.jpg?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800)
“I launched Mama Shrooms nearly a year ago, actually, in November last year. Previous to that, I ran a plant-based food business for ten years. And before that, I was an addiction counsellor for the NHS, for about eight years.”
From working in mental health to launching a food brand to now running her own line of functional mushroom products from Brighton where she lives with her family, Gemma Ogston’s story reveals her passion for providing nourishment – in every sense of the word.
The Mama Shrooms brand stands out in an oversaturated market teeming with new celebrity-backed concepts and glossy promises. It’s interesting, that functional mushrooms of all things – weird mycelial bodies that sprout in the dark and smell like damp earth – have become so glamorous as a result of the wellness boom.
But they are everywhere, and mushrooms like lion’s mane, reishi and cordyceps have become the reserve of those seeking longer life, a calmer nervous system, better sleep. There’s a mushroom for everything, and entrepreneurs and whole food enthusiasts like Gemma Ogston want to share this knowledge with the world.
Recipes for good health
“I moved from working in mental health and really seeing the connection between food and mood,” she continues. “Then when the kids were a little older, I set up my own food business. I actually started in Barcelona because I didn’t have anything else to do, and then moved to Brighton and continued there,” Ogston tells me.
Brighton, with its sea breeze and eclectic energy, seems like a natural backdrop for her culinary and entrepreneurial ventures. It’s here that she published her first book, The Self-Care Cookbook in 2019.
“I thought, ‘that would never happen today’,” she tells me, reflecting on her instagram follower count of 2,000 at the time of publishing. “It’s actually wild, isn’t it?”
“I used to post pictures of my food and Penguin got in touch, saying, ‘Come and have a chat.’ And that’s how I wrote my first book. I can’t believe it, actually. The idea that follower count equals interest now, it’s such a meaningless metric. And yet, it doesn’t define your worth. I have a great relationship with my publishers; I did both my books with them. But talking about book three, they said, ‘You need 100,000 followers.’ And I was like, well, that’s not going to happen. So I’ve kind of shelved that a little bit.”
Read more: Can supplements really ‘balance’ your hormones’? What you need to know
Despite these changes, Ogston’s passion for food has remained unwavering. “I loved cooking. I grew up in a big family – five kids – and that’s when I learned to cook at a very young age. I still love cooking, but I almost lost my passion when I was working on my own, with the kids growing up and juggling everything. After Covid, going through the cost-of-living crisis, it became harder to make money. I was thinking, I’m here in a kitchen for like 15 hours and I’m not seeing my kids.”
Ogston’s personal life also played a pivotal role in her career shift. “I was hitting perimenopause, and my daughter became unwell. That was a big triggering point for me. I thought, okay, I’m going to change what I’m doing. I need to be around them more.
“I always thought I needed to be around when they were little, which is why I set up a business working from home. When I started my food business, it was literally in our little flat, and the kids were crawling around. It was chaotic, but it felt right to be around them,” she says.
Read more: ‘Wellness washing’ is tricking us all into thinking we’re healthy, and it’s only getting worse
.jpg)
The functional shroom boom
Gemma’s love for mushrooms became the catalyst for her next venture. “I had thought about creating my own brand of mushrooms, only because I love them so much. I used to do workshops, write, and use them in my food for such a long time. I thought, why don’t I have my own brand rather than consistently go with other brands? None of them felt right.”
The mushroom market is flooded these days. We are truly in the midst of mushroom mania and adaptogenic mushrooms abound. It can be incredibly difficult to know whether a mushroom supplement contains appropriate levels of quality adaptogenic ingredients.
“Being a female founder has its challenges, but for me, the most important things are ingredients and transparency. I want people buying my products to know they will work. Even in the short period from idea to launch, the mushroom market has gone insane. People are really into it now, which is amazing, but it’s also complicated for people to know what they’re buying. It’s crazy that Ellie Goulding has a mushroom brand now. I was like, how much is she involved? But I focus on what I know, and that’s mushrooms, transparency, and quality.
“I’ve sourced an amazing new supplier, and I’m getting all my individual mushrooms for my products tested at an independent laboratory, Eurofins. People can see the polyphenol count, beta-glucan count, all of it. It costs more, but for me, it’s worth it.”
Food and community
During my conversation with Ogston, we discussed several aspects of the wellness industry but one of the things we repeatedly landed on was the importance of community. When we spoke, she’d been planning a mushroom-led retreat at Pike’s in Ibiza, a trip to Camp Bestival to serve mushroom hot chocolate created specifically for growing teens and was telling me about new plans to meet fans of her brand and her books in the wild.
“When I was younger, I had an eating disorder, and later, through party days and trying to conceive, food has always been medicine for me,” she says.
“Working as an addiction counsellor, the first point of connection was often food,” she explains. “Offering a hot meal could bring someone through the door. For girls on the street, we’d never know what we’d get from food charities, and sometimes it was just a tin of beans. But it connected you in a different way. That would be the first point of therapeutic relationship building. If someone hadn’t eaten for days and then they had a meal, maybe a wash and a little sleep, they’d already start to feel better.”
Read more: Magic mushroom therapy could provide lasting depression treatment for years
The dark side of the wellness industry
But despite her love for nourishment and community, things she believes should be at the heart of any wellness business, Ogston has noted a worrying trend in modern wellness culture.
“Now, with things like GLP1s and extreme diets, we pathologise food again. The emphasis on being skinny is back. I talk to my daughter about it all the time. It’s everywhere. Algorithms push content, and people aren’t always aware of how damaging it can be.”
“Even when creating my branding for mushrooms, I wanted it to be everything that is not extreme wellness – bright, joyful, colourful, happy and fun. Wellness should feel like that. You don’t have to be the best at everything. I work closely with public health and schools, creating recipes around food for less and you absolutely don’t need to shop at Whole Foods to eat well.”
Ogston explains that routine and consistency are important for good health, but that this looks different for everyone. Our rituals all look different, especially with families to care for.
“Fun doesn’t have to be prescriptive,” she says. “If I’m exhausted, staying home with animals, a book and clean sheets – that’s fun. But my mornings are for the kids and getting them ready, breakfast and lunch packed.
“I go to hot yoga if I can. I try to fit in walks with my husband and dog, sit down properly to eat, and do weight training twice or three times a week. Walking by the sea, hot yoga and sleep, these are my pillars. Sleep, for me, is number one – I need nine hours.”
“Food has been my medicine, my connection, my joy,” she says. “And wellness has helped me get to where I am now – robust, happy and passionate. I hope to show others that wellness can be accessible, fun and nourishing, without the extremes or the pressure,” she adds.
Enjoying this? Sign up to Emilie Lavinia’s Well Enough newsletter for more investigations into wellness
