Savor Classics: Mushrooms

Mushrooms are a delicious, nutritious part of our diets, but they’ve more traditionally been a medicine -- and you definitely shouldn't eat wild mushrooms without an expert. In this classic episode, Anney and Lauren dig into the history and science of the fungus among us.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to favorite protection of iHeart Radio. I'm
Anny Rees and I'm lawin Vocal Mom. And today we
have a classic episode for you about mushrooms. Yes, and
look we've been We've talked a lot about mushrooms on
this show. Yeah. So so this, this initial generalized mushroom

(00:28):
episode aired in oh what's that date, February of I
don't even know when that was anymore. Um uh. And
since then we've done episodes on Chantrelle's truffles and morals. Um.
And honestly like, yeah, like we could keep going. We
we shall keep going. We must, we must because as

(00:53):
I was telling Lauren when when you suggested this, there's
been a lot of mushroom news lately. Yeah. And I
will tell you, um, I love mushrooms both as a
food but as a subject of interest. But they kind
of you know, only because of the last of us
or like in general. But that's a big piece of it,

(01:16):
which January not a sponsor, but I will be watching
the show comes out. Um. There has been a huge
wave of mushroom based horror. As I told you recently,
I have a whole list I could send um and uh,
I did see I think after we did the Truffles episode,

(01:37):
I watched the movie Pig with Nicholas Cage, which isn't horror,
but it kind of is touching on it. And this
weekend I went to go see the Menu and I
texted you about it, which is more horror. Yes, but
I think they did. Yeah, I think both of those
are considered um thrillers or perhaps suspense. But yes, from

(02:00):
I have not seen either, but from what I understand
that the Menu is straight up horror. Yeah, so it's
funny though I was watching, like, yeah, yeah, I have
I have some friends who all work in the same
kitchen together who who went to see that after one
of their recent and kind of grueling prep for Thanksgiving

(02:23):
work days, and apparently the theater was not prepared. Yeah,
it's a trip, it's a trip. But I was kind
of going over my nerdy like, here are some recent
mushroom facts, because mushrooms, do you get? They are involved
a lot in this kind of you know, the scene

(02:44):
that the Menu is making fun of, perhaps, but they're
also just cool and a lot of stuff is going on,
and there's been a lot of big mushroom based stories lately,
which I know sounds ridiculous. No, but but like the
like scientific research stories. Yeah, yes, so there was a
big one I'm really interested in, where um, scientists built

(03:07):
biodegradable computer chips using mushrooms. Okay, yeah, another one, Uh,
somebody used a synthboard I believe, hooked up to mushrooms
to make this music and it's pretty haunting sounding. Um,
but that was part of a larger study that we
were talking about. And we want to come back and

(03:28):
do a whole savior side dists'm use bouche or whatever
about all these mushrooms stories and they're like non food
related mushroom story. Yeah yeah, because right, I would. I
would go on for a solid twenty minutes about that.
It's I mean, we're only ostensibly a food show. So yeah,
and I thought the side dish side dishes can encompass

(03:49):
all kinds of things. That's what the men you taught me.
But but there there was really recent slash kind of
terrifying study about how mushrooms communicate, um and how they
it's like a music almost. It was really cool. It
was no joke, really really cool. Um, so we're going

(04:12):
to do that. Uh yeah, but this is kind of
this is like a amuse bouche for the amuse bouche.
It's a teaser with a throwback. Yeah, I do have
one quick correction. Um, when we first started into the
history section where we're talking about fungus more generally having

(04:33):
been a a a type of thing that was used
from like the dawn of heck and civilization in order
to produce things like wine and beer, um and and
and bread. And those were not literal mushroom wines or
meads or bread. They weren't made from mushrooms, but rather

(04:54):
fungal spores I mean, I mean cells, not sportes microbes
helped in the making of those products. Yeah, phonical spores, Lauren.
This is what breaks me out, but it's also cool.
So yes, that's that's fermentation. Yep, yep. Okay, well why

(05:19):
don't we let it pass? Any and Lauren take it away? Hello,
and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Any Rees and I'm
Lauren vocal Baum. And okay, we've got to We've got

(05:40):
a pop quiz at the top of the episode here. Yeah, yeah,
what is the largest organism on Earth? Dude? Do do
do? Do Do? Do? Do Do do? Actually, you probably knew the
answer right away based on what we're talking about. It
is a humongous honey fungus. Actually, I would not have

(06:00):
guessed that just from mushrooms being the title of the episode.
That's true. I knew it was a mushroom, but I
didn't know it was a honey fungus specifically. That's a
different thing. Well, it's located in Oregon, it's about two
point four miles long, what three point five kilometers? And uh,
that is one random fact of the episode that you

(06:24):
probably already knew. And one other trivia note. A fungus
aged forty million years is currently known as the oldest
organism to live on dry land. Yeah, a scientist said
in the Daily Mail article I read about it. It
fills an important gap in the evolution of life on

(06:44):
land and that it may have kick started life on earth. What. Yeah,
as this is a food show, we're going to be
talking about edible mushrooms today. Yes, if you if you
want to hear more about the psychedelic varieties. I believe
Eve that both stuff you should know and also stuff
to blow your mind have episodes about those. I do

(07:06):
not doubt it. So, Okay, mushrooms, what is it? I
love this code about them from edible mushrooms in their
creation without leaves, without buds, without flowers, yet they form
fruit as a food, as a tonic, as a medicine.
The entire creation is precious. That sounds very lovely. Yeah,

(07:29):
and or like a Tolkien like riddle. Uh okay, but
yeah so yes. Mushrooms are a type of fungus, neither
animal nor plant. They breathe oxygen and release carbon dioxide
like we do. They can grow above or in the ground,
with or without sunlight. They can't photosynthesize. They eat by

(07:51):
excreting digestive enzymes and then absorbing nutrients from the compounds
that those enzymes break down. But they don't have vascular systems.
They they grow similar to the way that plants do,
with new cells propagating out from developed cells, each with
its own cell wall, But those cell walls contain kitan
like animal cell walls do. Uh, basically like wtf nature, mushrooms,

(08:16):
what's going on right? More specifically, mushrooms are the edible
fruit of a larger fungus structure. Mushrooms produce spores that
sort of sort of like seeds, can spread on air
or water or moving creatures and grow into a new fungus.
They produce the spores in those kind of gill looking
structures on the underside of the cap. When a spore

(08:38):
lands in a suitably moist and nutritious area you know,
nice rotting bit of tree or a heap of manure,
I know, delicious, right, Um, it'll germinate and begin radiating
new cells outward from its central point. New cells only
grow on the tips of the older ones, so left
to its own devices, the fungus will usually grow out

(08:59):
from the center into this like flat circle of branched threads,
which over time can kind of cluster up into ropes.
Think of like a like a drink coaster made from
from lace or crochet doily. Okay, if your grandmother had those,
that's kind of sort of what this this root system
of of a of a mushroom amost like um like

(09:23):
your grandmother's do on a slightly larger scale. Generally um
that that sort of roots system is called a mycelium,
and it'll spread out underground or you know, through whatever
growth medium it's working with, and when it's developed enough
and the conditions are right, when the stars are right,
it'll shoot out fruit mushrooms to create spores and to

(09:43):
begin the life cycle again. By the way, the growth
pattern of fungi cells, you know, from the tips radiating
outward like I described, is why mushroom fery circles form. Oh,
the mushrooms pop up along the outer edges of the
underground circular my cellium, and grass tends to be greener
on the inside of these circles than on the outside

(10:05):
because the mycelium is breaking down compounds in the soil,
giving the grass that grows above it more available nutrients.
I was so in two fairy circles when I was
a kid, Right, aren't they great? They're so cute. Yeah,
I had a fairy house. I had this like little
bell to try to attract them. Did you see that
movie that they proved the photograph was fake? But okay, anyway,

(10:27):
point being, this was a lovely unexpected throwback. So if
we look at the types of mushrooms that you're likely
to find in stores, the button mushroom is the most cultivated,
but there are so many types, more than I realized. Technically.
Oh man, me too, You've got truffles was probably one

(10:49):
of the first ones few foodies thought of I don't
know um which Brilliot Severan, we've mentioned him before. He
named them the diamond in the aught of cookery. And
I had a question why truffles be so expensive. I
don't know, Well I do. It's because there's a lot
of work involved. Shuffle forgers use dogs and pigs that

(11:11):
are trained to recognize the smell of truffles, and when
they find them, a truffle farmer sort of treats it
like someone who has found a fossil, very carefully examining
the surroundings, cleaning, and then checking to see if it's ripe.
The farmer can't or shouldn't really touch them either, because
it might make it rot if it isn't ready. Oh yeah,

(11:32):
and they're underground in case you didn't gather that. Gather
that from what I was saying, Oh, truffle aside, you've
got portobello, chautaki, carmini, porcini, morals, oyster, button, king, trumpet,
chanter els and oki, caulifire, mushrooms, on and on and
on and on. Do you have a favorite type of mushroom?
Moren oh, all all of the above. Maybe maybe maybe

(11:55):
good good old like baby part of bellows yeah, which
which I guess is sometimes also called criminals. Yes, I
think so, Okay, there are over two thousand known species,
but it could be way more, and it's generally agreed upon.
We haven't found them all. I would say, definitely, we
haven't found them all. Yeah. Of those we widely eat

(12:19):
only about twenty five of them. Yeah. But but one
thing I read from Oxford Research, Encyclopedia's cited estimates of
up to five million, five million fecis of fun guy
on Earth. The most accepted estimate is one point five million.
From that, scientists suspect that mushrooms would make up about

(12:42):
one d and sixty thousand of that number, which means
we only know about ten of them. And I love this.
Using our current discovery rate, it would take about four
thousand years for us to discover them all. That's a
lot ste beautiful long discovery process. Yes, However, important to

(13:05):
this show, only about seven thousand of that sixty thousand
number are believed to be mushrooms that are edible. Oh okay,
yeah important, It's still quite a bit, I would say, yeah. Okay,
So while mushrooms do grow in the wild, for something
that just grows right on poop um. Industrial mushroom farming

(13:26):
is a serious technological undertaking. Farmers create these indoor environments
that they can control to best benefit their crops in
terms of temperature, humidity, light, growth media, and potential pests. First,
such a farmer might try to create a pure fungal
culture for a particular type of mushroom by germinating spores

(13:48):
um on on agar in vitro like in dishes and labs,
and then culturing the resulting threads in sterilized medium and
then further developing uh those those that that that growing
funga in a growth medium, and that growth medium thing alright,
So creating the best dirt or would for mushrooms to

(14:08):
grow in is a perhaps shockingly complex process. As I
was reading the research for it, it's very specific and
very industrial as everything is. But I was just like mushrooms,
they grow on dirt. Now the dirt of story, the
dirt is super specific. Mushroom farmers have always depended on
other producers by products to create their growth material. You know,

(14:31):
plant and animal waste composted to perfection. Delicious for mushrooms
that grow naturally on trees or logs like the chattake.
Farmers might prepare actual logs or create synthetic logs, which
are basically bags packed with a mixture of sawdust and
then supplements like a wheat brand or spent coffee grounds

(14:53):
or powdered corn cobs, or on and on um. Different
types of mushrooms bear different enzymes for break down specific substances,
so lots of different composting material could be used depending
on these species that you are growing. This media or
these media rather are often kept in blocks like crates
kind of with these clear side panels that you can

(15:15):
keep track of the growing my cellium. And these crates
can be stacked into these huge tall shelving units and
then moved into different areas of of your of your
indoor mushroom farm at different stages of development. Uh. Part
of some mushrooms development involves picking up hormonal cues from
nearby fungi. It's sort of like, oh, oh, hey, you're

(15:38):
you're making this type of cell. I'm gonna go ahead
and make this complimentary type of cell, and then they
can have beautiful mushroom babies together. Inter mushroom communication. Who
knew not me, not me? Uh so, yeah, it can
be really important to be able to move these crates. Um.
These crates are blocks of media plus my cellium are

(15:58):
sometimes called spawn in the industry. By the way, spawn, Yeah,
they probably each have really awesome little capes. I don't
know enough about the horror movie spawn to make a
joke about it, but there's some joke there. Somebody write
it for us. Please, yeah, right right in and let
us know what you got. The resulting mushrooms that um

(16:20):
spawn from the spawn are typically harvested by hand. Like
each mushroom is gently twisted and popped from the mycelium
and then packed up once they get to you. Mushrooms
are best stored in a paper bag or loosely wrapped
in paper towels that are then loosely wrapped in plastic.
It's best not to wash them because they soak up

(16:42):
moisture and might get all soggy. But if that makes
you twitchy, you can scrub them with a damp paper
towel or brins quickly with cold water in a colander.
That's what I do. I'm very glad to have read this,
because I always, like my mushrooms always get that gross,
slimy kind of Yeah. Now, I know. Do you have
favorite type of mushroom? I didn't ask you. In return,

(17:02):
I do and is chake. There's a place in Georgia
that they're usually at every farmers market mushrooms man mm
hmmm uh and Mushrooms are cultivated in over sixty countries.
In the year two thousand, the top producers were China,

(17:23):
the US, France, Poland and the Netherlands. You can find
mushrooms in places that otherwise don't have much else growing
in parts of Africa and Asia. Asian countries make use
of a wider variety of mushrooms accepted for eating. Yeah,
and China they eat up to seven hundred wild and
domesticated varieties. For the French, that number is closer to

(17:46):
two hundred types. The largest producer of commercial mushrooms, China,
produced twenty eight points three million tons in that's about
eight seven of the global market. The industry in China
employees thirty five million people. I'm just shaking my head,
which is working great on radio, I'm sure, but yes,

(18:08):
that's a that's gigantic. I love it. Worldwide, total mushroom
production in twelve was estimated at thirty one million tons,
valued at over twenty billion dollars US and mushrooms have
been getting more popular in the past few decades, with
total global production increasing annually at an average of like

(18:29):
thirt cent every year. During this whole time, crops of
the everyday button mushroom have decreased as other varieties have
become more popular and available. Yeah, one of the reasons
they're so popular is they're used both as a food
and a medicinal product. Surprised surprise, Mushrooms are high in protein, fiber,

(18:50):
and a whole bunch of nutrients while being low and fat,
so they're pretty good food choice. In general. They can
be a non animal source of vitamin D, which makes
them a particularly good choice for vegetarians, and like many
foods that we talk about, they have a long history
of being used as a preventatives and remedies for any

(19:12):
number of conditions. Various species and extracts of mushrooms are
being studied for just all all kinds of potential benefits,
including improving the immune system, improving the gut microbiome, inhibiting
the growth of cancer, protecting against neurodegeneration. As usual, though
a research is still preliminary and has not produced solid

(19:34):
evidence about any of these benefits. Yet eating mushrooms is
part of your diet certainly won't hurt and may help,
but talk to a doctor before trying extracts, and don't
buy into claims, especially like expensive claims that some particular
type of mushroom is going to be a magic fix
for whatever issue. Magic mushrooms are a separate thing. I

(19:55):
was about to say. I recently me NPR had a
story about um countries that still use mushrooms medicinally, So
if you're interested, you can go you can go check
that out. But in the meantime, we have a lot
of history to cover when it comes to mushrooms. But
first let's take a quick break for a word from

(20:17):
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you.
Humans have been eating mushrooms for a long time, probably

(20:38):
back to prehistoric folks and our hunter gatherer ancestors. This
is speculation, but generally agreed upon speculation. The world's oldest
human mummy, Otzi, the iceman of brad Pitt Tattoo fame,
about five thousand years old, had two types of mushrooms

(20:58):
on him that he was probably using one of them
medicinally and the other was included in a sort of
highly advanced for the time fire starting kit. Yeah. Part
of the reason why this is all speculation is that
mushrooms don't leave of fossil evidence or or not fossil.
They don't leave evidence the way that a lot of
other vegetative systems do. Yes, but by the Neolithic times,

(21:24):
fungi were used to make mead and other fermented beverages
like beer or wine. Mushroom meade. I want to drink
that immediately, mushroom meade new cocktail hour. Yes. Similarly, analysis
of yeast residue in drinking and or brewing vessels in
ancient Egypt seemed to indicate that, whether accidentally or on purpose,

(21:48):
fungi were used in beer and wine making as far
back as three thousand, six hundred fifty BC. Some of
this evidence was found in the tomb of a queen
containing a jar beer. Higher glyphs from around that time
called mushrooms a plant of immortality. Because of this, they

(22:09):
were largely reserved for royalty. We don't need our our
poor people being immortal ang us. Other things I read
about beliefs pen to mushrooms labeled them as granting superhuman
strength like super Mario. Oh man, do you think that's
where they got it from. I don't think so at all,
Probably not, but still that's exciting. Um that they could

(22:30):
aid in the search for something lost. So you eat
a mushroom, you're like, a ha uh. They could lead
your lost soul to the godly realm. Yeah. Up to
seven thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese knew about fun guy,
but it's more likely they used mushrooms again for medicinal
purposes rather than food. Some evidence indicates that the Chinese

(22:54):
started consuming mushrooms in nine dred BC. A lot of
ushroom varieties were first cultivated in China, certainly by the
time the Han dynasty came along. Around the Book of
Songs listed several edible mushrooms. In one a Japanese emperor

(23:15):
visiting China was offered edible mushrooms as as a welcoming gift.
Chinese physician wrote that the chatake was the elixir of life.
Around dred to sixteen hundred CE dates so hard to
pin down. Around this same period you could find written
instructions for cultivating mushrooms. The ancient Greeks used them. I

(23:39):
suppose alongside garlic to give strength to their warriors. Delicious strength.
I know, you get mushrooms and garlic. Perfect. However, mushroom
consumption was not without its problems. Both Euripides and Hippocrates
wrote about accidental mushroom poisoning in the fifth century b C.

(24:00):
And at last, we're talking about a food the ancient
Romans liked. What is it possible? Are we in the
olive oil episode? And I'm just confused. They called mushrooms
the food of the gods. They even had a designated
cooking vessel for them, and the legend goes a Grippa

(24:21):
used this vessel to feed poisonous mushrooms to kill her husband,
Emperor Claudius, to clear the path for her son Nero
to become rooms. Emperor wo Horace wrote around that they
were expensive delicacies, and Romans had integrated truffles into their

(24:42):
cuisine by the first entry CE. My favorite part about
it is that they believed that the answer to where
do truffles come from? Was a lightning strike hitting the
ground during thunderstorms. Wow, that's awesome. That's that's way more
metal than I think it actually is. But great. The
oldest cookbook we know of dating back to third century

(25:04):
Ce had a handful of brisipees using mushrooms. As for Japan,
mushrooms appear in text around seven, referring to much earlier
encounters with mushrooms, like the one in China mentioned above.
Jumping jumping way ahead to the sixteenth century, two verses

(25:26):
had been composed about mushrooms and mushroom gathering. The way
these mushrooms were being cultivated, by the way was on
rotting logs. In the case of ancient Rome and Greece,
they used slices of poplar tree trunk. This kind of
reminds me those mushrooms. Did you do this as a
kid that would grow on the logs and need to

(25:46):
stomp on and like that fog would come out? Was
that doing something potentially deadly? I would do it to
create dramatic effect in the stories, and I was telling
to no one in the words but myself. I grew
up in Ohio, so so we might have had a
different mushroom culture who didn't have smokey mushrooms. So occa,

(26:09):
All right, Well back to history. At records show that
the Vikings and Siberian Shamans used hallucinogenic mushrooms and religious
ceremonies circa one thousand CE and at least one thousand
years ago. Records exist that several types of fun guy,
including truffles, were being eaten in North Africa when the

(26:30):
Spanish arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century. They wrote
that the Aztecs used a mushroom, the name of which
translated to God's flesh. A book by an herbalist in
fifteen fifty two noted the Mayans used the same mushroom
for pain management. Some surviving Mayan manuscripts depicted mushrooms as sacred.

(26:53):
That same mushroom God's flesh later pops up in Bernardino
does the Hagoons sixteenth century book General History of the
Things in New Spain, as a hallucinogenic employed by the Aztecs.
He wrote that it incited luxury goodness. I know the

(27:14):
first reference book dedicated to mushrooms came out around this
time as well. And if we're talking straight up mushroom cultivation,
we've got to talk about the French. Oh, of course, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Renaissance era France enjoyed a truffles and their food sometimes

(27:34):
pickled or in sauces are served with butter. I know
you're wondering, and yes, they were seen as an afprodusiac question,
answered Louis Is four, and Napoleon adored them. France had
a habit of running a string through mushrooms and hanging
them in his room because he loved them so much.

(27:56):
He wants to smell. Yeah. At first I was confused too, Yeah,
I was like, sure, right, that was for the smelan.
He would just like grab one of his mouth and go.
They even had a way of transplanting them by these
by being super careful when handling and moving them. France
exported mushrooms to England beginning with the eighteenth century, and

(28:19):
the English also used horse maneuver, which I should have mentioned.
That's what the French were doing, um in their mushroom cultivation,
but they went a step further by stacking and composting. Yeah,
so similar to what we do today. The word mushroom
itself probably comes from an old French word musson from

(28:41):
the early fifteenth century, which may itself have been borrowed
from the Latin word muso, but we don't know what
that means. Apparently It might just mean mushroom. It might
just be a label for Hey, that thing mushroom. I
love it. It could be this word, and we don't
know which it means. I love this too. In the

(29:04):
eighteenth century, Voltaire wrote a dish of mushrooms changed the
destiny of Europe. What. Yes, he was referring to the
seventy death of the Holy Roman Roman Emperor Charles the
six The death cap mushroom was and is thought to
be the culprit of his demise, and in the wake

(29:26):
of it came the War of Austrian succession. Half a
death cap is toxic enough to kill a grown human.
Cooking does not reduce the toxicity, and they look like
other mushrooms you can eat, So look out. Do not
eat mushrooms that you find in the wild, unless you
are an absolute expert in not dying from eating mushrooms

(29:47):
that you have found in the wild. More more on
that later. But where still lived by? Yes, just wanted
to put it in here now in case, for some
reason you stop listening to this episode. Hey, to go outside,
see if I can find some mushrooms. Now, So that's
mushrooms in Europe and Asia. But what about mushrooms in

(30:08):
the US. M hmm, well, we'll tell you all about
it after one last quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So it
took a minute for America to start using mushrooms like

(30:32):
cooking wise specifically, and actually at first they were mostly
used in those recipes we talked about in the catchup
episode and condiment type recipes. Yes. Uh, this could be
because a lot of cookbooks available at the time warned
that some mushrooms were quote very poisonous, but didn't really
give any clarification on which ones that would keep me

(30:52):
away from them as well. However, once France got a
handle on mushroom cultivation in the seventies, America wanted to
emulates their cuisine, and we were all about some mushrooms
by the eighteen nineties, wonderfully called by some sources a
fungus frenzy, they became a bit of a fad. One

(31:13):
might join a mushrooming club. I would join a mushrooming club.
Info on recognizing mushroom types and how to cook them
was published to help Americans understand and utilize this new
to them ingredients. An entire cookbook devoted to mushroom recipes
was published in eight The forward reads the general opinion

(31:37):
in this country regarding mushrooms has been that, with one
or two exceptions, all forms of fungus growth are either
poisonous or unwholesome. Unwholesome, but it is very gratifying to
observe the change that is rapidly taking place in the
public mind. Soon public opinion will acknowledge that it is
an established fact that the great majority of the larger funguses,

(32:00):
especially of those that grow in fields and other open places,
is not only wholesome, but highly nutritious. Highly nutritious. As
mushrooms were catching on in the US, shuffle demand was skyrocketing.
In France, the demand and the price tripled up until
about this point. Mushroom spawn that that root like miceleum

(32:21):
system that mushrooms grow from, was collected from wild growing
specimen rather than grown like farmed purposefully, but in too
French scientists at the Pasteur Institute developed the first pure
culture spawn from spores they germinated in labs and grew
in sterile horse manure sterile horse I know right by

(32:46):
nine two a method for creating pure culture Spawn had
been published, and folks in the industry started working with
it to develop lots of different particular strains. In the
United States, one of the big players was Lambert's Americans
Bond Company. It's a great name for a company and
was marketing seven distinct pure strains of button mushrooms by seven.

(33:08):
They would move from Minnesota to Pennsylvania around nineteen fifteen,
which was the established heart of the American mushroom industry. Yes,
the ninety US Census listed five hundred sixteen mushroom cultivators
and three hundred and fifty were in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Nineteen thirty was the same year that the Mushroom Growers

(33:30):
Cooperative Association was founded. Pennsylvania State University would later get
in the game, researching ways from mushroom growers to increase productivity.
One of the inventions out of penn State was mushroom
spawn grown with grain instead of manure. Chester County is
also home to the American Mushroom Institute, the first meeting

(33:51):
of which took place on December four nine. Bad timing,
but after World War Two they started doing everything they
could to promote mushrooms. Ads and TV, radio, newspaper magazine. Meanwhile,
some of these uh culture spawn companies were having a

(34:12):
direct hand in the growing antibiotic industry because of the
because of the development of penicillin, these companies already were
working with fungus in labs, and so therefore they were
able to help the medical industry create all of these
new curatives. Cool In the nineteen sixties, the production of

(34:33):
grain based spawn was further developed into essentially the process
that's used today. And this artificial manure can be more
nutritionally complete than natural manure, could provide better natural structures
for the growing fungus, and most importantly, is more easy
to scale up industrially than a natural manure. I could

(34:57):
see that artificial manure the phrase that I never I
thought I would be saying out loud or even to myself.
That's just I had not conceived of that phrase. Well,
making dreams come true on this podcast. From one to six,
there was a seventy three point six percent increase in

(35:18):
mushroom protection. Yeah. In the nineteen eighties, The New York
Times is the first to write about kremini and portobello mushrooms,
both of which got a boost from some serious marketing power.
Previous to this the Portobello, which wasn't called the portobello,
and it's actually just an adult cremini, which is an
adult white button mushroom. Yes, we need to make it charted. Um.

(35:44):
It was a hard sell to the American public and
generally ended up getting tossed. Farmers didn't like them either.
One guy who grew them almost got fired by his
boss just for growing them. So marketers changed the name
to Portobello and it went from zero twohero no sales
to thirty million pounds in And this is one of

(36:06):
my favorite facts of the episode. No one is sure
where the name comes from, but the popular story is
some ads person made it up by coming up by
combining the words for beautiful and door, the Italian words
or depending on the spelling, beautiful ports. But the portobello
mushroom has no agreed upon spelling. What Yeah, it's a mushroom,

(36:28):
chaos it is. I was staring at my computer furiously
as if it could give me answers. You're telling me
if I was in a spelling bee. There are multiple answers.
I think there's four four different spellings that people use. Goodness,
get get, get your stuff together Portobello. See you said,

(36:50):
I said, Oh, if my braid cannot grapple with this,
it's gonna be okay, all right, okay, I'm out right,
um are you no? But I'll put on a brave face. Okay,
all right, um. In legislation was submitted to Congress in
the United States to create better marketing for for the

(37:12):
increasingly valuable mushroom industry, the Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer
Information Act. That is quite the title. This act eventually spawned,
uh sorry, the Mushroom Council, an organization that pulls funds
from mushroom producers and uses those funds to promote mushrooms
generically and if I may quote from their website because

(37:35):
I'm kind of delighted by marketing verbiage. Many different venues
are used to promote fresh mushrooms to consumers, such as
working with professional chefs and developing and promoting new recipes,
working with produced department managers to maintain the highest quality
mushroom product for customers, and sending out thousands of psures
each year to customers hungry for new mushroom ideas. Thanks

(37:56):
to the Mushroom Council, mushrooms have their own month to
be honored and eat in. September is National Mushroom Month,
National Mushroom, National mushroom. Yeah, mush mushroom, mush all of that.
One of their current promotions is called the Blend. It
encourages food service industry folks to try blending ground meat

(38:18):
with ground mushrooms for products like tacos and meatballs to
save money and calories. Oh I see. And in the
two thousands, a research at a Penn State demonstrated that
growers can increase one form of vitamin D that vitamin
D two in their mushrooms by subjecting the growing fungus
to bursts of UV radiation, thus making their products such

(38:41):
a good choice for vegetarians who would otherwise miss out
on this nutrient through their diet. It's really only found
in meat other than mushrooms that have been exposed to
UV radiation. Um, and it's different from vitamin D three,
which is the one that our bodies produced from sunlight
exposure to the skin. So yeah, I imagine the Mushroom

(39:02):
Council as like a bunch of toads from Mario sitting
around this round table and talking about whether, like what
type of mushroom they need to promote. Next. Well, there there,
there are. There are nine council members. I can't Oh
my goodness, I think we've stumbled onto something here, Lauren,

(39:23):
does anyone have any pictures of these council members? M
m m. Well, we'll put a pin to come back
to that later. For now, let's talk about the environment. Yeah.
One of the cool things about mushroom farming is that
it can be a really great way to put agricultural
waste to use instead of having to dump it or

(39:44):
burn it. I mean, of course, mushrooms do leave some
waste themselves. They don't like, completely destroy anything that you
put in their path. That's a different horror movie entirely. Yeah.
Um and industry researchers recently coined the term micro restoration,
meaning of using mushrooms greater fungal structures to help restore

(40:05):
damaged environments by filtering talksic waste and microorganisms from the
soil or the air, by controlling insect populations, or by
just creating more nutrients for plant life. H Well, now
you might be thinking these mushroom things sound pretty cool.
Maybe I'll let's go out. Let's go ahead and get
some right now, let's go full from the ground. Hold

(40:28):
up a minute. So you might have heard a thing
or two recently about mushroom foraging. I know it has
come up several times around the office here when we
were discussing videos we could do for food stuff. Apparently
there's a big group in Atlanta that, yes, and it's
this thing where people sometimes in groups are as part
of mushroom clubs, go out and look for edible mushrooms

(40:51):
and cities in the woods, in the backyard wherever. Um.
I feel like it's gotten pretty popular over the past
couple of years. But this is not something you should
just pick up. Um. You need to be informed about
the mushrooms in your area, really informed. Yes, if this
is something you're interested in, totally pursue it. See if

(41:12):
there's a club or a my cologists in your area.
But do not do this just looking at your phone
like this is like this mushroom here, I think I
can eat it. No, no, no no, no, because some some
things that look like little harmless white button mushrooms will
kill you. Yes, So don't do that. It is dangerous. Um.
There are several when I was looking into this, there
are several that look like kinds that you can't eat,

(41:33):
that you cannot eat. Um. So I mean, if you're
just looking at picking them up, I don't know, I
don't know. You just want to you just want to
find them, If you just want to like poke them, Yeah,
that's fine. But you're planning on eating them, Yeah, take
percaution because if you're asking yourself if there's a way
to tell if a mushroom is poisonous, no, nope, unless

(41:56):
you're on beyond the shadow of a shadow of a doubt,
you know what you're new doing. Don't eat a strange mushroom. Further, Yeah,
a lot of anecdotal rules about the mushrooms you can
and cannot eat are not true. So yeah, no, I
love this. I don't know if it's true, but according
to some things that are out on the internet, there's

(42:17):
an adage out of the Czech Republic saying that goes
every mushroom is edible, but some only ones. It sounds
like something my dad would say, and that brings us
to the end of this classic episode. We hope that
you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed doing it

(42:38):
and revisiting it, and very much are excited about delving
into these these mushroom news stories. Oh yes, yes, But
in the meanwhile, if you would like to get in
touch with us, you can yes and send does any
any mushroom news stories you think we should cover or
anything in that realm? Yes, you can email us. Our

(43:03):
email is hello at favorite pod dot com. So we're
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at Saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Saber is production of I Heart Radio
four more podcasts from our heart Radio. You can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you

(43:24):
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way