The Gbiota Community
An online community where groups can chat and exchange information – particularly on preferred plant species which are suited to the locality and season.
You can share information on plants, food and cooking with people from the same locality or further afield.
A safe, non-commercial space to network and find like-minded people.
Our gut controls our body – it needs to be fed gut food
The Gbiota local food movement
Our focus is how to grow plants to enhance our gut brain – breeding beneficial biota in the soil is by far the most effective and cheapest way of enhancing our gut brain and has been tested over hundreds of thousands of years.
What’s a Biofoodie
A Biofoodie is someone who wants to enhance their gut brain by ensuring that at least some of their food is grown in soil that is full of living biota, organic matter and minerals which lead to a healthy gut brain.
Our webs
Our web is in three parts. Here (gbiota.com) we focus on the technology. Community is a social area where people can exchange information on anything of interest – what plants grow well in this area, speciality plants, how to prepare and cook food. Shop provides a system where Biofoodies and growers can trade among themselves.
We do not make, buy or sell anything but we try to bring like-minded people together for mutual benefit.
Much of the site is open but some areas require you to log in – for details read here.
We humans need energy – and where does that come from? Literally out of thin air.
The sun shines and plants take carbon dioxide from the air and water, and break these down by photosynthesis to make chemicals containing carbon and hydrogen – full of potential energy.
We eat the plants (or animals that eat the plants), turn the chemicals back into carbon dioxide and water and bingo – we have a supply of energy, lots of it.
As plants take energy from the sun and carbon from the air, they exude sugars to attract and feed the soil biota and eventually die to further feed the soil biota.
Modern chemical industrial agriculture produces more than adequate supplies of energy food, but is often low in essential minerals and normally lacking in living biota.
But things are never as simple as they seem. We need to regulate the supply of energy. If we do not have enough energy food we feel tired and fatigued, and conversely if we eat too much energy food we get fat and unhealthy.
So we have evolved a system – our gut brain – to regulate how much food we eat by making us feel hungry or full. Trillions of cells in our gut communicate with each other like some super computer which regulates our bodies.
Our gut biota breeds inside us depending on the food we eat but it originates in the soil.
The biota enters the plants’ roots
We eat the plants to create trillions of cells which act as a second brain.
Our bodies need more than energy – we need a whole range of minerals to make and replace our body parts as they wear. Again these come from plants which make phytonutrients which we eat.
These phytonutrients originally come from rocks or rock dust in the soil. Rocks are not soluble, but there are micro-organisms in the soil which break down the rocks into complex chemicals which are soluble so the plants can absorb them to produce the phytonutrients we can eat.
Growing plants in nutrient rich, biologically active soil is essential for a healthy gut.
Why we need gut food
Our gut brain regulates what and how much we eat, replaces cells as they age and hosts our immune system.
Our gut brain is critical to our bodies, but to do its job it needs food – gut food – which is not the same as the food we may eat. If we don’t feed it the right gut food the wrong sort of biota will breed in our gut, and the gut brain will not work as it should.
Time tested
While we were evolving over hundreds of thousands of years, the soil was young and full of both minerals and the living biota which made the system work well.
Our modern chemical industrial agricultural system may be very efficient in producing energy food but is relying on synthetic chemicals to feed the plants rather than organic wastes which are produced naturally. Our soils are becoming inert, lacking the available minerals and biota we need for our health.
We may try to correct for this by supplementing our diet with pills, which may work to a degree but they do not have the diversity of natural biota, are expensive, and still do not give us the healthy gut brain which has looked after us naturally for hundreds of thousands of years.
We all need to eat
While our focus may be on the technology, we want everyone who wants a healthy gut brain to have ready and affordable access. Continue reading to see how we make the technology widely available at an affordable price.
Because we don’t spend money on advertising healthy gut brain food, it is often cheaper than branded food – you can help spread the word by letting your friends know of the Gbiota local food movement.
A local grower breeds beneficial biology in a mix of organic waste and minerals
The Gbiota growing system is a way of growing plants in soil with a high nutrient content from organic waste, manures and minerals, and careful regulation of the moisture level so the biota can breed.
Local growers produce this biologically active soil, load it into Bioboxes and seed with either a green manure crop or food plants which are grown to the stage of being ready to start eating.
Boxes are delivered to the customer typically with plants ready to harvest – often using the tipping method where just the tips are harvested and are allowed to regrow.
Food waste and minerals may be added through the compost tube to continuously feed the soil and its biota.
These nutrients are flushed into the box during watering.
The Gbiota Biobox
The Gbiota Biobox is a system where growers can produce soil with the living biota and minerals, load this soil into boxes with the Gbiota moisture control system. They can be planted so that almost anyone, even if they have no gardening or growing experience, can eat freshly picked fruit and vegetables.
Instead of buying already harvested plants, Biofoodies buy plants still growing in the Bioboxes and harvest at home just before eating.
They often use the tipping method where just the tips are harvested and the plants are allowed to regrow. This is a very healthy and cost-effective system.
Food waste and minerals may be added through the compost tube to continuously feed the soil and its biota.
At the end of harvest
When the soil is depleted, the boxes can simply be swapped for a fresh one with plants already growing or the soil can be topped up with new young soil.
The beauty of the Gbiota Biobox system is that almost everyone can have the health benefits of genuinely fresh food grown in nutrient rich biologically active soil.
Gbiota food simply tastes better.
I am a real person
I am a real person – not some computerised zombie. I am lucky, I have had a long and good life and seen many changes in the world.
When I was a kid I had a weekend job on a chicken farm – bluntly shovelling shit – but I earned enough to buy a bike. But I learned that our food system was based on manure.
Changing the food paradigm
Take a fat mouse and feed it the poo of a skinny mouse and it too will become fat. Take the poo of a skinny mouse and feed it to a fat mouse and it will become skinny too.
And it works with humans too.
It is not just about being fat or skinny – our whole body and temperament changes with gut biology.
From chemistry to biological intelligence
In the wonderful world of food the established paradigm, based on chemistry, has been incredibly successful. In my lifetime, we have increased food production by a factor of 4.3 – just totally stunning. At the centre of this success is nitrogen – we learned how to capture nitrogen from the air to make fertilisers and whoom! food production just went through the roof.
The Gbiota technology
Feeding our gut brain by eating plants grown in natural wild biologically active nutrient rich soil is not new – we have been doing it for millions of years so it is well tried and tested.
The Gbiota technology is based on studying the natural process and learning how to apply the lessons in a modern setting – see overview of Gbiota Bioboxes here.
