From a Shared Kefir Culture to MyZubster
Some projects begin with technology. This one began with a simple breakfast question:
Why keep buying yogurt every morning when we could learn how to produce fermented food ourselves?
I discovered kefir while volunteering in community settings connected, according to my personal experience, with the Comunità Papa Giovanni.
I obtained kefir grains through a direct person-to-person exchange and started maintaining my own culture. My original intention was simple: prepare something for breakfast and reduce the need to repeatedly buy the same products.
From there, I began experimenting independently in domestic and community kitchens. I used milk and kefir cultures to explore fermented preparations, fresh cheeses, ricotta-style products, and both sweet and savoury recipes.
The kitchen gradually became a small place of learning and self-production.
This experience taught me that a living culture is different from an ordinary product. Kefir grains can be maintained, reproduced and shared. Knowledge travels with them from one person to another.
I still keep kefir cultures today, both at my home and at my grandmother’s home.
The circular-economy lesson
This personal experience helped inspire part of MyZubster’s circular-economy vision:
- preserve useful resources instead of constantly replacing them;
- share practical knowledge between people;
- produce locally when it is safe and appropriate;
- reuse containers;
- measure inputs, waste, water and energy;
- document processes without exposing personal information;
- distinguish personal experience from scientifically verified results.
MyZubster is now translating these ideas into a candidate kefir pilot.
The proposed process is:
qualified ingredients
↓
registered kefir culture
↓
controlled fermentation batch
↓
quality and safety checks
↓
reusable container
↓
distribution and return
↓
sanitation and reuse
The first implementation uses synthetic data only. It records culture lineage, batches, process versions, reusable containers, returns and corrections.
Events can be digitally signed and grouped into a Merkle tree. A minimal proof may then be anchored on a blockchain without publishing recipes, contact details, health information or HACCP documentation.
Blockchain cannot prove that food is safe or that a physical process happened correctly. It can only help demonstrate that recorded digital evidence existed at a certain time and was not silently altered.
Food safety, batch release and authorization must always remain human responsibilities.
What a future pilot could measure
If an authorized physical micro-pilot is established, we want to measure:
- container return rates;
- safe reuse cycles;
- single-use packaging avoided against a defined baseline;
- water used for cleaning;
- energy required for preparation and refrigeration;
- rejected or surplus product;
- completeness of the traceability records;
- corrections, incidents and unresolved evidence gaps.
No environmental benefit should be claimed without a transparent baseline and supporting measurements.
From personal experience to open-source infrastructure
My kefir experience was a personal initiative developed while volunteering. It was not an official programme, clinical intervention or commercial food operation.
What it gave me was an idea:
Communities can preserve useful capabilities instead of starting from zero every time.
A kefir culture survives through care, continuity and responsible sharing. An open-source ecosystem works in a similar way: knowledge is maintained, improved, documented and passed to others.
That is the connection between this personal experience and MyZubster.
The objective is not to claim that everything should be produced at home. The objective is to explore how local knowledge, circular practices, reusable resources and verifiable digital evidence can work together.
Project links
- MyZubster: https://www.myzubster.com
- GitHub: https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster
- Kefir pilot charter: https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster/blob/main/docs/life/ventures/KEFIR_CIRCULAR_PILOT.md
- Personal testimony: https://github.com/MyZubster-Ecosystem/myzubster/blob/main/docs/life/ventures/DANIEL_IONI_KEFIR_COMMUNITY_TESTIMONY.md
- Visual chronicle: https://www.myzubster.com/fumetto
Evidence note: This article records Daniel Ioni’s personal recollection. It does not imply endorsement, authorization, affiliation or partnership by the Comunità Papa Giovanni, any associated community or therapeutic organisation. It does not make medical or therapeutic claims. Any future physical pilot will require an authorized food operator, appropriate HACCP controls and review of the applicable food-safety, allergen and labeling requirements.
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