Sugar blockers and baby greens

Baby greens and health

Baby greens are one of the most effective way of improving health and combating our modern diet which leads to chronic disease like overweight and diabetes.

They act in two ways, by acting as sugar blockers reducing the sugar spike which is well understood but also by changing the gut biota which is less well understood so I try and explain how it works here.

However it is important to understand how they work as sugar blockers - they do not magically eliminate sugar but spread the sugar spike so it has more time to dissipate but baby greens work in a much a much more complex and important way by changing gut biota and consequently the release of hunger controlling hormones.

What are baby greens?

But do we actually mean by sprouts, micro greens and baby greens?

Sprouts are simply seeds that are sprouted and eaten before there is any root development. Seeds are full of nutrients but typically those nutrients are difficult for our bodies to access, sprouting makes these nutrients readily accessible but there is no additional nutrient input from their roots. It typically only takes a few days for the seeds to sprout.

Micro greens take a little longer and the seeds actually develop roots which may take up water to help the seeds turn into plants but again the nutrients come largely from the seeds. They usually take a week of so before they are eaten.

Baby greens are one step further along the growing path, sometimes taking up to a month or more before they start to be eaten.In the Gbiota system they are grown in a biologically active soil and a regularly flushed with a compost tea with mineral supplements.

They develop a fully working roots system and in the Gbiota growing system taking in both nutrients and biology from the soil. They develop a fully working roots system and in the Gbiota growing system take inboth nutrients and biology from the soil.

This is the key benefit of Gbiota baby greens.

Many highly beneficial plants can be grown as baby greens which would not be suitable if they were allowed to fully mature. For example Linseed is a highly beneficial plant which is an excellent source of Omega 3 which is important for health. But as they mature the stems become very tough and indigestible so they are not really useful as a food.

However as a baby green they are an excellent food source, the tips of the plants are very tender, tasty and full of nutrients so the ideal way of harvesting them is simply to cut of the tip of the plants and eat that leaving the stalk and older leaves intact to provide the energy for further growth on a cut and grow cycle. A plant may be harvested many time before it becomes too old and tough to eat.

This cut and grow again is a very economic and practical way of growing, but it also has other advantages.

The plants can be grown very close together so weeds are less of a problem and harvesting is often over before the insects discover them. This makes if much easier to grow without using toxic chemicals but without the costs associated with organic growing of mature plants.

Baby greens as sugar blockers

Vegetables contain fibre which slows down the absorption of sugar into the blood stream so reducing the sugar spike. They do not simply eliminate the effect of sugars and high glycemic carbs - rather they slow the rate of digestion reducing the sugar spike so allowing your body time to burn of the excess sugar.

This is beneficial but there are two other more important mechanisms at work with a biologically active nutrient rich baby greens which I will explain later but first an example of the power of baby greens is well illustrated by the banana paradox.

The Banana paradox

Bananas are basically a very healthy food as they contain a broad spectrum of minerals but they are also full of sugar which causes sugar spikes so many dietitians recommend that diabetics or people on a diet should avoid eating bananas (and many other fruits).

However eating a banana with baby greens will blunt the sugar spike (and also improve your Gut Biology which will give better control of your appetite - see later).

Baby greens are most effective in combination with other foods, many people find they are not particularly tasty when eaten alone but when combined with other foods, such as a banana they create a pleasing taste while making the sugar packed banana a healthier food.

Our friendly Gut Biota - the intelligent control system

Baby greens may be very effective as a sugar blocker but there real benefits comes from how they can improve our gut biota.

Our gut biota contains trillions of cells of thousands of different species. It is incredibly complex and the truth is that modern science is still in the process of learning how it works but we do know that it is much more than just a bunch of different species - they all work together as an integrated system.

It is a bit like human civilisation - in any society we have people with a wide range of skills plumbers, dentists, farmers, engineers, brick layers, musicians, train drivers etc. but we do not work independently of each other, we talk to each other and work together to form a highly complex but effective system.

It is the same with gut biota, we have all these trillions of different sorts of cells but they do not live in isolation but communicate with each and also the cells in our head brain to from an intelligent control system which manage how our body operates.

We understand conceptually how it works as some form of super computer which is continuously taking decisions but its extreme complexity still defies us but we can see the results of these decision by the multitude of hormones it releases as messengers to implements its decisions.

We can study the hormones which control our appetite making as feel hungry or full, which control our moods, fear, anger, happy or sad and also how it is protecting our bodies from the continuous attack from toxins and harmful biology. It does this so effectively that we are not aware of how our body is under continuous attack as our bodies deal with these harmful toxins and biology.

We have truly evolved into an incredible machine.

Our changing Gbiota and ecosystems

But our gut biota is continuously changing. It starts to develop before we are born, it receives a major boost as we pass through the birth canal and as we are breast fed and thereafter by the food we eat throughout life.

Our gut biota may have a profound effect on our health but it is a big mistake to think we can just pop a few probiotic pills and change our gut biota just like that.

We made exactly that mistake in agriculture when we first began to appreciate the importance of soil biology.

Some farmers were naive enough to think that we could sterilise the soil by a highly toxic chemical such as methyl bromide which kills of every living thing then introduce a spectrum of beneficial microbes - and it was a complete failure - we just did not understand how soil biology works.

Now we very clearly understand the principle of ecological balance.

In the soil - as in our guts - there are beneficial and harmful organisms.

Smart chemist have developed some very powerful chemicals which are extremely effective at killing of organisms in the soil (and in our guts).

But the life span of these micro-organisms is very short and they breed very rapidly with the natural variability which comes with each new generation. Some of these will be resistant to the toxins and will breed up until the whole population is resistant.

All we are achieving with these toxic chemicals is to breed resistant micro-organisms. We now understand that they way to control the harmful micro-organisms is to use the principle of competition by creating conditions which are highly favourable for the beneficial organisms which will then out compete and out breed the harmful ones.

The harmful biology is still there in minute quantities but they are not causing any harm while we maintain the conditions which support the beneficial organisms.

This is the way soil biology works and it is the same for our gut biology. Virtually everyone has potentially harmful E-coil bacteria in their guts but they are there at such small levels that our immune system has no problems with dealing with them so they are harmless.

But if we upset the balance in our guts we can end up seriously ill, this is not some hypothetical situation, around the world we are seeing a global epidemic of chronic diseases simply because modern foods have upset the natural balance in our guts.

People who understand this - and revert back to the more traditional diet that our bodies have evolved to live with - are able to avoid this modern epidemic.

Baby greens grown in Gbiota Bed

Image result for biologically active soil

Baby greens grown in a Gbiota bed are more than a highly effective sugar blocker.

They are tasty and tender so can be eaten with other foods to balance the sugar, but the prime benefit is they are grown in biologically active soils with a balance of minerals and phytonutrients which can restore gut biology. which leads to a feeling of satisfaction so our appetite is under control.

This contrast with our modern diet, rich in sugars and fats but low in micro nutrients so we develop food craving, overeat and end up on the overweight or diabetes highway.

The gut-brain axis

A healthy Gut biota has trillions of cells which communicate with each other and our head brain to create a master intelligent control system which has evolved over millions of years to manage and protect our bodies so we eat the right amount of the right foods.

This happens automatically so we don't have to spend vast amounts of time, money and forced control to remain healthy. We just feel full and satisfied.

A healthy Gut biota will effectively protect us from harmful microbes by creating conditions where the beneficial microbes out compete and out breed the harmful ones.

This is the natural ecological way of creating a balance between beneficial and harmful microbes. It is happening all the time but the natural biological approach works so well we are not even aware it is happening.

Modern food, produced by chemical industrial agriculture, results in severe damage to our Gut biota so we loose this automatic control of our appetite and develop food cravings.

The GBiota growing system learns from the traditional biological growing systems and incorporate the lessons into a modern system taking advantage of the latest technology - modernised traditional agriculture.

The basic principle it to create a mix of compost, organic waste and minerals to create a biologically active tea which floods the root system on a flood and drain cycle providing biology and nutrients to the plants then the tea back out of the root system for reuse on the next flood cycle while automatically sucking air back into the soil.

The plants are biologically active, high in nutrients and fibre and improve our gut biology.

Baby greens are tender and tasty so can be combined with virtually any other food to act as a sugar blocker and to improve gut health.

Insulin - friend and foe

When your body senses high blood sugar level it releases insulin which in a health body will allow the excess sugar to enter fat cells so the sugar level is under control. The extra sugar may make you fat but will not initially cause any serious medical condition other than a marginal trend to diabetes.

However over time the additional fat will accumulate in vital organs particularly the liver and pancreas. When the level of fat in the pancreas reaches a certain level the fat block the further creation of insulin, your body can no longer control blood sugar and you have full blown diabetes.

In the short term insulin is beneficial by controlling the blood level but in the long term continuous high levels of insulin are highly damaging leading to overweight and diabetes.

Our modern health system - targeting symptoms or source

Our modern health system has become overwhelmed by the scale of the current health epidemic and has been forced to focus on the short term issues - like high blood sugar levels - rather than attacking the root cause of the problem which are the result of our modern chemical industrial farming system.

The longer term solution is simply to eat food which makes us healthy.

The current health crisis is a new phenomenon - go back fifty years when people were eating a traditional diet there was no diabetes epidemic.

But we cannot go back to the way we grew food fifty years ago - putting it bluntly there are too many of us and we would not accept the high costs of traditional agriculture.

But we can study traditional agriculture and learn how it was able to produce food which kept us healthy and then incorporate this into a 'modernised traditional agriculture' which maintains the essential features of growing plants in a biologically active, nutrient rich soil.

This is the Gbiota growing system which maintains the traditional benefits but in a highly automated system which can produce food at an economic cost.

Put simply it is biological growing as opposed to chemical industrial production But the structure of the modern food industry, dominated by profit orientated mega corporations present a major hurdle.

A modern grower may only receive between 15 to 20% of the retail price or put another way over 80% of the retail cost of modern food come from distribution, marketing and the major cost of advertising which runs into billions of dollars.

The challenge we face is how to create a system where the grower can receive the income to grow food in a biologically active nutrient rich soil so all people can enjoy healthy food at a price they can afford.

We obviously must study the cost of food production but the biggest hurdle is the 80% distribution costs - that is where the real savings can be made. This is an issue a discuss in my article on community food action - newfood.