Be like Kev. Not Gwyneth.
I'm Kev. I run this place, and the taproom next door. Here's how a public health bloke ended up selling beer.
Twenty years in marketing. Ten of them changing habits.
I've spent twenty years in marketing, and ten of them in public health behaviour change.
National campaigns for NHS London and the Department of Health. Smoking, drinking, eating, moving. Getting people to do the healthy thing without telling them off.
Turns out the trick isn't willpower. It's making the good choice the easy one.
Brilliant at the fall. Rubbish at stopping it.
What I kept seeing was a system that caught people on the way down. Very good at the catching. Not so good at the not falling.
So in 2023 I opened Functional Drinks Club in Otley. A shop, a cafe and a taproom. Working upstream, one fridge at a time.
I was a big wine drinker.
Not a disaster. Just a bottle here, a bottle there, and a lot of foggy Saturdays.
I swapped wine for kombucha. Cut down first. Then cut it out.
More energy. No more bloating. Better skin, apparently. I'll take it.
I'm 46. My daughter's 8. I want to keep up with her in my 70s.
That's the whole plan. No stack. No app. Just fit enough to be daft with her.
Balance, not optimisation.
You can chase a perfect, optimised life that never turns up. Or you can live a healthy one with love, laughter and balance.
Look at the Mediterranean. Long lunches, family, friends, moving every day, not stressing about it. Some of the longest-lived people on the planet.
So AFDC is for cutting down, zebra striping or stopping. Whatever balance looks like for you. I cut it out. I'm not here to judge your glass.
One life. Optimise for happiness.
Two shops. Same group. Same bloke.
You only get one life. Don't spend it chasing perfect.
Here's what nobody selling you a 20-pill stack will tell you. Getting healthy isn't complicated. And past a certain point, more effort buys you less and less.
Start with your gut. It's the foundation for everything. Feed it plants, fibre and something fermented every day.
Then cover the basics. Two or three strength sessions a week. 150 minutes of brisk walking or a bit of cardio. Around 7,000 steps a day. Mostly whole food, with room for the good stuff. That gets you most of the longevity benefit.
Past that, the returns get smaller and smaller. Run two hours a day if you love it. It just won't buy you twice the life.
So why spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds on supplement stacks, apps and get-fit-quick schemes, chasing the last 1%?
Look after your gut. Cover the basics. Then optimise for laughter and fun. Not for the sake of optimising.
Show me the science
- Your gut's trillions of microbes are linked to heart health, blood sugar, inflammation and weight. ZOE's scientists studied over 34,000 guts and found 50 bacteria linked to better health, and diet can shift the balance.
- In a Stanford trial, eating more fermented food for ten weeks boosted gut diversity and cut 19 markers of inflammation.
- Around 7,000 steps a day was linked to a 47% lower risk of death from any cause compared with 2,000 steps, with modest extra gains beyond that.
- Benefits from exercise level off at roughly three to five times the NHS minimum.
Sources: ZOE Microbiome Health Ranking (Nature, 2025), Stanford fermented food trial (Cell, 2021), NHS physical activity guidelines, Lancet Public Health 2025 steps review, JAMA Internal Medicine 2015 dose-response study.