Health Benefits of Mushrooms

There is a popular saying in China that tells us vividly about the trend of healthy eating habit in today’s world.  While eating the two legs is healthier than eating the four legs, taking the one leg is even better.  I guess most people know what the “four legs” and “two legs” refer to, but what is this “one leg” thing? The answer is ... MUSHROOOOOM.

In this post, I’d like to share with everyone the nutrition and health benefits of the mushrooms in general, and of the exotic species that our farm is growing. We don’t grow white button but it is added in this post because it is the most popular kind in Canada.

To help people visualize and compare, I collected the major (not all) nutritional value of oyster, enoki, king oyster mushroom and white button from a food nutrition website and copied them into one table attached to the end of this post.  Some of the data may be slightly different from what you see but it shouldn’t be too far off.

So here are the common nutrition attributes of edible mushrooms:

• Low in calories
• Low fat
• Cholesterol-free
• Gluten-free
• Higher protein than vegetables and fruits
• Source of many important minerals
• Source of multivitamins

I’m going to mention a few types of minerals and vitamins, which I find very interesting to know.  I also did some research and calculation as to how much mushrooms we need to take to meet the daily requirement of that element for our bodies.  You can find the health benefits of these minerals and vitamins easily from the internet as most are very well known.

1.  Vitamin D

Mushroom is the only source of vitamin D in the produce aisle.  Surprise, isn’t it?  You will probably ask why Vitamin D was NOT listed in my mushroom nutritional fact table.  This is BECAUSE it does not naturally contain vitamin D BUT it can produce vitamin D after being exposed to the sun or UV light.  So here is a little health tip for you:  put the mushrooms under the sun for an hour before you cook them.

The study shows that for adults a handful of sun-shine fresh mushrooms (100 to 120 grams) per day turned out to have the same effect as taking vitamin D supplements.

2.  Potassium

Mushrooms are rich in potassium.  Some mushrooms even contain more potassium than bananas that are well known for its high potassium.  Mushrooms themselves are not sufficient for the required daily amount of potassium unless you can eat over 1 kilogram of mushrooms every day.  But adding some to your meal definitely helps to reach the target.

3.  Protein

Mushrooms have 18 kinds of amino acids of which 8 are required by human being. While vegetables lack one or two, meat have all the 8 required amino acids but also high in cholesterol.  Although mushrooms contain much less protein than meat, replacing some meat or rice with mushrooms helps to lower the fat and calories A LOT in the long run.  In addition, some mushrooms have a better-balanced and higher-quality protein than beef.

4.  Antioxidants

Mushrooms have many types of antioxidants. Antioxidants include some vitamins (such as vitamins C and E), and some minerals (such as selenium). Some mushrooms have more antioxidant capacity than tomatoes or green peppers that are well known for their high antioxidant amount.

There are so many other health aspects of mushrooms than the ones listed above. In the nutritional fact table attached at the bottom, there are some featuring health benefits for the individual type of mushroom. Take a look only if you are interested.

For vegetarians, I would highly recommend having mushrooms on your table if you like their texture and flavor.  I will provide some recipes on how to cook the specialty mushrooms in my next post. 

At the end I should mention that I’ve seen quite a lot of people interested in my little farm.  I want to thank everyone who follows and supports me on this project.  I’ll keep everyone posted on the status of our coffee ground mushroom kit.

Jennifer

Urban Mushroom Farm