"Here is a simple experiment we did one summer afternoon in Kamilche Point, Washington. We compared several forms of organically grown shiitake mushrooms, which had starting level of 100 IU/100 grams. We compared the vitamin D levels of three sets of mushrooms, all from the same crop. The first was grown and dried indoors. The second set was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing down. The third set of mushrooms was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing upwards for full sun exposure. The most vitamin D was found in shiitake dried with gills up that were exposed to sunlight for two days, six hours per day. The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams (see chart). Their stems, though, produced very little vitamin D, only about 900 IU. Notably, vitamin D levels dropped on the third day, probably due to over-exposure to UV."
It's worth noting that this is Paul Stamets' work. He's definitely worth the google search if you've never heard of him and are into this sort of thing - super interesting guy. He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.
Interestingly enough I did a deep dive on mushrooms and vitamin D about a month ago. You can easily find a lot of papers that demonstrate sunlight and vitamin D with mushrooms, so don't take the unofficial training as a knock (we should always be skeptical, but verification exists).
It's all about UV light. Some producers are now using UV to help increase the vitamin D of their mushrooms (along with killing bacteria) but they can also quickly lose it when in the fridge. So just set them out on the windowsill 15-90 minutes before you use them. The more the better. Surprisingly this even works for dried mushrooms, so just build the habit. If you don't, you basically shouldn't expect to be getting meaningful amounts of vitamin D from your mushrooms. The effects are this large.
In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.
> In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.
This is how they do it in Chinese soups, but honestly I haven't personally seen other cultures use dried mushrooms.
I suspect they mean "dry" as in "not damp from washing" not "dry" as in "dehydrated". Lots of people wash their mushrooms, which can lead to them cooking down soggy.
You're closer, but I specifically mean to take your fresh mushrooms and throw them into the skillet without any oil (or water). Using dehydrated mushrooms in soups is kinda a shortcut to this.
Though the above comment mentioned Chinese soups and we should recognize that they often use wood ear, which is a different class of mushrooms than most westerners are used to. Wood ear are jellies whereas most western cuisine uses mushrooms with caps and stems (cremini, chanterelles, morels). Still, in general I recommend dry sauteing mushrooms before adding them to the rest of your dish.
More detailed cooking explanation:
Mushrooms are mostly water and air (i.e. a sponge), which is why the traditional French cooking methods tell you to not wash your mushrooms but to clean dry. So recognizing that these are mostly water, really we want to draw the water out, heat (break down cell walls), and then rehydrate with something more flavorful. Most people fuck up on the first step, by using too high of a heat or using something that the mushroom absorbs (oil or water). You start low heat, then the mushrooms release their water, you then bring the heat up to evaporate the water (now cooking the mushrooms). After that, your options change and you need to decide if you want to just brown the mushrooms with oil and seasoning or add them to a sauce or soup. The former will maintain a lot of mushroom flavor but also that nice fat and seasoning. The latter is going to absorb your sauce and add texture and add umami flavor. Either way, you generally reduce the heat here. But I cannot stress enough how mushrooms are sponges and you have to cook under this paradigm. It's like the difference between cooking french toast with bread straight from the loaf or using bread that has been left overnight (or a bit stale). Though maybe this is a bad comparison because a lot of people don't use stale bread for french toast either, despite that being a major part of its history.
I usually look at all the gunk on the mushrooms, and knowing they're grown in a chicken poop mixture, wash them anyway. Probably not better than a good wipe but I can't help myself.
Rinsing them is absolutely fine. The "food science" recommendation around cooking mushrooms has changed in the last few years. Many cooks are seeing good results by starting to sautee the mushrooms in water and only cooking with oil once the water has boiled off. This enables the air pockets to collapse and for a lot of the moisture to evaporate so you end up needing significantly less fats. I've switched to this method myself, and I've been very happy with the results.
Might well depend on the species as to which conditions are most favorable, but AIUI most of your farmed mushrooms are grown on other-than-poop substrates: grain, straw, wood and wood pellets, coffee grounds, shredded coconut husk.
Probably still a good idea to clean them off, though: none of those other things are particularly tasty :)
Most mushrooms you eat aren't coprophilous fungi. You're probably thinking of some variants of magic mushrooms (not all magic mushrooms grow on dung).
The mushrooms you're eating grow from the dirt. If you're into mushrooms, you'll probably also have mushrooms that grow on trees. But unless you're looking to trip, you're not getting poop shrooms.
Many Southeast Asian cultures dry mushrooms. I would suppose, purely based upon the scarcity of winter foods, that northern cultures (Korea through Siberia, the Altai, Central Asia, Russia and Nordics) would also.
Is this a problem a lot of people have, the slimy mushroom thing? I don't do anything special or careful at all with mushrooms; I rinse them off, maybe halfheatedly salad-spin them, chop them up and put them in a hot pan with some fat. I've never had a slimy one.
I used to carefully clean my mushrooms with a brush to keep them dry so they wouldn’t end up slimy. But someone told me that was a myth and I decided to try just quickly rinsing them instead. Never resulted in slimy mushrooms, and I was shocked at how much crap ended up in the rinse water.
Parboiling is often a critical step for certain mushroom species to remove toxins. But that's probably only relevant if you're foraging outside your local grocer.
Tbh, it mostly comes from people using too much oil. I have a longer description of my preferred cooking method above, though I should add that I still love them when cooked the normal way.
Glass blocks UV-B and UV-C, but not UV-A (unless you have a film). Many mushrooms can be enriched with UV-A, but UV-B is best. So yes, I agree, better to place outside in direct sun (or window open). But building the habit is the harder part for people tbh.
Glass doesn't block UV A so that might not be the case, don't know in particular which type of UV rays the mushrooms need to produce vitamin D however.
“He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.”
As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion.
There are plenty of brilliant professional scientists. There are also a lot of idiots in science.
There are also a lot of brilliant people who decided that the scientific path was too restrictive or outright false, so they (brilliantly) invested their own scientific life force externally
Having a science degree doesn’t make one less fallible to mistakes. If anything it makes people more likely to fudge to get ahead.
> As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion.
I would take a lot of science with a grain of salt too. Looking at the recent peanut butter allergy studies for example. Original 2016 study used 10 jewish children in Britain vs. 10 jewish Children in Israel. This study caused policy change around the world. Australia went from under 25% to over 80% of people feeding their children peanut butter under the age of 1. It had no discernible effect on allergies to peanut butter at all. They've followed it up with a larger study, 100 jewish kids in Britain vs. 100 jewish kids in Israel to prove out their original theory.
“That trial, involving hundreds of babies under a year old at high risk for developing peanut allergy, established that kids could be protected by regularly eating a popular peanut butter-flavored Israeli snack called Bamba. A follow-up study later showed those kids remained allergy-free even after avoiding peanuts for a year.
Under the new recommendations, published simultaneously in six journals including the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, all infants who don’t already test positive for a peanut allergy are encouraged to eat peanut-enriched foods soon after they’ve tried a few other solid foods.”
I get that it's the recommended path, it's been recommended since that first study in Australia and has had zero effect on peanut allergy rates even though # of people feeding peanut butter to their children under 1 has increased significantly.
Honest Q, Is that true? I mean, A) that since this study in 2015 or so, there’s been no decline in the prevalence of peanut allergies in the relevant populations? B) people are in fact submitting their children to disciplined exposure in a significant (enough) quantity?
From the study[1]: "Several years ago, we found that the risk of the development of peanut allergy was 10 times as high among Jewish children in the United Kingdom as it was in Israeli children of similar ancestry. This observation correlated with a striking difference in the time at which peanuts are introduced in the diet in these countries: in the United Kingdom infants typically do not consume peanut-based foods in the first year of life, whereas in Israel, peanut-based foods are usually introduced in the diet when infants are approximately 7 months of age"
So, the difference in real-world outcomes amongst Jewish populations in different countries inspired this study.
The person in question is definitely a good example of someone you SHOULD take with more than a grain of salt. From what I could gather (mainly from /r/mycology) he's not really well respected in his field, and seems to be rather a salesman who draws premature conclusions and evangelises them. The Netflix documentary with him also had my "this sounds too good to be true" sensors going off more or less constantly.
Do you have any logical reason to not trust him or is it simply “I have a feeling”
I don’t know I can’t say. But scientists in academia and in national labs are salesmen for themselves and their research too, so I think you’re possibly giving him too hard a time compared to them
stamets strikes me as a well-intentioned enthusiast who is more scientific than most. He did a ton of work on the actual techniques used today in a lot of commercial production and is a really interesting guy. It's also evident that he has sampled a little too much of his own more 'exotic' product.
In the documentary (I'm assuming Fantastic Fungi), he came off as one of those types that are first and foremost making money off it, but also believes some of what he's saying. I honestly just wanted that documentary to just be a Planet Earth style thing with mushroom footage, and less talking heads.
We've bought an oyster mushroom kit from him, as well as some soil inoculum. From an ecological standpoint I wonder how genetically diverse his inoculum strains are, and whether they can crowd out native strains of fungi.
I am open to the idea that someone from a background outside of academia could come up with some really brilliant scientific work. I just know that I am not capable of discerning what is solid science in fields different from my own so I typically rely on signals like an academic background (although not exclusively) to help me gauge the trustworthiness of a claim.
Stamets makes some extraordinary health claims about mushrooms that afaik have never been clinically tested (ex. anticancer and antiviral applications). I think a grain of salt is appropriate in this case - but he could be entirely right!
> He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.
Credentialing doesn't / shouldn't matter for science. The science should stand on it's own as long as you follow the scientific method, document your assumptions & results, and do work that is reproducible. Bonus points for good peer review. We should reserve the "grains of salt" for people who are sloppy or have been provably bad actors. </soapbox from someone who is "educated as a scientist">
I actually appreciate his wealth of knowledge (Paul Stamets) and his presentation of facts, often I learn a lot and his holistic approach is something that most universities would find impossible to implement as curricula. While not a classically-trained scientist, he is an erudite scholar of the highest caliber and his continual contributions to science and furthering our understanding of the natural world more closely correlates to the inceptive motivations of Science than would be found in the modern day tower of ivory.
> The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 gram
Isn't 46000 IU well into the dangerous range? This procedure sounds like an easy way to poison your liver.
The number I found says 4000 IU is a recommended max. You could say that you should only eat <10 grams then, but how much variability is there in the amount?
In many countries, the standard of care for low vitamin D is a bolus dose of 60K IU once a month is perfectly fine. It's only a problem if you were eating this much every day.
The "100 IU/100 grams" starting point is with fresh mushrooms, before they were dried. It's not clear to me from the article whether "46,000 IU/100 grams" is per 100g of the fresh mushroom input or per 100g of the dried mushroom output. Mushrooms are ~80-90% water so it makes a big difference.
It makes a big difference, but even if you removed 90% of the fresh mushroom's weight without changing vitamin D levels, you'd still only have 1000 IU / 100 grams.
Thanks. If that's it, it doesn't sound that amazing or accurate:
> A nonspecific test merely indicates that any of several in a category of substances is present. Although a nonspecific test could statistically suggest the identity of the substance, this could lead to false positive identification. However, the high temperatures (300°C) used in the GC-MS injection port (and oven) can result in thermal degradation of injected molecules,[3] thus resulting in the measurement of degradation products instead of the actual molecule(s) of interest.
I think vit. D is generated from a reaction of a protein with UVB.
UVA is rather destructive, so I would assume that’s what’s going on — to much UV-A on a part of the shroom that by design is shielded from direct exposure, is basically breaking everything down.
This is touched on in the article, but these mushrooms would have vitamin D2. Studies find that supplementation with vitamin D3 is more effective(lower dose for the same effect) and longer lasting on blood vitamin D levels than vitamin D2. So frequently eating enough of the mushrooms would be important if facing a vitamin D deficiency.
So, for those who just want to get the Vitamin D, from the article:
1) Obtain fresh Organic shiitake, maitake, button, oyster, shimeji or other mushrooms.
2) On a sunny day in June, July or August, slice the fresh mushrooms. Place them evenly on a tray exposed directly to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
3) Before nightfall, cover the mushrooms with a layer of cardboard to block moisture from dewfall.
4) The next clear day repeat exposure to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
5) Remove the mushrooms and finish drying (if necessary in a food dehydrator until they are crispy).
6) When thoroughly dry, store in a glass jar or sealed container. Adding a tablespoon of uncooked rice as a moisture absorber will help keep the mushrooms dry. The mushrooms should be good for a year or more, depending upon conditions.
7) Take 10 grams daily per person, about a small handful. Rehydrate in water for one hour. The mushrooms will swell. Then cook as desired.
For the rest of us:
1) Obtain mushrooms.
2) slice the fresh mushrooms. Place them evenly on a tray exposed directly to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
3) Take them inside before nightfall, so they do not get dew on them.
4) The next clear day repeat exposure to the sun from 10 am to 4 pm.
5) Remove the mushrooms and finish drying (probably in the oven on warm setting).
6) When thoroughly dry, store in a sealed container.
7) Eat about a small handful a day. You can rehydrate in water for one hour. The mushrooms will swell. Then cook as desired.
There is another option which is just take a vitamin D supplement because there should be no difference. Or even better get sun because there does seem to be a difference there and your body autoregulates the vitamin D.
Last time this discussion came up, someone pointed out there's a significant difference actually. If I recall correctly, there's three different kinds of vitamin D, D1, D2 and D3, and there's a fairly big gap in the bioavailability of synthetic vs animal-based vitamin D. I can't find that comment right now though, so take this with a pinch of salt.
D3 is more effective in raising serum levels of vitamin D (87% more efficient according to [0]). However, D2 still helps and can be fine for people who aren't very deficient.
Also, there is D3 from non-animal sources. Although most D3 supplements are from lanolin (the fatty coating of sheep's wool), there are some plant-based D3. Most of the ones I've seen are derived from lichen (ex. [1]).
I mean the following more to elucidate than criticize.
A minor point of clarification (admittedly rather pedantic though in line with the many comments in this discussion which relate to scientific rigor) but the statements indicating lichen sourced D3 is plant-based can be misleading. While many lichens contain one or more algae species/strains (hence containing a plant) some do not. Some lichens contain cyanobacteria as their sole photosynthesizing member in symbiosis with fungi (ie. no plant involved.) I don't know the specifics of the lichen source for vitamin D3 production. So a plant may or may not be involved.
Based on vitamin D being produced by other fungi than lichens and no (known to me) plant source of D3 I'll venture a guess that the source of the D3 in lichens is from the fungal component. If this holds true then claiming lichen sourced D3 is plant-based is a bit of a stretch.
Of course a popular reading of "plant-based" as used in current diet marketing -which seems to mean anything not derived from an animal- could hold. But marketing speak is anything but scientific.
[Quick searches didn't lead me to clarity on whether algae are part of the lichens used for commercial D3 production. I do wonder why lichens were chosen over mushrooms. I'd have thought mushrooms would have multiple advantages.]
PSMS (Puget Sound Mycolological Society) member here...
Stamets is widely regarded as a crank and makes a lot of mostly unsubstantiated claims about fungi. He is a fun guy (lol fungi) to talk to but you can't take anything he says too seriously. At least without further research of your own. Stamets is an interesting speaker, as far as I know always welcome at PSMS events, but the default impression most people in the pacific northwest mycology community have of stamets is that he confabulates a lot.
My body stopped making Vitamin D on its own. Taking D3/K supplements was a life saver and for seasonal affective disorder. And now I seem to be back to typical levels with just sun exposure.
How do you know for sure your body stopped producing Vitamin D? Are you going out in the morning? That's when your get vitamin D, almost nothing in the afternoon.
How do you know for sure your body stopped producing Vitamin D?
Not who you are asking, but most folks find out with blood tests. It is also pretty common for folks to produce less as they age, and it isn't a small difference.
Are you going out in the morning? That's when your get vitamin D, almost nothing in the afternoon.
This just isn't true. How much you get is going to depend on the angle and strength of the sunlight, the amount you get, the amount of skin exposed, and the color of your skin. (dark skin produces less than light skin, and makes it difficult to produce enough the further north/south you are).
The angle of the sun is vital, which is affected by time of day, time of year, and your latitude. This is a chart showing time of day and year on the UV index, for a given latitude (NYC so about 41°N) https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/... (PDF)
Yes it looks like what I read in the past was wrong and you are right, it's about the angle of how the sunlight passes the atmosphere. Also about the cholesterol oil your skin produce and what you said.
Where are you getting this information? My understanding is that Vitamin D production in the body is correlated with the directness of the exposure to the sun - therefore the most D is made at solar noon.
Yes and for example in central europe, you won't get enough UV-B from the sun in the winter months at all, as it is filtered out by the atmosphere (low angle, more atmosphere to pass through). But in the sommer, one still should avoid the sun at noon, because of sun burns.
I'm not sure where I read that but it turns out to be wrong, after reading a bit it seems noon is a good time but is also the most dangerous time due of the high amount amount of UVB.
Nit but if you have an article with a fake name in the byline that's not a deepfake. That would just be an alias or misinformation but a deepfake gets its name from the deep neural net used to create fake images of real people.
1. Many people do not get enough sun exposure to create their own vitamin D.
2. Some bodies produce more Vitamin D for the same amount of sun exposure as other bodies. For example, darker skin produces less vitamin D.
3. Some bodies convert Vitamin D into other useful compounds less efficiently than others. This is commonly done in the liver and kidneys.
4. Those with Vitamin D deficiencies have problems with their muscles, bones, and immune systems. We do not fully understand the impact of Vitamin D, but it also seems to have an impact on mental health, and is a key part of SAD.
Contrary to popular belief vitamin D is a hormone. Hormones are your body's chemical messengers. Having a deficiency in a hormone can have a lot of negative effects.
There are two sources of vitamin D: food & supplements and synthesis by the body in the skin on exposure to ultraviolet rays from the sun. Since a lot of us spend a lot of time indoor or behind glass (which blocks the necessary wavelengths) it's important to monitor it.
People with darker skin also need more sun exposure to get the required healthy levels. People living in areas where winters are very dark and very long are also at risk of deficiency.
Um… search pubmed for vitamin D. It plays an essential role in arming and activating the immune system. Low vitamin d is associated with increased risk of cancer heart disease and overall mortality.
Does anyone have any idea how consuming this "Vitamin D enriched mushroom" can be compared to taking a vitamin D supplement? Are they absorbed by the body in the same way? Also wondering compared to just being out in the sunlight yourself
Mushrooms produce vitamin D2. Animals produce vitamin D3 endogenously. There's no medical literature in aware of showing that vitamin D2 is equally useful to the human body.
45,000 IU is quite a lot though. I think the highest supplement of D3 you can buy is 10,000 IU.
There’s also a question about if D3 protects against heart disease (saw the article on pubmed) don’t have it handy. The different D vitamins might behave differently.
The key insight is you can get vitamin d from sun dried mushrooms. I would not have expected that.
One of the problems with supplementing vitamin D is that vitamin D is made from cholesterol. There are certainly some benefits to supplementing vitamin D, but if you get it exogenously rather than manufacture it, your cholesterol will be higher.
Not that cholesterol is anywhere close to the demon it's made out to be, but there is a (much higher than generally accepted) point of having too much where mortality risk increases.
Dietary cholesterol isn't really a major contributor to blood cholesterol, especially if you're getting it in foods that are not full of saturated fats.
People eating ketogenic/carnivorous diets for autoimmune or blood sugar issues have much higher LDL volumes (although their LDL particles are also fluffier and less oxidized)
German reporting in. According to Weatherspark [1] starting November to March around 70% of the days are cloudy and it's cold so you would barely expose 15% of your body to the remaining sun. In feburary, around midday, on a cloudy day you don't make enough vitamin d. And even on a cloudless day it takes more than 4 hours around midday to get the daily recommended dose. [2]. Being a dog owner I spend a lot of time outside, also during midday and 3/4 of the year I go for a run around midday every other day. Last year in january I was diagnosed with severe vitamin D deficiency at around 6ng/ml. Took a few months to get that back to normal using supplements.
At higher latitudes you can only get vitamin D from the sun for a few months of the year. In winter, the sun is too low in the sky, and the UV wavelengths needed to produce the vitamin D is entirely blocked by the atmosphere(though unfortunately the UV for sunburns is not).
This is a method of "storing" summer vitamin D for winter consumption.
I live in Minnesota and the sun just came out in the beginning of May. I feel like I haven't felt real sun exposure since maybe October of last year. Let me tell you, I definitely take vitamin D supplements in the cold season!
As an aside, I also drink Mushroom Hero tea all winter. Love that stuff.
I wear long sleeves or a light jacket for most of the summer, so it doesn't always matter. And it is pointless in winter - 4.5 hours between sunrise and sunset, with the sun at a low angle. I'm fairly far north.
Not just the darkness, but the necessary UV wavelengths literally can't reach you in the middle of that day without a cloud in the sky for some parts of the year at higher latitudes.
"Here is a simple experiment we did one summer afternoon in Kamilche Point, Washington. We compared several forms of organically grown shiitake mushrooms, which had starting level of 100 IU/100 grams. We compared the vitamin D levels of three sets of mushrooms, all from the same crop. The first was grown and dried indoors. The second set was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing down. The third set of mushrooms was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing upwards for full sun exposure. The most vitamin D was found in shiitake dried with gills up that were exposed to sunlight for two days, six hours per day. The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams (see chart). Their stems, though, produced very little vitamin D, only about 900 IU. Notably, vitamin D levels dropped on the third day, probably due to over-exposure to UV."
It's worth noting that this is Paul Stamets' work. He's definitely worth the google search if you've never heard of him and are into this sort of thing - super interesting guy. He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.