Our Story
Making better health information easier to understand and use.
Gut & Grain began with a simple idea: living more healthily should not require you to piece together dozens of apps, articles, podcasts, products and competing opinions just to understand what may be useful to you.
Where it started
A journey that began with weight, food and feeling healthier
Our own journey started with wanting to lose weight, eat better and feel healthier. As we learned more, our focus broadened beyond calories or a number on the scales. We became increasingly interested in the gut microbiome, food diversity, fibre, balanced nutrition, exercise, sleep, recovery and the many everyday habits that can contribute to long-term wellbeing.
Why we are building Gut & Grain
Fragmented information, brought together
We found a huge amount of valuable information, but it was fragmented. One source might explain the microbiome, another exercise, another sleep, while our watches, rings, scales and health apps each measured different parts of the picture. We began asking whether these pieces could be brought together in a way that was simpler, more useful and more personal.
That is the ambition behind Gut & Grain: to create a trusted place for evidence-informed articles, practical ideas, recipes and carefully selected products, while ultimately exploring ways to bring together the health information people already collect into a clearer overall view.
No miracle cures. No silver bullets.
We are not doctors and Gut & Grain is not intended to diagnose, treat or replace professional medical advice. We also do not believe there is one perfect diet, supplement or routine that works for everyone.
Where we discuss health and nutrition, our aim is to distinguish between established evidence, emerging research and personal experience, and to reference credible sources wherever practical. Science evolves, people are different, and we think being open about uncertainty is part of being trustworthy.
An approach shaped by an earlier journey
From tiles to gut health
Gut & Grain is a new venture, but the thinking behind it is familiar to us. In 2004, Jez and Mel created and launched Tile Click, an early UK e-commerce business dedicated to selling ceramic wall and floor tiles online.
A key part of the proposition was not simply putting tiles on the internet, but helping customers solve the practical problem behind the purchase — including a tile quantity calculator Jez built in Excel and translated into an online tool. Tile Click went on to win The Tile Association’s Website of the Year award. The lesson: genuine innovation often comes not from inventing everything from scratch, but from bringing existing knowledge, technology and information together in a way that makes a difficult decision easier.
Applying that thinking to health
A platform, not just an online shop
Twenty years later, we see a similar challenge in health and wellbeing. There is more information and more personal data available than ever before, but understanding what matters — and what to do with it — can still be surprisingly difficult.
Our long-term vision for Gut & Grain is therefore bigger than an online shop. We want to build a platform around learning, measuring and making informed choices: useful content available to everyone, a community for people who want to go further, carefully curated products that meet clear standards, and eventually a more joined-up way of understanding the health metrics people already generate.
Built in the open
We are at the beginning of this journey and we do not pretend to have all the answers. Gut & Grain will develop as we learn, test ideas, listen to our community and follow the evidence.
What will not change is the principle behind it: no fads, no fear and no promises of a quick fix. Just curiosity, credible information, practical tools and a belief that small, sustainable improvements can add up to something meaningful.