aggravated rather than resolves the obesity problem.

Changing the paradigm within a profession which has a duty to be cautious is not going to be easy. That can be resolved by pilot plant style demonstrations working on the show me don’t tell me basis.

The punch line

The health of billions of people and controlling the trillions of dollars spent on trying to manage health care costs depend on recognising the importance of our intelligent control system.

I may have developed technology to power our intelligent control system but I cannot create this change myself, this has to come from the entrepreneurial free thinkers within the health profession.

If this is you I would love to hear from you colin@gbiota.com

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

 Intelligence

Look around you, we humans don’t have giant claws or big teeth, we can’t run very fast and unless you are an old lady with a black cat, pointed hat and special broomstick we can’t fly.

So how do we survive? One word – intelligence.

But it takes a long time to grow our big brains – some twenty-five years for them to fully mature and just brute intelligence is not enough – our brains must be trained.

For that, we must be part of a tribe with older people who can accumulate and pass on information to the next generation.

This big brain and the ability to accumulate information over time is how we have become the dominant creature on Earth.

But it meant that we needed enough people to be fit and healthy to an old age to pass on information. Being alive was not enough – we needed a long health span.

Along with elephants and an odd species of tortoise, crocodiles, and jellyfish we have evolved to be among the longest-living creatures on earth.

We have two brains, the one in our head which we all know about but we have a second, subconscious brain in our gut. The trillions of cells communicate with each other to create intelligence which regulates our appetite, what and how much we eat.

The sort of food we eat and particularly how it is grown is critical to feeding both our brains and achieving a long health span. We need to eat gut-brain food.

Gbiota does not sell food, we show how to grow food for a long health span and if you don’t want to grow yourself we aim to link you to a local grower.

We provide documentation and support by email and video calls – it is not rocket science but must must be done right.

If this is of interest then start by reading the overview article Taste, Hunger and Health span. It is quite long but you are not going to achieve a long health span from a three-word slogan, it does take a bit of effort.

Having read this article you can decide if this is for you and subscribe but if you feel you need more information we can set up an email or video chat.

 Our intelligent control system

This is a members only site for people who are serious about gut health – and recognise that the trillions of microbes in our gut have swarm intelligence and form an essential part of our intelligent control system which regulates our appetite as described below.

They recognise that this is more complex than popping a few pills and takes some effort to successfully improve overall health.

You must be logged in to access this site.  Login here or read the overview and if you feel you can commit then register at the bottom of the page.

Extend health span

by enhancing your gut-brain

 Health Span

We have amazing medical and food science – we should all be fit and healthy and enjoying a longer health span, but we are not – we have such powerful technology which should be working for the benefit of the community – but it is not, why and what can we do about it?

That the question we examine on this web.  It is not trivial so we take it in stages.

The Gbiota movement

The Gbiota movement is based on three core principles.

Our gut-brain is intelligent

Our gut is generally thought of from the viewpoint of bio-chemistry. It is true that our gut digests our food and manufactures a range of chemicals essential for health.

This is true but only a partial truth.

Our gut contains trillions of cells of thousands of species. They communicate with each other to create swarm intelligence, which together with our head brain controls our bodies.

This operates as our subconscious brain which can override our conscious brain.

Our subconscious and conscious brains must work in unison. We can manage our subconscious gut brain in three steps – ensure we have the right species feed and enhance them – train them.

Modify our food system

Our food system is dominated by mega-corporations that focus on profits by giving people what they want which is highly processed food which is cheap, convenient and tastes good.

They crave this food because our current food system is deficient in the food which powers our gut-brain.

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

Creating a gut-brain food industry is a key objective of the Gbiota movement.

Food Honesty

The Internet must be among the greatest innovations of our era, giving people access to information which would not otherwise be readily available.

Unfortunately, it has become the home of manipulative advertising for profit.

All businesses need to cover their costs and make a profit, that is fine, but if they abuse the power of manipulative advertising without considering community benefit and the sustainability of human life on earth the future for the human species looks bleak.

The way to combat this manipulation of the truth is to have an informed public.

Cooperating with concerned individuals, organisations and Governments to inform the public is a key objective of the Gbiota movement.

Join and support the Gbiota movement our future depends on it. The Earth has been spinning around the sun for over four billion years and as far as we know will still spinning around the sun for another four billion years.

How long humans will enjoy a viable existence on earth depends on the decisions every individual takes.

Register now and join the Gbiota movement. Below are our various levels of membership.

Commercial grower

We will help you set up a commercial operation supplying Gbiota baskets and boxes for your local community

Contact us here so we can start talking

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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.

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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.

Join us

The modern world is full of fake news, fake people and fake food.

Fake food is deficient in the beneficial microbes that power our gut-brain and decides when we are full and satisfied.

The result is we overeat and get fat and sick. The modern epidemic of chronic disease stems from the deficiencies in fake food.

If you want to mix with real people and eat real food then this site is for you.

Start by watching this video – ruminations.

Then if you are just interested in eating real food you may like to watch this video – Transforming Health Through Microbial Balance.

If you are an organic or regenerative grower and want to run a successful business supplying real food to your local community then you may like to read   Organics save us and watch this video will give you an overview of how to grow plants to breed gut bugs.

If you want to live in the real world then join us by registering here.

Watch this seven-minute video to see why changing the gut biota which regualtes our appetite is so important for health

This video give more information on the growing technology

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

20 28/1

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 are some people fat while others are skinny, why do some people enjoy a long and healthy life while others are fat and sick?​

We know from the study of twins that genetics play a part, but it is just a part, it is what we eat that matters the most.

We all know the old adage, eat less and exercise more but what really matters is what we eat rather than how much.

If we eat the right sort of food we feel satisfied and simply feel satisfied and naturally want to stop eating. If we don’t eat the right sort of food we get food cravings and overeat.

Our modern food system is high in energy food – fats and sugars but low in essential minerals and vitamins but above all low in the beneficial microbes which live in our gut and control our appetite.

The right sort of food comes from eating plants grown in soil full of beneficial microbes that reinforce our gut biota and break down the minerals to make them bio-available.

Microbes are easy to breed, they are naturally a randy lot, the skill is in creating the right conditions so the beneficial microbes out compete and out breed the harmful microbes.

This is a process of creating an Eco-balance to favour the beneficial microbes and is the key to the Gbiota technology.

The soil produced this way is called “Wickimix”.

It is not that difficult, an experience grower can learn to do this however for most people it is simpler and easier to buy a Gbiota box loaded with Wickimix and seeded so a spectrum of plants are already growing.

But buying Gbiota boxes is more than just buying a box from a store, it requires linking up with a grower who can provide a regular supply of Gbiota boxes on a swap over basis so the boxes are continuously replenished with fresh Wickimix which has a finite shelf life.

To link up with a grower you can sign up for free here.

If you are interested in becoming a Gbiota grower, either just for your own use or to provide a beneficial and profitable service for your local community you should email me here.

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.

Changing the Health Paradigm

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.

This result from our modern food system which we need to change, but changes are never easy.

For the last thirty years, I have been working on how we need to change our food system so it is sustainable and leads to healthy people.

This requires a food paradigm shift – a different way of thinking about food.

As luck would have it I had spent the previous twenty years creating a paradigm shift in how engineers went about their design process.

This was an invaluable lesson on creating paradigm shifts and this is my story of creating a paradigm shift for food.

The birth of Computer Aided Engineering

Fifty years ago I was a humble lecturer in plastics processing at the RMIT in Melbourne. They had a mainframe computer, typical of the time with punched card input – a most unimpressive machine.

But then the very first mini-computer appeared and I had this instinct that this would change the way engineers went about their business.

I took out a second mortgage on my house to buy the second mini-computer to come to Australia, which is now laughable in its capabilities but still costed about a third of the value of my home.

The simulation with unexpected results

I learned computer programming and wrote, in my spare bedroom, a simulation of hot plastics flowing into a cold mould which was a pioneering technology for that time solving coupled complex non-linear partial differential equations.

The software may have been an achievement but the unexpected results changed the industry.

The industry was having problems in filling some moulds and the obvious solution was to make the flow channels bigger. That looks like common sense.

My software showed that some parts of the mould were filling first and the solution was to make some flow channels smaller to divert the flow into the more difficult areas of the mould.

That simulation showed that the current paradigm of how to design plastic moulds was deficient and my software led to a new paradigm which literally changed the industry across the globe.

Comparing Paradigms

The old paradigm for plastic flow was that the way to fill a mould was to make the flow channels bigger. It seems so obvious.

The new paradigm was to make some flow channels smaller to divert the flow to the more difficult to fill areas.

When I presented this idea at public lectures I was at first ridiculed and heckled. It made no sense. How can making flow channels smaller help a mould to fill?

But a few people heard the message, tried it and it worked and gradually became the accepted new paradigm.

Years later I face a similar situation. The current paradigm is that if you are getting fat then eat less. It seems so obvious.

The new paradigm I am presenting is that we get fat because our bodies (our intelligent control system) can sense deficiencies in our diet so we overeat and then get fat.

My solution is to fix these deficiencies by eating more, well not just more but more of the right sort of food.

I know the conventional wisdom is to eat less so to propose eating more sounds ridiculous. The missing words in that sentence are “more of the right sort of food”.

That automatically leads to eating less of the sugary fatty foods which make us fat.

From Plastics to Food

The company I formed Moldlfow became the leading exporter of technical software and was eventually sold for $500 million. Most of that went to the vulture capitalists but it still put me in the multi-millionaire category.

For my pioneering work on Computer Aided Engineering and creating the paradigm shift which changed the industry I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

I took a complete turn in my life to focus on what I thought, and still think, is the major issue facing humanity, how to grow food sustainably which will keep us healthy.

Speculative Research – doing daft things

We like to think of science as a nice logical step by step process and that is certainly part of the scientific process.

But doing things which seem daft at the time can lead to new ways of thinking. Moldflow, a company worth half a billion dollars was the result of doing daft things that led to a new way of thinking.

I was in a position to spend a few million dollars on speculative research knowing that most would be a complete failure but that failures lead to new ways of thinking which can have a profound impact.

With climate change, I am even more convinced of the importance of how we grow our food. I could say that I have spent the last thirty years of my life focused on how to sustainably grow food that will make us healthy but that would not be strictly accurate as I was used as child labour in WW2 to help mum grow food in the German U-boat blockade.

Computers have a delete button – Doctors don’t

My wife is a medical doctor, I am an engineer and there is a vast difference in the mode of operation.

If I make an error in my computer programming I can just hit the delete button whereas a medical doctor has to follow strict protocols which slows the rate of change and the adoption of new paradigms.

I am only too well aware that the current paradigm for chronic diseases is that they are caused by fat in the wrong place and we store fat in the wrong place because we eat more energy food than we burn, the calorie balance theory.

Eat less, Exercise more – it is more complicated than that

There is no disputing that calorie balance is an essential requirement for storing excess fat, this is just obeying the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy so it is not in dispute – this is what I call the “how” we store excess fat but it does not explain “why” we store excess fat.

Intelligent control software

It just so happened that I had written intelligent control software which can be quite complex as the software has to learn the behavioural characteristics of the specific machine, it is a form of Artificial Intelligence with self-learning capabilities.

Our bodies have a similar self-learning capability, as we can see from simple experiments on the human body, and the reason why we store excess fat, which leads to the chronic disease epidemic, is that our intelligent control system has decided that we need to store excess fat.

How is not the same as Why

This is the “why” underlying chronic disease.

It then sends out signals so that we eat more food which is the “how” we end up storing fat and is the underlying cause of the epidemic of chronic disease.

To understand why our intelligent control system decides we need to store more fat we have to understand how it takes decisions based on the information it receives.

The key point here is that our intelligent control system is highly sophisticated and the result of millions of years of evolution. Over this extensive period, it has learned to manage our bodies with a food supply relatively low in energy food but with an abundance of both microbes and nutrients.

We changed our food system

It is now faced with a different food supply with an abundance of energy food but deficient in microbes and some nutrients. This is a direct result of changes to our food supply.

To rectify this we need to change the paradigm from calorie balance, which we have tried for decades without success to the intelligent control paradigm.

Changing paradigms is always difficult but in the medical world can be a matter of life and death so a cautionary approach, which may seem prudent, makes this even more difficult.

Effective democracy depends on pro-active Governments

The first problem we have to overcome is the modern phenomenon of busy work.

For the last thirty years, I have been working on how we need to change our food system so it is sustainable and leads to a healthy outcome and I am not a drongo.

I cannot condense thirty years of thinking in an email or two.

It needs intelligent time from someone prepared to consider new concepts with an open mind.

Hopefully, my little cartoon demonstrates the status better than any words.

This is a global issue, every twelve seconds some unfortunate person has a limb amputated from diabetes, eight million people a year.

This is the dominant issue for health globally and I have an instinct that by changing the paradigm to our intelligent control system I could be sitting on the solution – just as I had that instinct fifty years ago that computers would change the way engineers would carry out their daily business.

Colin

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.

Our Intelligent control system

We eat food which contains a complex array of chemicals. These are converted into sugars for immediate energy, fats for longer-term storage, together with nutrients and vitamins to replace our body parts as they age and wear.

This is all done by our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, including our appetite, deciding what and how much we need to eat.

We can see our intelligent control system in operation, moving fats from long term storage to sugars in our blood by monitoring our blood sugar levels.

The trillions of cells which make up our gut biome communicate with each other to provide real short-term intelligence which works with our head-brain through the Vagus nerve to form our intelligent control system.

These microbes also need to be fed and replaced by our food.

For millions of years this happened, maybe in an uncontrolled way in the soil, or rather in the guts of the variety of creatures, worms, beetles, larvae, nematodes etc which inhabit the soil and who have gut biota similar to us and they excrete into the soil.

These enter the plants and are eaten by animals which replace and feed the microbes in the animal or human.

This is not a new process but has evolved over-time.

Our modern food system may be full of sugars and fats but is devoid of the microbes that power our intelligent control system.

This is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia – the wrong fat in the wrong place, resulting from the failure of our intelligent control system to function properly, in particular our gut biota.

This epidemic causes untold suffering and costs to our health system that we should focus on preventing.

This is readily resolved by breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste to create a soil teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients to grow plants which we eat, while fresh before the microbes die.

This is a simple and inexpensive process which most people and certainly local growers can manage with some education. Although simple, it must be done with understanding and care under the right conditions to avoid breeding harmful microbes.

Again managing the conditions so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes is an ancient process that we refer to as Ecological Balance and is readily managed with modern technology.

Food for Health

Food is the key to health.

Junk food is tasty, convenient, inexpensive but not healthy.

Genuine organic food may be healthy but is very expensive.

But there is a third type of food which is both healthy and inexpensive, cheaper than junk food and healthier than organic food.

How can that possibly be? What is the catch? It takes a little effort to understand how food works in our bodies and to grow, or buy, this food takes a little effort, that is the cost of health.

This web is in two main sections.

Food and Health

Here we look at how food determines our health with a particular emphasis on our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies deciding how much and where we should store fat.

It is often argued that we get fat and sick because we eat too much – that is how we get fat our intelligent control system determines why we get fat, which is very different.

While there is a genetic component we generally get fat and sometimes sick because of deficiencies in our diet so our intelligent control system sends signals that make us hungry and eat more than we need.

The soil in which our food is grown dominates our health.

There are many articles on how food affects our health but first step is to read ‘The essence’.

It may be interesting to understand how our intelligent control system regulates our bodies and how the microbiology in the soil affects our food and then our health but to get the benefits you have to eat food grown in biologically active soil.

That means either growing or at least buying Gbiota food.

Growing

The growing section covers the specialist growing system to grow plants that avoid deficiencies in our diet which are the root cause of chronic diseases.

Microbes play a crucial role in this forming part of our intelligent control system and processing minerals to produce the wide array of complex molecules our bodies need.

Microbes breed incredibly easily, the challenge is breeding the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes.

This is covered in the ‘growing’ section but the article ‘Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes‘ explains the basic principles.

Recommended action plan

The first step is to read these two overview articles ‘The Essence’ and ‘Summary: Creating Gbiota Beds and Boxes’.

These are free and you don’t have to sign in or anything, click and read which will give you a good understanding of how our intelligent control system regulates our bodies and how we can train and grow food to feed our intelligent control system.

You can then either sign up for free to read our articles on food and health which we publish most weeks or become a full Gbiota member and subscribe and receive technical support by email or video chat.

Gbiota is about breeding beneficial microbes in the soil, growing plants in that soil when the microbes transfer to our gut.

It is a simple, inexpensive and highly effective system and is in everyone’s interest that it is done right, hence we attach great importance to technical support.

So email me at colin@gbiota.com so we can chat about your project.

Lots of stuff

There are over 300 articles and 200 videos on this site, that is a lot of stuff and nobody expects you to view everything so here are some tips to make life easy.

The key point is that we all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and the key to health is to learn to feed and train this control system.

If this control system is working as it should we don’t have to worry about taking a specific number of micrograms of B12 or Selenium or whatever, our intelligent control system learns over time what foods contain what nutrients or minerals, sends out signals so we want to eat those foods without even thinking about it.

We have been successfully doing this for a million years or so without a dietary handbook in sight, just by eating natural foods grown locally.

These foods naturally contain the microbes which form part of our intelligent control system and also process naturally occurring minerals which make them bio-available.

That was until we changed our food system so it was deficient in these microbes which has led to the modern epidemic of chronic diseases.

As these microbes breed in the soil it may seem obvious to start breeding these beneficial microbes in the soil again which is a simple and inexpensive process.

But that is not the conventional wisdom.

Gbiota is simply about how to breed these beneficial microbes in organic waste to make a nutrient-rich living soil then grow plants in this soil and eat the plants while fresh before the microbes die.

In a world which seems to worship complexity, it seems that such a simple solution to the major problem of the epidemic of chronic disease would be welcomed with open arms but that is not the case.

So this website has two streams. The first stream starting with the heading Essence contains literally hundreds of articles written over the last thirty years when I have been working in this area which are aimed at showing this is sound technology.

The very first article summary is as it says a summary of all these articles.

So I suggest you start with this stream until you are convinced that breeding beneficial microbes is the solution, the link to the next article is at the bottom of each article, so keep on clicking on that as though you were reading a book, moving onto the next chapter.

When you are convinced click on the back to home page link and start reading how to breed beneficial microbes with the stream Creating Gbiota beds and boxes.

The first few articles in this stream are free to give you an idea on what is involved, and let us be upfront, there is some effort required – that is the cost of health.

If you feel that this is something you may like to undertake then you will need to sign up and become a full paying member when you will receive technical support.

However before you sign up and pay the money I suggest that you drop me an email, tell me a bit about your situation and I can make some suggestions on the best way to proceed.

You may lwant to be a home grower, you may want to become a Gbiota coach and advise new members or you may want to become a Gbiota grower and supply boxes to local people.

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 essence

Colin Austin 23 Nov 24 This document is published under the Creative Commons and can be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgment of source www.gbiota.com

In today’s fast-paced world, junk food dominates our diets—tasty, convenient, and inexpensive, but hardly healthy. Organic food offers a wholesome alternative, but its high cost puts it out of reach for many. Now, a revolutionary third option promises to be both affordable and nutritious, challenging conventional wisdom about what we eat and how it affects our health.

The Health Crisis at Our Doorstep

Chronic diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and dementia – are the silent epidemic of our time. They plague millions, drain healthcare systems, and diminish quality of life. For decades, the prevailing solution has been simple: eat less, and exercise more. Yet, this advice fails to address the underlying cause.

What truly lies at the root of these conditions? An imbalance caused by improper nutrition and a neglected gut microbiome.

A Revolutionary Insight into Food and Health

Our bodies operate with a sophisticated control system, akin to a smart thermostat. It manages fat storage, hunger, and immune responses. At the heart of this system is the gut microbiome—a community of trillions of microorganisms vital to our health.

Modern diets, packed with processed foods and depleted of nutrients, starve this essential system. The result? Increased food cravings, inefficient fat storage, and a cascade of chronic conditions. Cutting calories alone cannot fix this; the solution lies in what we eat and how it nourishes our gut.

Enter Gbiota: A New Path to Wellness

The Gbiota movement offers a groundbreaking approach. Transforming organic waste into a nutrient-rich soil called Wickimix, it enables the growth of plants brimming with gut-friendly microbes. When consumed fresh, these foods restore gut health, reduce cravings, and help prevent chronic diseases like diabetes and heart attacks.

This method mimics the diets of earlier generations, who thrived on fresh, locally grown produce teeming with natural goodness. Gbiota’s innovative process combines traditional wisdom with modern science to create a sustainable, scalable solution.

Beyond Nutrition: A Community Movement

Gbiota is more than a health initiative; it’s a call to action for individuals, communities, and governments. It envisions a world where:

• Food waste is recycled into Wickimix to enrich the soil.

• Local governments support urban agriculture, turning parks and open spaces into hubs for growing fresh produce.

• Communities take charge, learning to cultivate and share nutrient-rich food locally.

By empowering people to grow and consume fresh, microbe-rich food, the Gbiota movement creates a ripple effect – one healthy choice inspiring another.

A Sustainable Solution for All

The Gbiota approach isn’t just good for people – it’s good for the planet.

Recycling waste into rich soil reduces landfill, while local farming cuts the carbon footprint of transporting food. It’s a win-win solution that addresses both environmental and health challenges.

Why It Matters

The message is clear: to combat chronic diseases, we must rethink how we feed ourselves. Prevention is better – and cheaper – than cure. Instead of expensive treatments and reactive measures, we can embrace fresh, nutrient-rich food that aligns with our bodies’ natural systems.

Gbiota is leading the charge toward a healthier future. By rediscovering the basics of nutrition, supporting local food systems, and feeding our gut microbiomes, we can break free from the cycle of chronic illness.

Are you ready to be part of the change? Join the Gbiota movement today and take a step toward a healthier, happier tomorrow.

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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.

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

Health – prevention better than cure

The health crisis

Two-thirds of the population are overweight, the wrong fat in the wrong place is the root cause of all chronic diseases.

Diabetes is the fastest-growing disease with half a billion sufferers and eight million people a year suffering a limb amputation.

Heart attacks are the most common cause of death while dementia must be one of the most distressing diseases.

Health systems are creaking at the joints with not enough doctors and health workers.

A shortage of beds leads to Ambulance ramping.

Governments struggle to maintain an overstretched health system.

The costs to our health system are measured in billions of dollars – one of the highest costs to Governments worldwide.

Welcome as it may be spending more money on health is not the solution so what is the solution?

In one word prevention.

Weekly blog

I read, study and experiment with the technology of preventing getting fat and sick. I write a new post every week. You can join for free for six months but you need to sign in and tick the box saying ‘Notify me of new posts by email’.

When you receive a notification of a new post you will need to come back to this site and log in.

Prevention

Prevention is not just a medical problem, we need medical expertise but essentially it is a societal problem, creating a society where people can live a long life, fit and healthy to the end.

Forget about talking about life span, who wants to spend their life stuck in a wheelchair, dribbling into your blanket, peeing your pants and wondering who those funny kids are who keep on calling you granddad.

What matters is health span and health span is a societal issue so before I talk about how to increase health span (which I will do) I have to talk about the society we live in and it is not nice.

Health span

Chronic diseases that reduce our health span are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

We know exactly how we get fat. The biochemistry has been long established. One of the best books is by Ruben Meerman.

We eat food which is largely made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Our bodies burn off the carbon to form carbon dioxide which is a heavy gas which we breathe out.

If we consume more carbon than we breathe out we get fat. It is the law of conservation of mass – simple.

Nutritionists talk about calorie balance which is highly confusing but can be technically justified as burning carbon, however you do it, always releases the same amount of energy so talking about calorie balance as a measure of carbon is technically correct – but confusing.

So we know how we get fat but the real question is why we get fat. We have known about that for years with the science of homeostasis.

Our bodies have a set point for the amount of fat we need to store and will do everything possible to go back to that set point.

Set point

Understanding what determines that set point is the most important issue in managing chronic disease.

The classic example of the set point at work is in post-menopausal women who tend to put a lot of fat on their bums and thighs. This is the set point at work.

Men have a different issue tending to put on fat on their tums.

Don’t believe me – go to any shopping centre and look.

The mechanics are simple. In the millions or so years of humanoid existence, we have had to cope with a single feature of human nature. Our children take far longer to mature than any other animal.

No hopping out of Mum’s tum, then being able to run away from that lion.

Our kids need looking after for a very long time. In this evolutionary period, parents were kept busy gathering or hunting for food so much of the role of child care fell to grandmother (and grandfather too if they were still alive).

For grandparents to survive and look after the kids while the parents were gathering food they needed a store of energy or fat so we evolved to have a raised set point. That is evolution at work.

In our modern society with an ample supply of food, this set point is no longer appropriate.

But instead of focusing on changing the set point, which we can easily do by ensuring we feel satisfied, we go on extreme diets restricting food intake which means we don’t feel satisfied which raises rather than lowers the set point making things worse rather than better.

This is why operations like bariatric surgery and drugs like Ozempic are so successful – they make us feel satisfied. Both have nasty side effects and there are much better and cheaper ways of changing the set point.

That is an individual choice, there are no major operations or expensive drugs involved but it does require education.

That is why I run this website with weekly posts to help people understand how their bodies create this set point and how to change it.

Changing society

We know what we have to do to prevent an epidemic of chronic disease, it is not a technical problem we have to change the society to work on the principle of prevention.

Not so profitable for the mega-corporations but a lot better for the community.

But how do we do that when the internet is so choked with misinformation and the mega-corporations have so much influence over our Governments?

It does not matter how many technical articles I write or how many letters I write to the Government nothing will happen.

The solution is to create a social movement of people who appreciate the need for change and are prepared to spend time for the benefit of the community.

It is a simple process.

Step one is to find people with an entrepreneurial attitude who see the need for change.

Step two is for them to spend time reading the key articles on this web so they understand the basic principles but words are not enough we have to show people that it works.

Step three is for them to grow food using the Gbiota principles of breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste, growing plants in the resultant soil and eating the plants while fresh.

Even a glass of green Gbiota smoothie works wonders.

Step 4 is to sense their appetite and see if the food cravings stop and they feel satisfied. If they want to fit themselves with a continuous blood sugar monitor, as I do, they will get more specific information on how their body is working.

Not essential, the critical test is do I feel satisfied?

Step 5 is to tell their friend and contacts and persuade them to start growing some food using the Gbiota principles.

This may seem a slow and tedious process but seeing is believing and growth would be exponential 2 4 16 256, 65536 4.3 billion half the world’s population.

It is like a bolder on a mountain top, hard to get rolling but once it starts impossible to stop. Changing the world is not difficult when you have a few shoulders to get the bolder rolling.

No one wants to be the victim of a chronic disease, be fat and sick and risk having a foot amputated from diabetes.

Let’s get the bolder rolling.

When you have joined here are some earlier posts you may like to read.

See Society

See Food we love it

See prevention

See Disease

See Recycle

See community health

See friendly bugs.

See My Teddy

See Jenny

See The riddle

See Invite

See The plan

See adoption

See Applying technology

See Think smarter

See Food Paradigm shift

Chronic diseases require a life style change, they cannot be cured by pills or injections. You have to make the effort.

We  have no funding, we are a membership only social benefit organisation with costs like any other organisation.

We are supported by our members. We have a free six month trial period. After that you can  join the community and read the various articles we publish on a weeklyish basis for an annual subscription of $Au15 (about ten dollars US). Use rethinking food login here or join as a full member and benefit from our growing support.

If you want to know more I am happy to chat, I can set up video calls, but you have to email me first.

Together we can make the world a better place for humans, (but maybe not for computers).

Find out who we are at Welcome to Gbiota

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 a short 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 New Posts, Food and Health, Gbiota news  for free as a signed up member or growing as a paying member

If you have question or want to chat I am available for email or video chats.

Health – prevention first cure second

Colin Austin 4 Nov 2024 © This document is published under Creative Commons. It may be copied and republished without further permission, just acknowledgement of source.

Summary

Across the globe, we are suffering from an epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases. Three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease. The social and economic costs are massive stretching our medical resources to the limit and at high cost.

We know that these chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place and it is widely assumed that this is because we are eating too much sugary fatty foods – the calorie balance theory.

While it is true that we do have to consume an excess of sugary fatty foods this is not the cause. How much and where we store fat is decided by our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. The microbes in our gut are an integral part of our intelligent control system regulating our appetite and immune system.

We need to both feed and train these microbes. Our modern food system is deficient in gut-brain food.

This can only be rectified at an individual level, ‘we the people’ but it needs the Government to run educational programs and support the change in the way we grow our food.

This is not a cost to the Governments as it would save them billions of dollars in the health care system.

What life for my great grandchildren?

What will life be like for my great grandchildren? Long, healthy and happy I hope.

But at this moment we are facing an epidemic of chronic diseases. We know how to fix it but we are all too busy with pointless busy work.

Here I show how to fix that.

Three out of four people die prematurely from chronic disease.

That is bad but it gets worse, across the globe our health systems are creaking at the joints, doctors are overworked and in short supply waiting lists for other medical needs stretch out, ambulance ramping is the norm and the cost to our medical services run into the multi-billions.

Eight million people a year suffer an amputation from diabetes.

Health is a major cost to our Governments.

This is the major issue facing our health services.

The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of all chronic or non-infectious diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.

What makes our bodies store the wrong fat in the wrong place? This is a control problem.

Not little piggies

The conventional wisdom or paradigm is that we get fat and sick because we have turned into little piggies.

We see this everywhere, in the thousands of books written, in articles and on the many influential websites on diet and health.

It is called the calorie balance theory and it says that we can model our bodies like a water tank, with water flowing in and out.

If we have more water flowing in than out the level in the tank will go up, which is equivalent to us getting fat so we get fat because we are consuming more calories than we are burning so we end up fat.

Is this really true?

It is well worthwhile breaking the over-activity cycle which seems to dominate everyday modern life by asking if this model is a valid representation of how our bodies work.

We can’t procrastinate and say we are too busy. Busy work is not an alternative to death.

Control systems

Let me confess, I am not a medical doctor, micro-biologist or bio-chemist. I am an engineer which may seem totally irrelevant to the human body.

Engineers make machines, and every machine has some form of control system – maybe a dead simple on-off switch of something a bit more complex if you are controlling a rocket to the moon.

How control system work

I understand how control systems, my first real job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations. Later in life I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering and wrote software which led me to be recognised by the Australian Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

Among the software I wrote was sophisticated control software so I know a bit about control systems which means I can look at how intelligent control systems work and see if there is anything relevant to understanding how the intelligent control system in our bodies may work.

Balancing capacity with demand on time

Control systems have some target, in a power station it may be providing the power to balanced load.

This is similar to the problem in our bodies, balancing energy in and energy out.

The challenge in a power station is that the load varies while it takes some time for the power plant to increase output. It is essential to know the timing characteristics of the power plant.

In our bodies the target is to control both our blood sugar and fat levels. In a way these are interchangeable as our bodies can turn sugar into fat and fat into sugar but they have very different timing characteristics.

Sugar is like having food on the table, it is immediately available, fat is like having food in a cupboard, to make it available we have to take it out of the cupboard and process it ready to eat and that takes time.

Errors and timing characteristics

Typically we have a simple target and we can operate in a narrow band, in a more complex situation like driving a car the target is continuously changing.

In our bodies we have a fairly stable requirement for our blood sugar and fat levels to be controlled within a narrow band but a dramatically varying demand whether we are running to catch that train or waiting in a queue.

PID controllers

In a relatively simple case we can get away with measuring the error between the target and actual and this is important, the rate of change of error.

If we are driving a car and see it is wandering from the lane we may decide to just gently correct, but if we see the car is about to leave the road we may make a dramatic correction but then we have to be careful we don’t over correct.

All this is handled by the traditional proportional, integral and derivative controllers which have been around for years.

But more recently we have developed self learning software which learns over time how the system is working based on observing history or even applying real intelligence.

Intelligent controllers

More recently we have developed intelligent controllers which can learn to deal with the unexpected.

A classic example is the football half time problem.

On Saturdays, when there is a football match there is a low demand as people are busy watching the game.

But at half time many people will put their kettles onto make a cup of tea creating a huge and initially unexpected peak in demand that no regular controller could handle.

But engineers may have been caught out initially but they soon worked out the problem and developed an intelligent solution.

It was impossible for them to cover this abrupt surge in power demand with a conventional power system. But having identified the problem they located a pumped hydro facility and well before half time the put the power station on full bore but used that power to fill the upper reservoir.

Then by half time the main power plant was operating at full capacity and could be supplemented by the power from the pumped hydro so avoiding the disaster of not having a cuppa at half time.

This is the basic principle of self learning or adaptive control, it involves learning how the system works, anticipating a change and applying a correction ahead to time.

Toddler on a bike

The human body is incredibly good as this self learning and anticipatory control process.

Have you ever watched a toddler learning to ride a bike?

They don’t sit down and read a book on gyroscopic couples and self balancing systems, no way, they just hop on the bike and after a couple of spills the kid has learned the dynamics and is up and away.

Anticipatory control is natural for the human brain.

Continuous blood sugar monitoring

I am in the habit of wearing a continuous blood sugar monitor, it tell so much more than a single measurement. This shows that our intelligent control system fully understands anticipatory control.

At night my blood sugar will drop to a low (and oddly erratic level) but when it gets time for me to get up my blood sugar level will rise in anticipation of my needing extra energy.

I have not eaten anything it is just my intelligent control system looking after me.

What is happening is my intelligent control system recognises that I will soon be getting up and will need energy. It goes to the bodies pantry, the fat cells, takes some out, converts it to blood sugar ready for that spurt of energy I will need as I start the days activities.

Anticipatory control

That is what we engineers call anticipatory control, it is the technique we use so that the football fans can have their cuppa at half time.

Engineers have only been able to exploit anticipatory control since the development of the computers, our bodies have been doing this for hundreds of thousand of years.

Time for a bit of humility.

Self learning software and the self learning body

It also understand that I have different loads at different times of the day.

There is a difference in response with food eaten at a normal meal time and a meal that is not on schedule.

While it is normal to expect that a meal would increase blood sugar levels this is not the way it works.

It takes a lot of energy to digest food so we need extra energy for digestion, which is why we eat a sweet desert to provide the energy to digest the heavy main meal.

It appears our bodies have learned this so if I eat an experimental meal in the middle of the afternoon when my body is not expecting these loads I will get different traces.

Our bodies are just much more sophisticated than the over simplistic calories in calories out theory.

The puppy inside our tummies

As an engineer I know full well the laws of conservation of mass and energy but these are not the driving force that is the cause of the modern epidemic of chronic disease which makes us fat and sick, it is our intelligent control system which is the driving force.

It is like having a puppy inside us, it is there to look after us and if we feed it and look after it, all is great, if we don’t feed and train our puppy then we end up with the epidemic of chronic disease.

Feed and train

If we expect our intelligent control system to work effectively we have to both feed and train it.

At birth we get our initial burst of gut microbes from out mum, later she feeds us pre-biotics in her milk but later our gut micro-biota depends on the food we eat.

We have known it for a long time

We have known this for a long time.

We learned in the second world war that people deprived of food would be trained to overeat and get fat when food was available.

We learned that changing the gut biota in mice could make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat.

We learned from faecal transplants that skinny people could become fat just by changing their gut biota.

And then we conducted the largest experiment on food and health ever conducted, it was called processed foods which were inert, dead, lacking the essential pre and pro biotics .

People across the globe got fat and sick in the worlds largest epidemic.

And still the simplistic calorie balance theory prevails.

A peculiar creature

We are a singularly peculiar creature, we are naturally intelligent and naturally cooperative which has led to us becoming the dominant creature on earth.

Yet we kill ourselves on an industrial scale in modern warfare, we destroy soil, the basis of a healthy food system and despite a clear intelligence we cling to outdated ideas because they are simple and convenient (and make the big food and big pharma a lot of money).

The real reason why we get fat and sick

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.

I cannot do this for you – there is no magic pill, but I 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 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.

I can’t do it for you but I 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.

Modern food

Modern food, backed up by a multi-billion dollar highly sophisticated advertising campaign, may claim to be healthy but is making us fat and sick and killing us from man-made chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is deficient in the beneficial microbes which forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and also critical trace minerals.

Health starts in real soil, teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients. Eat plants, grown in living nutritious soil and eaten fresh – not plants grown in chemical soil and eaten days after harvesting.

It is not rocket science, anyone with a little effort can grow plants that will make them healthy. It costs less and is always there in an emergency.

Gbiota shows you how.

But there is so much hype on the web that people have become sceptical. They want to see hard evidence from real people. This takes a social movement.

That is why there are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

The first – the easy bit, is developing the technology – the second is to apply the technology and for that, we need a social movement and why we need you.

Start by reading my last two articles Community Health and Jenny explain why and what we can do about it.

Chronic diseases require a life style change, they cannot be cured by pills or injections. You have to make the effort.

We  have no funding, we are a membership only social benefit organisation with costs like any other organisation.

We are supported by our members. We have a free six month trial period. After that you can  join the community and read the various articles we publish on a weeklyish basis for an annual subscription of $Au15 (about ten dollars US). Use rethinking food login here or join as a full member and benefit from our growing support.

If you want to know more I am happy to chat, I can set up video calls, but you have to email me first.

Together we can make the world a better place for humans, (but maybe not for computers).

Find out who we are at Welcome to Gbiota

What society?

What sort of society do we want to live in?

One based on Maximising Money by Manipulative Marketing.

Where we have a food system that is so sterile it is devoid of beneficial microbes so we never feel satisfied, overeat, get fat and sick and run the risk of having a limb amputated from diabetes.

Where we have little concern for the other living creatures on the planet, particularly the beneficial microbes which are the great recyclers so we destroy the very means of sustainable food production on which we all depend.

Or

Do we want a caring and compassionate society where all people, black, white, brown, red or purple have healthy food to eat so they can live a long and healthy life?

Sharing knowledge

In this web, I show how to grow food based on breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste.

Growing and eating plants while still fresh so we have the beneficial microbes which make us feel satisfied.

No longer craving food so we do not overeat, get fat and sick and run the risk of having a limb amputated from diabetes.

Social movement

No one is going to get rich from recycling waste so we need a social movement where we share knowledge and information on how to grow sustainable and healthy food which will lead to a long and healthy life.

This does take more effort than throwing plastic food wrapped in plastic into a supermarket trolley but the reward is being part of a caring and cooperative community which will be around a long after the manipulative marketers.

Join us in creating this caring and compassionate society focused on people not profit.

Start by registering for free, then read the articles below.

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 a short 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 New Posts, Food and Health, Gbiota news  for free as a signed up member or growing as a paying member

If you have question of want to chat I am available for email or video chats.

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.

Modern food

Modern food, backed up by a multi-billion dollar highly sophisticated advertising campaign, may claim to be healthy but is making us fat and sick and killing us from man-made chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is deficient in the beneficial microbes which forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and also critical trace minerals.

Health starts in real soil, teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients. Eat plants, grown in living nutritious soil and eaten fresh – not plants grown in chemical soil and eaten days after harvesting.

It is not rocket science, anyone with a little effort can grow plants that will make them healthy. It costs less and is always there in an emergency.

Gbiota shows you how.

But there is so much hype on the web that people have become sceptical. They want to see hard evidence from real people. This takes a social movement.

That is why there are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

The first – the easy bit, is developing the technology – the second is to apply the technology and for that, we need a social movement and why we need you.

Start by reading my last two articles Community Health and Jenny explain why and what we can do about it.

Then decide if you are willing to be part of a social movement to fight the battle for food that will keep us healthy.

We are not a charity and have no funding, we are a social benefit organisation with costs like any other organisation so to join the community we have an annual subscription of $Au15 (about ten dollars US). Use rethinking food login here

You have a free month to decide whether you are prepared to commit your time to the battle for healthy food and avoid getting fat and sick and having people’s legs chopped off from diabetes.

If after the free month, you decide this is not for you cancel – there is no hassle.

If you want to know more I am happy to chat, I can set up video calls, but you have to email me first.

Together we can make the world a better place for humans, (but maybe not for computers).

Find out who we are at Welcome to Gbiota

Busy but not rich

Why are we all so busy and not revoltingly rich?

When I was a kid people worked six days a week growing, making or building things yet we could not keep up with demand.

With automation and computerisation, we have such amazing improvement in productivity that we can produce everything we need in a couple of days a week.

So why are we working five days a week in a fury of work rather than taking the kids to the beach?

Not anti-technology

I could say technology is to blame but that is not right. Let me be clear I am not anti-technology. Far from it, I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering, I built up Australia’s leading exporter of technical software – a company worth half a billion dollars and was recognised by the Australian Institute as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

I am not anti-technology, we could not support the current population without technology.

It’s how we apply technology

We are busy because we live in the information age and big companies need to sell things to people who don’t need or want their products.

Sounds bad? We are all busy keeping the information machine happy – but that does not kill people.

The great challenge facing us all is not how to develop new technologies, we are very good at that – it is how to apply the technology for the benefit of the community and not make a few individuals and companies unbelievably rich, with the wealth of nations.

This is just not right.

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

Gbiota Manifesto

Gbiota technology

The Gbiota technology is to breed beneficial microbes, under carefully controlled conditions, so the beneficial microbes outbreed any harmful microbes in a mix of organic waste and minerals to produce a soil, Wickimix, teaming with life and nutrients.

Plants are grown in Wickimix, the beneficial microbes and nutrients enter the plants and then our gut to power our gut-brain which forms part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

This increases the chances of living a long and healthy life free of the modern epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases.

Gbiota organisation

Gbiota is a community benefit organisation, we are not a charity but aim to cover the significant cost of developing and promoting the technology but our primary aim is to benefit the community rather than generate profits for shareholders which we see as the great weakness of modern society.

We do not sell products but provide information to members of the public concerned about their health, those wishing to grow their own Gbiota food and to commercial organisations wishing to sell products produced using the Gbiota technology and health professionals and Government departments responsible for community health.

We ask that people and organisations respect our intellectual property and trade names such as Gbiota™ and Wickimix™. Many of our articles are published under the Creative Commons system which means they can be copied and reproduced without further permission just acknowledgement of  source.

Other articles and information are prepared for the benefit of growers using the Gbiota technology and we ask that these growers respect our intellectual property and copyright.

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.