My father, Peter Smith, who has died aged 97, set up a pioneering health food store in the unlikely setting of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, in the late 1950s, at a time when the pursuit of vegetarianism and healthy eating was a fringe interest.

He ran the shop until the mid-1960s before spending a number of years living and teaching in Japan and then opening up another health food outlet in Surrey in the early 70s, guiding it successfully into the late 90s, by which time his advocacy of healthy diets had become much more mainstream.