I'm Gem: chef, author of The Self-Care Cookbook and The Healing Cookbook, plant-based nutrition advocate, mum of two teenagers, and proud female founder.

For over ten years I ran my own food business, starting out in Barcelona before bringing it home to Brighton. Food has always been my way of caring for people, and over the years I've learned how powerful it can be as medicine. Before that, I spent over a decade working as an addiction therapist, supporting people through recovery — work that taught me how deeply nutrition, brain health and emotional wellbeing are connected. It's a thread that runs through everything I do now.

I've been taking functional mushrooms for over ten years, and they've genuinely changed my life — the clearest way I can put it is that I got ill so much less. That alone made me a believer. But it was during a difficult chapter moving through perimenopause that everything shifted. I was already leaning on functional mushrooms, but found myself juggling too many separate supplements just to feel like myself. What I wanted was one perfect blend — something that could genuinely support clarity, calm and energy without a cupboard full of tubs and pills. That's how Mama Shrooms was born.

Not long after, I was diagnosed with ADHD, after a lifetime of struggling with focus and feeling overwhelmed. Looking back, I believe functional mushrooms had already been helping me long before I understood why.