Fungi: Our Foodiest Friend and Foe

Food. We take it for granted. We grow up with food. We shop for food. We sometimes grow food. But we always expect to have food to eat when it is time for our next meal. Food is ubiquitous in our daily lives, although that was not always so.

Not so long ago even western nations had many starving people. The Great Depression of the 1930s struck the entire world and once-prosperous civilizations nearly crumbled beneath the weight of their hungry, homeless teeming multitudes. In those days food was considered a luxury by many. You were lucky to receive 3 full meals a day; many people often had to subsist on far less.

In those challenging times most people were glad to eat a high-carbohydrate meal consisting of bread, potatoes, and maybe some cheap meat. They did not worry about eating gourmet foods. And most westerners had not yet caught on to the Asian gourmet cuisines yet anyway.

Some really obscure foods might include recipes for using shiitake mushrooms, a favorite with Japanese-inspired cuisines today. Shiitake mushrooms are indigenous throughout eastern Asia and are enjoyed in many countries; this interesting fungus is even used in traditional medicine.

Whether you call it the "black forest mushroom" or the "golden oak mushroom", the shiitake mushroom is enjoyed by millions of people around the globe today.

It is a fact that mushroom recipes are becoming more popular with people today. We don't just take our mushrooms on pizza -- we stuff them, sautee them, and use them as garnishes. Mushrooms (and other forms of fungus) are even popular substitutes for red meat.

In fact, you might think of a "mushroom burger" as a beef-burger topped with mushrooms -- and in many restaurants it is. But some people just make the whole burger out of mushrooms. You might also find recipes for foods like teriyake beef noodles that use mushrooms and other meat alternatives.

You may never even have thought of mixing mushrooms with eggs, but some people eat mushroom omelets for breakfast. Mmm. Smells good from here, too.

We did not turn to eating mushrooms because we were starving. We turned to eating musrhooms because they can be prepared in a delicious way. But mushrooms must be carefully cultivated. It is an unfortunate fact that whole families have been sickened, sometimes died together, after picking wild mushrooms they thought were safe to eat.

Only an experienced Mycologist (someone who specializes in the study of mushrooms) can know for sure which wild mushrooms are safe to eat. There are, in fact, so many as-yet unnamed species of fungi that experts believe we'll be discovering and cataloging them for decades to come.