How Tweakd is trying to keep the nation fit one meal at a time

Omar Meziane remembers the first time he was allowed to stay up late, aged nine. It was for the semifinals of Italia 90. England vs West Germany, of course. “It was so exciting,” says Meziane. “And then we lost on penalties.” He dreamed of playing for England and going to the World Cup. “The only problem was that I was not very good at football.” But he still managed to live the dream by becoming England team chef and accompanying them to the World Cup in Russia. And now in lockdown he has devised Tweakd, delivering frozen meals to keep the entire nation fed and fit.

He always knew he wanted to cook. His Moroccan father and British mother met in Paris as exchange students and came back to England together to run a restaurant in High Wycombe. The young Omar spent all his spare time helping his dad. “He had me polishing the chairs and the cutlery,” he says. “But I became completely obsessed with the people behind the kitchen door. I could see them rolling ravioli and doing things with knives. I wanted to be one of them.”

He started working in kitchens the day after he left school at 16. “My parents were not overjoyed at the time,” says Meziane. “I said to them, ‘This is what I am going to do for a living.’ I knew I didn’t want to do anything else.”

It wasn’t all plain sailing though. He spent the next ten years slogging in the kitchens of hotels and restaurants up and down the country, “being shouted and screamed at”. Meziane says that the working environment for professional chefs is “most people’s idea of hell. It’s hot, it’s hyper-aggressive, and there are a lot of knives”.

At 25 he felt burned out. “I hadn’t reached the goals I’d set myself. I was exhausted. I was broke. And I was still averaging 100 hours a week.” He said to himself, “That’s it! I’m never putting a blue and white apron on again.” He resolved to try something completely different. There was only one problem. “I realised I’m pretty useless at everything else.”

The other irony of the kind of life he was leading was that his diet was terrible. “I was surviving on baked beans on toast – with a bit of cheese on top.” But he was addicted to the excitement and the pressure of producing one great plate of food after another. “We sit outside the norms of society. You’re working when everyone else is at leisure. It’s like a band of brothers.”

He found himself helping out at the Wycombe Wanderers ground and soon graduated to sous-chef. The Wasps rugby club were ground-sharing at Wycombe at the time. “I loved it,” says Meziane. “It wasn’t too stressful and I got to watch my two favourite teams play every weekend.” Meziane started working with Wasps and quickly realised what a different job it was to cooking for footballers. “It’s the sheer volume,” he says. “If I’m cooking chicken for 23 footballers, I might make 23 chicken breasts. If it’s rugby, I have to cook 23 whole chickens. The food is the food, but the sheer quantity rugby players get through – it’s phenomenal. It still shocks me to this day.”

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It was a massive learning experience for Meziane. He was having to prepare meals – before the game – specifically designed to maximise performance and then different meals again afterwards to support recovery. “It was a bit of a revelation,” he says. It was at this point that he started working with Mike Naylor, a sports nutritionist, who got him thinking in terms of more carbs on match days and more protein for muscle repair. Naylor would come up with the science while Meziane applied it in the kitchen. “There are types of food that will have an impact on inflammation. I would make a yellow curry on Monday morning, with coconut and turmeric.”

Meziane has adapted his skills to any number of different sports. He rewrote the menus of the England cricket team for the purpose of the 2013 Ashes tour in Australia. “We got whitewashed,” says Meziane, “but we did improve the food.” The problem for cricketers is that you’re doing nothing for long periods of time. And there is the great tradition of “tea”. “But if there are quality protein snacks, you’re far less likely to pick up a pack of chocolate bourbons.”

After that it was rowing at the national centre at Caversham. “Some of my fondest memories are of working with the GB rowing team. [They have] lovely people. And they work and train so insanely hard. I stood in awe watching them row up and down the lake, then do their ergo in the gym, then do weights, and then go back out and do it all again, seven days a week. And it’s not for the money.” Nutritional fact: rowers eat even more than the rugby guys. “Unbelievable amounts – but they work harder than most people will ever do in their lives.” Somewhere between 2.5 and 3 thousand calories is our average everyday intake. Rowers get through 8-10 thousand calories every day.

“You are what you eat really rings true in what I do on a daily basis,” says Meziane. But he says the priority for him is to “bring some joy to food”. It’s not all about quantity or sports science. “They’re being howled at all day by their coaches. When they come into my restaurant I want to deliver a plate of food that does them good, but also makes them feel loved. It affects the mind not just the body. Good food will make us feel better about the day.”

Meziane took the rowing team all the way to the Rio Olympics. “When they won their medals I felt proud that I’d contributed.” But then he went back to football, in the shape of the Under-20s England team playing at the U20 World Cup in Seoul in 2017. Meziane didn’t expect to be gone for long. He told his wife, “It’s England: we’ll get knocked out in the early rounds – I’ll be back in ten days.” Forty-five days later, England had won and Meziane had a World Cup medal round his neck. He returned to London to work for Harlequins but then he got the call from the England senior team. If it could work for the U20s, it could work for them.

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Fast-forward to summer 2018: the Olympic stadium in Moscow, the World Cup semi-finals, England vs Croatia. “It was so intense,” says Meziane. “A once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Even if England came fourth. He says one day he hopes to go back as a tourist. “I’ve been right around the world as a chef. But I haven’t seen very much – mainly the inside of kitchens, hotels and airports.”

When the world came to a stop during the pandemic, Meziane didn’t. “I’m a workaholic,” he says. He took two weeks off, then joined forces with Mike Naylor to come up with Tweakd. “I wanted to harness my 25 years of experience to create healthy meals that anyone can buy.”

After his twenties, Meziane changed his own diet. No more beans on toast. “I felt better, I slept better, and I put on my running shoes. Tweakd is designed for anyone like me.” He mentions the beetroot, carrot and ginger cold-pressed juice. “It’s delicious, but it screams, I’m doing you some good.” It’s all online and you can specify your performance goals – 100 miles cycling at the weekend or training for the next London marathon. “Or you can just enjoy the food for what it is.”

Meanwhile, Meziane is still cooking for England. “Nine times out of 10 I get to watch the game,” he says. “It’s the biggest perk of the job.”

@andymartinink