The water temperature is around 9C far from freezing but theres something about jumping straight in that feels like being hit in the chest with a lump hammer. Ive been cold before but truthfully nothing like this.

This is the kind of cold that soaks right through to your bones in seconds. Its so cold, in fact, that getting out of the water and standing dripping on the stony beach feels positively warm. And yet at 8.20am on a grey Thursday morning in December, there are around 30 people at the cove in Greystones to partake of this daily ritual.

As recently as November, that number was apparently up to 60 a day or 100 on weekends. I eagerly accept a cup of steaming hot tea and a piece of gluten-free madeira cake from David Flynn one half of the Flynn twins better known as The Happy Pear and he asks me, Do you get it now?

And I have to admit, I do. Its invigorating and I dont think Ive ever felt so alive. The other swimmers gathered around in Dryrobes and flip-flops are amazed that after 20 years of living in Greystones, this is the first time Ive swum in the sea there.

And while Ive always meant to do it, it was an invitation from the Pear brothers and an order from the Weekend editor that got me here for a sunrise swim. The occasion is a chance to talk to the Flynns about their new book, The Happy Health Plan, as well as the ins and outs of running a health-based business that employs 150 people and has made the pair social media stars.

I think this is the seventh year weve been swimming here every day and the numbers have grown steadily in that time. First there was a small group of maybe five people, then that became 10 and then 20. This year the numbers exploded during lockdown because people didnt have much to do and they realised that a swim in the sea is healthy, gets you outdoors, doesnt cost anything and gets your day started on a fantastic adrenalised high, says David.

We swim at sunrise, which is around 8.30am at the moment but is around 4.50am in the summer. It doesnt take long: just jump in and out and you reap the rewards all day. Theres also something primal about watching the sun come up over the waves. You get this amazing light in the morning and you become plugged into the tides and what phase the moon is in.

Spend any time with the Flynn brothers and it quickly becomes apparent that what you see is what you get. They are relentlessly positive people who describe themselves as naturally optimistic by disposition. But behind the social media presence, the handstands and topless six-pack selfies, and the consistent message that plant-based eating is good for you, there are also two canny business people and a business thats been going for well over a decade.

There are also complicated personal lives. David was married to his partner Jan but has been separated for six years and together they have two daughters, Elsie, aged 10, and Izzie, aged seven. Today hes with a new love, Sabrina.

Stephen Flynn is married to child psychologist Justyna and together they have three kids, May aged 10, Theo, aged seven, and Ned, who is four. The twins brother Mark also works in the company. Throughout the interview we do upstairs at the caf in Greystones, around the corner from the cove, the pairs kids wander through to grab a cuddle with their dads before school.

The trick to cooking for kids is: dont ask. Cook whats good for them and put it down in front of them. Make sure they havent had snacks between meals and theyre much more likely to eat it. That said, while were both vegans, the kids arent. Were not hardcore about that at all, says David.

Stephen adds that his wife is Polish, and trips back to Poland were hard enough for himself as a vegan, but asking his mother-in-law to feed the kids vegan food was a non-starter.

I really wanted our oldest to be vegan when she was born but then we went to Poland. Our family there live on a farm and have all their own animals and they wouldnt know what a vegetarian was if you explained it to them. Good luck trying to leave the kids there and telling them they can only eat veg. I quickly learned that it takes a village to raise a family, he says.

When the kids are at home, they eat a vegan diet but when theyre out, they can eat what they like.

Our message has softened in recent years. Were not about pushing veganism or vegetarianism: theyre binary terms and arent helpful. There is no perfect but we want people to feel good and have better health, and that means eating a predominantly plant-based diet, says Stephen.

For example, nine out of 10 people in Ireland dont get their recommended daily amount of fibre. As a nation were doing appallingly in that regard we just dont eat enough whole foods. Being a vegan doesnt automatically make you healthy. You could eat a diet consisting of vegan sausages and vegan ice-cream and vegan doughnuts and still be incredibly unhealthy.

The Pear brothers want more Irish people to turn away from processed foods that have been overly interfered with to increase shelf life, and to make them look and taste better, at the expense of their health.

Processed food is designed to hijack your mammal brain. Our prehistoric ancestors had no access to refined sugar and refined fats: it was all about roots and shoots, says David.

Despite having published multiple vegan cookbooks in the past, The Happy Health Plan is the first health-based book that the brothers have released. It contains 90 recipes designed specifically with medical experts to help with various aspects of health. Under the microscope are heart health, skin condition, gut health and weight loss.

Significantly, the brothers say a key part of this initiative is that there is no calorie counting to be done and readers adopting the plans can eat as much as they want.

This is the big one, as far as were concerned. Over 50,000 people have been through the Happy Heart and Happy Gut courses weve run, and this book contains what weve learned in the process. Weve built these courses, both in person and online, with the advice of doctors and dieticians, and theyre medically sound, says Stephen.

The book also has a lot of stories from people who have improved their health and who enjoy their lives more as a result. Its all meant to be highly relatable. All the recipes are extremely tasty, but its the first book weve done where that hasnt actually been the main point this is about health and it happens to be tasty. Its all low-calorie food, high in fibre and low in energy density.

The big message is that people arent eating enough fibre and its having an effect on their health. So at this point, an awkward question has to be asked. How do they know? After all, the Happy Pear arent doctors and dont have medical qualifications. What puts them in a position of being able to offer others advice?

Its a good question. This is about hard data, not two lads in a vegetable shop selling veg. We started out reading books by people who really impressed us, like Dr Dean Ornish, who was able to reverse the indicators of cardiovascular heart disease, the biggest killer in the world, through diet. And we started realising that this could really help people so we read more, says David.

Next we went around the corner here in Greystones to Dr Brendan Cuddihy and asked could we borrow a nurse to help us run an experiment. We followed Dr Ornishs advice with a group of 20 volunteers and put them on a diet designed to lower cholesterol and improve heart health, and we measured their cholesterol, weight and blood pressure before and after. And we ran it as a cooking course, basically encouraging people to eat vegetables.

And we really didnt know what would happen but the results were amazing. There was a 20pc drop in cholesterol; people lost weight and reduced their blood pressure. From there we started to offer this course online, and we travelled and presented talks on the eating and cooking end of applying this scientific research.

The Flynn brothers have given talks at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and at medical conferences in the UK. They ran a Happy Heart course for 75 medical professionals in the UK in one go.

The funny thing is that we were really nervous going in and trying to teach these guys about vegetables. We had total imposter syndrome and I was sure we were going to be caught out. Who are we to teach these men and women anything? But what we got was a really warm and receptive audience, says Stephen.

We gave one of our first presentations to doctors and when the first hand went up and the first question was asked, it was, Can I drink Diet Coke on this plan? That was funny but it really taught us these are people too. Theyre normal human beings as well as being doctors and they have their own health concerns. Its one thing to know the data and a different thing to put it into practice in your own life, says Stephen.

Similarly, the brothers gave a talk at the London School of Economics at a medical conference for 300 doctors, and again were worried about their qualifications to be there. The organiser took them aside and said basically, Youve helped 50,000 people through your courses and thats just as big an effect on peoples health as any doctors in the room. Youre just as entitled as anyone else to write a book on it.

But writing books on health and plant-based diets isnt the only thing the Flynn brothers do with their time. As well as being social activists, there is also a strain of capitalism in evidence, from the multiple business ventures to the successful cafs and courses on offer.

They work with supermarket chains and have their own range of ready meals. So what happens when the concerns of running a business clash with the ethics of promoting healthy eating?

Since the start of the business, theres been a conflict there. Basically, we do our best but none of our campaigning work would be possible without a means of paying our staffs wages. Last year we put up a post on social media saying we were taking a week off and would do a tour of schools for free, and we had to pull the post down because it was oversubscribed. We went to 20 schools but over 100 applied in 48 hours, says Stephen.

We saw 5,000 kids in the four provinces in one week. It was exhausting and very fulfilling but if we did that all the time, wed be broke. You need capitalism to get anything done. When we started, we wanted to do this as a charity but our dad sat us down and made us realise wed spend our entire lives looking for hand-outs.

So were using business to do this within the constraints of capitalism. Sometimes that works well and sometimes its a horrendous conflict, and basically you do your best. Sometimes it doesnt work.

Opened in 2017 and closed in June of last year, the Happy Pears Clondalkin caf and restaurant is an example of when the brothers extended things just that bit too far. Located in the Br Chrnin visitor centre, it was welcomed as an exciting departure for the town when it opened, and yet coronavirus put an end to it after the first lockdown in 2020.

We just didnt put enough energy into it. We overextended ourselves and around four years ago we borrowed 1.5m and had the idea of setting up a central production kitchen in Kilcoole, and opening up multiple cafs. We started with Clondalkin but quickly realised that this wasnt going to go the way we wanted it to, says David.

People wanted to actually see us there every day and we were spread quite thinly. Youd spend the entire day in the car between the multiple locations. We started to ask ourselves, Why are we doing this? I personally didnt feel connected to the business anymore and we had to ask ourselves: Whats enough?

The pair have also run into some of the perils of owning some of Irelands most followed social media accounts. Their Instagram account has 550,000 followers, and an average post attracts 10,000 likes and hundreds of comments. Great for advertising a brand, not so great if youre of a sensitive disposition people can be cruel online.

Negativity can get to you. You can post something and have it be misunderstood or whatever, and just find yourself thinking, I dont want to do this anymore. Overall, social is a double-edged sword. Were on a social mission so the reality is that if there was no social media, wed be standing by the road holding up signs, so it allows us to reach people, and thats great, says Stephen.

But at the same time... its a beast thats hungry and demands feeding. People are sometimes envious of the size of our following but they should know that it comes at a serious cost. There are algorithms that need to be fed and youre playing a game in which youre feeding the beast. And of the 500 comments left on a post, there might only be two or three that are negative but theyre the ones that stick with you.

The Happy Health Plan by David and Stephen Flynn is published by Penguin Life and is out now

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The Happy Pear: We just didnt put enough energy into it. We overextended ourselves... - Independent.ie