Getting to Health: Mushrooms

Mushrooms are known for their health benefits and with a savoury umami taste and meaty texture they can be a great alternative to meat in meals. Including a variety of different mushrooms in your diet is as important as including more fruit and vegetables.

Mushrooms are often regarded as vegetables but they are not. They are not even plants! All mushrooms are fungi and they produce spores, similar to pollen or seeds. Mushrooms typically live in soil or wood.

Compounds in mushrooms help the growth of beneficial gut bacteria and promote a favourable gut environment. This is important because a healthy gut plays an important role in maintaining our immune defences, digesting our food as well as communicating with the brain through nerves and hormones.

There are a whole range of different types of mushroom: some edible and some poisonous, so you need to know what you are eating. Well-known edible species include button, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms; and you may be familiar with the names of some of the ‘functional’ or medicinal mushrooms such as reishi, chaga, and lion’s mane. Many of the species that are known overseas aren’t found in NZ and our biosecurity rules mean that those that aren’t found here naturally can only be brought into the country in powdered form.

I previously discovered that we have a native lion’s mane mushroom called pekepeke-kiore that was being researched by a local company called Mushrooms by the Sea. They showed that it has some unique compounds as well as the better known lion’s mane ones and have started producing it commercially. They also produce home growing kits for pekepeke-kiore, pink oyster mushroom, Raglan oyster mushroom, Phoenix oyster mushroom, Shiitake and (sometimes) Golden Enoki.

I have grown button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and pekepeke-kiore at home before. Unfortunately while I was dealing with gut issues as a result of long covid, I had to follow a severely reduced diet and that meant no mushrooms. But then, I discovered the FODMAP App that has a traffic light system that enables you to eat smaller amounts of some of the problem foods – and Oyster Mushrooms were okay (other mushrooms weren’t).

So I bought myself a new growing kit and delighted at being able to include mushrooms back in my diet. The first crop was much more than I could eat so (as I’ve been doing with many things recently) I tried dehydrating them – successfully.

This also coincided with my exploration of making herb and spice blends so that I could add them more easily to my food. I found several recipes for Umami Mushroom Seasoning: grinding the mushrooms into a powder and including them in a spice blend that could easily be added to soups, stews or whatever else you fancy. Here’s the first one I made (avoiding the onion powder for the moment). You can vary the mushrooms according to taste or make a mixture. Mine is oyster mushroom for the moment. You can also mix up the herbs and spices to suit your tastes.

1/2 cup finely ground dried mushrooms
[1/4 cup onion powder]
2 tbsp mustard powder
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp paprika or chilli flakes
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp thyme

You can buy a variety of different functional/medicinal mushroom species in powdered form. Check to make sure that they have been sustainably produced or harvested.

I have been using The Apothecary’s Magic Mushroom Mix (Reishi, Shiitake, Maitaki) to help build my immunity from the gut upwards. You take 1 heaped teaspoon of the mushroom mix daily in water, juice, coffee or milk.

Mushrooms by the Sea’s NZ Lion’s Mane extract MYND for brain health and performance. It can be used to aid focus, memory & cognition. Take a quarter teaspoon per day in your beverage or food of choice.

Wildcrafted have a great range of different mushrooms available for vitality, relaxation, and more. There are also great descriptions of the benefits of the different functional mushrooms.