ZOE Science & Nutrition - How to unlock the secret power of the mushrooms to heal your gut, cut cholesterol and protect your brain | Prof Robin May

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Could mushrooms hold the secret to better gut health, lower cholesterol, and can they protect your brain? Today, Professor Robin May, a leading microbiologist and the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, explores why our interest in mushrooms has exploded. He explains why they are not just another vegetable but could hold the key to better gut health, brain health, immune health, and lower cholesterol. By the end of the episode, you’ll know which health claims about mushrooms are real, which are exaggerated and where the science is just too early to trust. You’ll have a solid understanding of what mushrooms are really doing inside our bodies and how to unlock the secret health powers they hold. Should mushrooms become a regular part of your weekly shop rather than an occasional side dish? And if fungi have evolved alongside humans for millions of years, what else might they reveal about the future of nutrition and health? 🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily30 Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE Follow ZOE on Instagram. Timecodes 00:00 Intro 03:32 Are mushrooms closer to humans than plants? 06:20 What is a mushroom, really? 10:46 Why we’re eating more mushrooms now 12:14 The hidden nutrients inside mushrooms 13:56 Can mushrooms boost vitamin D? 15:35 The sunlight trick for healthier mushrooms 17:27 How many mushrooms give you enough vitamin D? 18:01 The mushroom with 500x more vitamin D 20:25 The mystery compound found in mushrooms 22:00 Should you take mushroom supplements? 24:30 Do all mushrooms contain this rare compound? 26:22 Can mushrooms help you live longer? 28:35 Can lion’s mane protect your brain? 30:24 Do mushrooms really boost IQ? 34:21 Can mushrooms affect your immune system? 36:40 How mushrooms feed your gut microbes 38:20 Should fungi live in your gut? 39:45 The fungus that lives on your head 41:50 Can mushrooms lower cholesterol? 43:21 Are you cooking mushrooms wrong? 45:25 Should you eat raw mushrooms? 47:21 How to make mushrooms taste better 49:25 The easiest way to eat more mushrooms 52:17 Robin’s top mushroom tip 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Good Mood Food (preorder) by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE The Hormone Harmony Guide: Tuning Your Body’s Internal Orchestra Eating for Better Brain Health: Your brain-gut blueprint How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide Mentioned in today's episode A Review of Mushrooms as a Potential Source of Dietary Vitamin D, Nutrients (2018) Ergothioneine: an underrecognised dietary micronutrient required for healthy ageing, British Journal of Nutrition (2023) Ergothioneine: A Stress Vitamin with Antiaging, Vascular, and Neuroprotective Roles?, Antioxidants and Redox Signaling (2022) Mushrooms & longevity, Nature (2025) Lion’s mane & nerve growth factor, Journal of Biological Engineering (2023) The Relationship between Mushroom Intake and Cognitive Performance, Nutrients (2024) Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here. Episode transcripts are available here.

Welcome to Zoe, science and nutrition, where world-leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health. Mushrooms spent decades as one of the most boring ingredients on your plate. Today, they have a reputation as one of the most exciting. Brain protection, gut health, immune support, even longevity. The health claims associated with mushrooms are astounding. So did we discover something new? Were we missing something that was obvious all along? or perhaps all this excitement is simply unjustified.

In today's episode, we're joined by Professor Robin May, a microbiologist, scientific advisor to the UK government and world-leading expert on the way that mushrooms interact with our immune system. Robin will help us understand which health claims are real and which are exaggerated, which mushrooms you should be eating, and how to prepare them to get the benefits. Robin, thank you so much for joining me today. Nice to be here.

So we have a tradition here at Zoe, which is very high. half for professors, where we ask a quick fire rounder questions, and we say you have to give us a yes or a no, or if you have to, a one sentence. You willing to give it a go? I'm racing ready. All right. Are mushrooms more closely related to humans than to plants? Yes. Could eating mushrooms help you live longer? Can I have a maybe? Yeah, you can. Do some mushrooms contain vitamin D? Yes. And finally, what's the biggest myth that you often hear about mushrooms? I think it's the weird of the mushroom, the better it is for you. Caution against that one.

Not true? No, stick to the mainstream, I'd say. Is that only because you might die by eating the weird mushroom? There's quite a risky weird mushrooms out there. So, yeah, if someone's telling you something in a brown packet, I would be cautious. When I was young, mushrooms were definitely something I ate, but only because my mum liked the taste of mushrooms and she was cooking. And then more recently, I feel like I'm surrounded by claims that mushrooms can extend

your life, like improve your immune system, prevent brain aging, and so on. Now, look, I love the taste of mushrooms, so any excuse to eat mushroom is good, but my son hates them. So it's not really the taste is like the texture. So my objective for this podcast is to come out with compelling arguments for why he should keep eating mushrooms, even though he doesn't like them very much. Right. Okay. Mission in mind. Yeah, I can't change the slimyness, I think, but bad luck. You had this crazy answer that a mushroom is more closely related to me than it is to a plant. So what is a mushroom? So we now know pretty clearly that mushrooms and animals share a more recent common ancestor than plants do.

So if you think about that evolutionary tree of life, plants branched off earlier than fungi generally and animals did. So hence the answer, we're more closely related to a mushroom than to a plant. Not by much, I have to say, that branching is still a very long time ago. But actually, that explains quite a lot of things, I think, about mushrooms. So if you think the most obvious thing is they're not green, right? They don't photosynthesize, plants do. So that tells you already that they're probably not a plant. If you look sort of molecularly, there are quite a lot of other reasons why they are more

similar to animals. So, for example, some of the machinery that we use to make proteins in our cells, fungi use a machinery that's more similar to ours than the machinery plants make. So there's quite a lot of reasons to be confident that we are more closely related to fungi. And so you just started to touch on it, but are there other differences between fungi and plants? And so does that mean that somehow if I was eating a mushroom, there are therefore genuinely going to be things that I'm sort of eating that wouldn't be in a plant? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So perhaps the most obvious is that plants and fungi both have cell walls, which is why they're rigid, unlike animal cells, we're pretty floppy. But it's made something completely different. So plants are made a sense.

People might remember that from school. Fungal cell walls are made of a molecule called chitin, which is actually the same molecule that is in the shell of crustaceans, so lobsters or crabs or insects. The crunchy bit, if you step on a beat and it goes crunch, that is chitin, it's the same molecule in a fungal cell wall. So that's a really obvious one. And then if you kind of really look biochemically,

I mean, one of the most amazing things about fungi is they are incredibly chemically diverse. And so, for instance, many of the antibiotics we get today are produced by fungi because they are able to do this fantastic chemistry. In some cases, chemistry that we haven't managed to crack as humans yet. So there are, depending on the species, lots of molecules you find in fungi that are not found in plants or in animals or sometimes even in other species, sometimes really unique. And so that means that if I was eating a mushroom, there could genuinely be like molecules

in there that I just would never get, even from eating lots of diverse plants? Yeah, absolutely. And they can be good, bad or indifferent. So there are some nutrients that come from mushrooms that are really important. But of course, people are familiar with the fact that some mushrooms, some toadstools, are hugely poisonous, potentially lethal. And of course, there are also magic mushrooms that produce hallucinogenic compounds that are not found in other species.

Now, I asked about mushrooms and you immediately switched out to fungi. I ran with it, but can you help me to understand what the difference is? Yeah, absolutely. So we talk about the fungal kingdom. So if you think about, we're talking about plants and animals and fungi. So each of those is a kingdom. as a big group. And fungi as a kingdom, we don't really know how big that is. We estimate probably something like one and a half million species, of which the vast majority are still not known to

science. They are all closely related in the sense that they all share those characteristics like a kite and cell wall, but they are wildly different. So, for instance, athlete's foot on your foot is a fungus. The yeast that you put in to make your bread rise or your beer brew is a fungus. The mushroom you buy in your supermarket is also a fungus. So fungus is the wider group. Mushroom doesn't really have a kind of biologically defined term, but we tend to use it for the fruiting body. So if you think about what a mushroom looks like in a supermarket, if you see that growing in the field, that's actually a tiny fraction of the whole organism. Most of that organism is invisible underground in this kind of hair-like network that's called a mycelium.

And it's only when it fruits that comes up. So I guess it's a little bit like thinking about, you know, we talk about an apple, but the apple tree is much bigger than the apple. apple alone. So the mushroom is the fruiting body of a particular species and not all fungi produced mushrooms. So the yeast that you made bread with, you know, you don't come, hopefully don't come down in the morning and find mushrooms popping out of your bread. Certainly not from that yeast. Anyway, it stays as a yeast its whole life. Other fungal species can move between this yeast form and this kind of fruiting form. Actually, the kind of scale of the invisible part of fungi is something people often overlook. So if you think about out in your garden or the woods, you know, you see a

toad stall pop up. Often that toad stall is revealing the presence. of a mycine that's enormous. And in fact, there's quite well-documented cases in the United States, for example, of individual fungi that stretch for miles underground. So you see a mushroom pop up here, and five miles down the road, you see another mushroom pop out. And it's actually fruiting bodies of the same superorganism that's under your soil. But we just can't see that bit.

That's wild. So you're saying there's just one fungi that can be like five miles long. Yeah, biologists like to fight over kind of records. And if you're a kind of mycologist, as somebody who specializes in fungi, you always claim that you have the biggest organism in the world, because if you were able to haul that out of the ground, it would be far larger than a blue whale or a giant redwood.

Obviously, the problem is we can't actually extract it and show that. Now, I think all our American listeners are say, yeah, but of course everything's bigger in America. So is it just in America that you get five-mile fungi, or if you were in Europe or Australia, whatever? I mean, is that also true? Yeah, I feel like we might be starting some kind of international competition here for large fungi. No, so the largest one that we currently know of is in the United States.

States. I don't think there's any reason to believe it would have to be in the United States. I suspect quite a lot of this is about who's going looking. There are lots of really great mycologists in the US who look at these things. But I'd wager you can find a bigger one in Brazil if you go looking. When I was young, I only ever saw button mushrooms in the store. And now I regularly see like oyster mushrooms and Chitaki and Lions Main. And that obviously represents the fact that many more people are eating mushrooms and also like this sort of more wilder diversity, what's been driving that shift in terms of just like what we're able to eat in the supermarket? Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of things that are playing there.

So obviously, here in Europe and the US, we've been very restricted in our palettes for quite a long time. I mean, that's not true in the Far East, for example. I well remember many years ago traveling to Japan, you know, and having just extraordinary dishes with mushrooms, which I had never seen before and which people couldn't tell me the name of. So I think many cultures have a much more diverse repertoire already. Part of that change in Europe and the US in recent years has been that globalisation of the food economy. People travelling, eating stuff they like elsewhere and saying, why can't I buy it here? Partly, it's also about the ability to produce these. So producing mushrooms or related to fungi is quite different to other sorts of farming. And so

it takes investment, it takes kind of skill. And so you have to sort of have a market that's going to make it worthwhile. But of course, as we know, The more exotic fungi, mushrooms, often sell for quite a premium. And so there's been quite a big market driver to support the development of those. And I think probably the last thing is that people have become sort of more experimental in their diets. People are very interested in healthier diets, more diverse diets, cuisines from elsewhere. And so I think it's driving that overall kind of shift in what we buy and what we cook. I'm struck by you're saying that when you first went to Japan, you suddenly saw that they ate all of these different mushrooms.

And you're an expert, but you're like, oh, I don't even know what this. mushroom is, is that because there just were many more varieties of mushrooms that you can eat? Or is this just because somehow Western Europe and obviously, you know, places like America just were not really open-minded about it? Yeah, I think it's probably a bit of both. I think, I mean, so one of the characteristics of most fungi-like growing kind of damp, humid conditions. I think there's something about the climate you're in.

So if you take the UK, for example, you know, middle of winter, you can't go and find mushrooms out in the wild. it's too cold and there's just not enough environment for them. If you're in the tropics, you can find mushrooms, toadstores all year round. So there's something about availability historically. But I think there's also something about sort of cultural acceptability and particularly the kind of flavors. A lot of fungus species that we eat, especially the more unusual ones, have really quite marked flavors. And we know that people are usually quite reluctant to kind of experience new flavors initially and they have

to kind of be exposed to it. And so one of the things, for example, is that many fungus species have a very strong umami flavor, this sort of quite difficult to describe is this kind of rich kind of deep flavor that polarises people. I think that's a much more common flavor historically in Asian cuisine, for example. And so people are ready to embrace this. I suspect in 1950s, England, if you'd have come with a strong umami flavor, people might have run away. I'd love to now sort of almost drill down to nutritionally speaking sort of what's in a mushroom. Hi, Professor Tim Specter here.

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Well, it depends, first of all, on what we mean by mushroom, I think. I mean, clearly that one we know the best is the classical mushroom that you buy from, you know, the supermarkets, white or brown, big cap on the top, it's an agarica species. And we know quite a lot about that. mushrooms are often used to replace meat in sort of vegetarian type of cuisine and it's a good replacement so they have more fibre definitely than animal products not as much as some of the kind of really fibrous sort of whole grain food I wouldn't recommend substituting your granary bread or your oatmeal with fungi but they are quite healthy in terms of fibre good levels of protein very low levels of fat

particularly saturated fat so that's all really promising but the thing that gets people quite broadly excited I think about mushrooms is a lot of the more interesting kind of trace elements and vitamins. So if you think about the way that fungi grow, we talked earlier about this kind of mycelium network in the soil. So they are scavengers, essentially. They're harvesting nutrients from the soil from decaying matter. So they are really good at accumulating things that are quite rare or trace elements in nature. So for instance, things like potassium, they accumulate very well from soil. Relatively rare compounds like selenium are also quite often accumulated by mushrooms. And then last of all, they're pretty good at making

vitamins, say they make vitamin B, vitamin C, and the one that gets people really excited is vitamin D because vitamin D is extremely rare in plant species, and we need relatively good levels of vitamin D, particularly for our immune systems. And so people often talk about mushrooms have been a great source of vitamin D, although it is slightly more complicated than that. I asked at the beginning, is it true that mushrooms contain vitamin D? And I think we often think about that as something you get by being in the sun. What is the reality? You're right. So we make it by being in the sun. And just as a kind of caveat here, that does not mean going out and getting yourself lobster pink. That's a very bad thing to do. You don't actually need very much sunshine,

even in rainy old Britain, but you do need a bit of sunshine to make vitamin D. Dietarily, we get it from a variety of foods, but many foods do not have vitamin D. And actually, mushrooms are a great source. In the winter in particular, it's quite difficult for people in northerly climbs like the UK or northern US to make enough vitamin D. So that diet becomes really important. And mushrooms are often touted as a great way to get vitamin D because they make vitamin D sometimes to very high levels. There are two caveats there, though.

The first is that the amount of vitamin D they make is very, very variable between species. So for instance, if you think about oyster mushrooms, which you can now buy in most supermarkets, they actually, on average, make about 100 times more vitamin D than your routine field mushroom that might be next to it in the shelf. So there's quite a big variety between mushrooms. And Robin, when you say routine field mushroom, this is like what I think of like a little cap, and it doesn't matter whether it's white or brown. Yeah, button mushrooms, field mushrooms, the can you might have on your English breakfast or mushrooms on toast or whatever, that, that one. So they do produce vitamin D, but they produce less. And so you said oyster mushrooms create

100 times more vitamin D than like the typical mushroom that I grew up with and I thought was the only mushroom probably when I was 15. Pretty much, yeah, exactly. And that's very, you know, different species make more or less. But the big thing about all mushrooms, pretty much, is they are making vitamin D just like us in response to sunlight or actually in response to UV light.

So if you have, and of course, if you think about the way mushrooms grow, they shouldn't see very much UV because most mushrooms grow in the dark. So if you grow your mushrooms in a industrial farm in the dark, harvest, stick them on a supermarket shelf, and someone comes five minutes later and buys them, they'll have almost no vitamin D in them, because they won't have seen much sunshine. But the longer they see UV light for, the more vitamin D they make. And so you might be able to, you know, you might have seen in shops vitamin D enriched mushrooms, which are essentially mushrooms that have been left in the sunshine for a little bit of time.

You can do the same trick, actually, at home, because they will produce that. That reaction to create vitamin D is a spontaneous chemical reaction. So what's happening is a molecule in the membrane of the fungus called a agostrol is being converted by UV into vitamin D essentially. So you don't need the mushroom to be growing to make vitamin D. So actually laying out your mushrooms in a bit of sunshine where it'll get UV. So not inside a glass thing because glass filters out UV, but outside on your picnic table or whatever, they'll start producing vitamin D. And actually an hour or two of sunshine is enough to raise the level of vitamin D in mushrooms very dramatically to the point.

at which a kind of decent serving of mushrooms, eight or nine mushrooms, will give you your daily requirement. I guess it's a bit like fruit that continues to ripen and the bananas that I'm used to. You're saying if I put that out in the sunshine for like literally one to two hours, suddenly it creates this like rather amazing amount of vitamin D

because you then said, well, then eat eight to nine mushrooms and I've had my daily amount. And if I think about other vitamins, I'm always struck that often they, you know, they claim it's on the pack, but you have to eat an awful lot to actually get the amount that is recommended. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's obviously there's a variable art here, not least because mushrooms vary in size.

But, you know, as a very ballpark sort of estimate, you know, 50 to 100 grams of mushrooms that have been in the sunshine for an hour or two will give you plenty of vitamin D for a day. Now, you mentioned before that different mushrooms are very different in the amount of vitamin D. So is it all about the oyster mushroom now? No, not necessarily. So as you can imagine, not that many mushrooms have been studied. There was an interesting study a few years ago looking at the quantity of vitamin D in various commercial mushrooms. I think the winner actually was the bolete, which is a kind of slightly exotic, fancy mushroom that not many people have eaten. So harder to buy that one from your supermarket. But if you get the chance, they have, I think that's 500 times as much as your typical butter nor peel mushroom. And then oyster mushroom. And then you have the kind of more routine mushroom. have a bit less. I mean, pretty much all mushrooms do make some vitamin D. So this is, you know,

so I wouldn't kind of run away and not eat a mushroom anymore. But it's just worth bearing in mind, especially if you have the opportunity, you know, whilst you're cooking, you put your mushroom pot outside for half an hour and then throw it in your omelet and you'll do yourself some good. And so are the other ones all roughly similar to the bottom mushroom or is it particularly bad? I'm just curious. No, it's not particularly bad. Yeah, there were several with that, those kind of levels. And actually, there's quite a lot of variability there. So one of the things that's slightly frustrating for us scientists is the structure of the mushroom seems to make quite a difference. So you have more of the molecule that turns into vitamin D in some parts of the

mushroom. So whether it's kind of flat or open or button makes quite a big difference. Generally speaking, there seems to be more agostrol and therefore more vitamin D made in the gills, so in the kind of fluffy bit under the mushroom than elsewhere. But I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't take the effort to turn all your mushrooms upside down to make it work perfectly. And for those of us living in cold northerly climates, is this going to work or is this a great trick, but it only really works in Florida. And frankly, they don't need to worry about the mushrooms because it's sunny. So you need the UV to make the conversion work. But actually, even winter sunshine has a reasonable amount of UVs.

If you think about one of those gloriously winter crisp days in Boston, for instance, you know, putting your mushrooms out will be fine. Actually, we'll do quite a good job there. And I think the other point is that this is not your, for most of us, this is not your sole source of vitamin D. So, for example, things like cow's milk also have vitamin D. So if you're having milk on your breakfast and a mushroom, you know, you're still doing pretty well. So, yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about that. I mean, clearly, if you live in sort of northern Sweden and you've got 23 hours of darkness, it's not going to be such a great trick for you in the winter.

And you might want to think about vitamin D supplements instead then. Brilliant. Well, I'm definitely now pushing oyster mushrooms right up in my head, I'm thinking about this. While we're talking about vitamins, the team who were doing the research here has said that there's a compound that I have never heard of before that I have to make sure I ask you about,

which is called ergothyonine. Very good, yeah. What is that? And why is it that some scientists are apparently saying it should potentially be classified as a vitamin? So ergothionine is a very interesting molecule. It's a natural amino acid, so people might be familiar with the idea

that amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. We as humans make about 20, or use about 20 amino acids to build our proteins, but there are other amino acids that we don't make, we don't use, that are using other organisms. So, ergothionine is one of those. So it's made by fungi in particular. And in laboratory studies, it has quite potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. So antioxidant, people might be familiar with this idea of reactive oxygen species.

So we're familiar with oxygen that we're breathing now. There is a chemically related molecule, which is a kind of charged reactive breakdown product of oxygen that damages things. It damages proteins. It damages DNA. And it is thought that reactive oxygen account for quite a lot of cellular damages we age in particular.

It's one of the reasons, for instance, why, you know, if you've done a lot of time in sunshine, you get older looking skin because the reactive oxygen that's created is damaging yourselves. So reactive oxygen, not great. Ways to mop up and dispose of reactive oxygen are therefore thought to be beneficial in protecting us from damage and helping delay aging. And ergothionine is a really good molecule of mopping up oxidative damaging agents. So in a lab, absolutely this soaks up reactive oxygen.

So that seems like something you might want in yourselves. And so there has been quite a big kind of interest in whether eating loads of mushrooms will give you lots of egothionine and that will help protect you. have to say the data on this is very much still up for debate. So, you know, if people are listening to this, I wouldn't race out and order yourself massive supplements. We're still a long way of being sure. What we do know is that in some situations, it does seem to have some potential beneficial effects. There have been some studies looking at cellular hallmarks of aging, and if you exposed to ogarine, it seems to reduce that. No really good clinical data suggesting broader health impacts them in it. But as with all science, you know, there's a lot more to do in this space.

One of the really big mysteries, I think, to ergothionine is we, humans, have a specific protein that is used to take ergothionine into our cells. It's very conserved, so other species have this too. And that sort of suggests that it must do something really quite important, because evolution has kept it and looked after it. However, our kind of typical way of testing these things is to remove it genetically from mice, for example, for the things. Those mice seem pretty fine, actually. So there's a bit of an enigma here that we have this protein that appears to have been conserved, does something important, but we don't know what the important thing is. And perhaps the last and most weird, unexplained thing is that that version of

that protein that takes up ergothining varies between different humans. So different populations have what's called polymorphisms, variation of this. We don't really know what that means or why that's important, but there has been quite a lot of renewed interest in that, because it looks like One particular variant of this is associated, and stress associated rather than causative, but associated with Crohn's disease. And so if you carry that particular type of ovarianine receptor, you appear to be more at risk of Crohn's disease.

We don't know why, and it may be complete, you know, red herring correlation, but yeah, a lot of interest in egothyony. So this is one of these examples where we're getting access to like this very early scientific insight, but you're not suggesting that we all have to go out to make sure that we're getting enough ergothionine from our mushrooms, and we're all going to live another five years of healthy life. Yeah.

I mean, it's kind of like the scientific equivalent to that moment when you've finished your flat-packed furniture and you've got this thing left over and you think, this looks like it's something really important, but I don't know where it goes. And so we're at that point, I would say. Do all mushrooms have high levels of this ergothionine, or is this only in particular mushrooms? So not all mushrooms throughs to ergothionine,

but it is relatively widespread. So it's very rare in other branches of life. So plants don't make it, animals don't make it. The places it's made naturally are quite a lot of fungal species. And in the cyanobacteria, so these photosynthetic bacteria that are associated with things like algal blooms in the sea. But obviously, we don't eat those. So mushrooms are your best bet. Levels vary in different mushrooms. And we don't really know how they vary in different species. We also don't actually know what a sensible level would be. So that has neuroprotective effects, you know, because we don't know what it does.

We don't know whether you, the thing is such a thing as too much of it or too little. So if I was having like a standard like butter mushroom, is there likely to be some ergothyionine in it? Yeah, there is. Your standard mushrooms have some levels vary. And again, we don't really know what a good level is. So, I mean, no evidence of harms.

That's always a positive thing. But I think we're definitely far from saying this is some kind of magical cure rule. And so we talked about vitamin D. We talked about this ergothionine. You mentioned at the beginning that there's quite a lot of fiber in these mushrooms. Are there any other nutrients that are helpful for us that are in mushrooms? Yes. So most mushrooms produce vitamin B and vitamin C.

And they also, I think we mentioned earlier, they harvest these kind of minerals like potassium and selenium. And they do quite a good job of that, actually. So generally, there's quite a lot of trace elements or minerals that are in there are mushroom mushrooms, the good for you. I'd love to talk now about some of the health claims that surround mushrooms. So less about the nutrients and more like, what does it actually mean for us as human beings? And I know talking to friends of mine from like China and Japan, that apparently they've been like an important part of their sort of traditional medicine, apparently, for thousands of years. But I'd really like to know what the science says. Is there any evidence that

suggesting eating mushrooms is linked to either healthier lives or or longer lives? Let's focus, first of all, on kind of your classical supermarket mushroom. And the short answer is, no, not really. So there have been a couple of studies looking at these very large population studies, looking at diet and longevity. A couple of caveats. One is they're usually done by what's called recall studies.

So people say, Jonathan, what did you eat last Tuesday? No, and I don't know about you, but often I think, I don't know what I ate last Tuesday. So there's a lot of patchiness in the data. As part of a broad, varied diet that doesn't have too much. meat, et cetera, et cetera, they do have a significant benefit. So, for example, even if the mushroom on its own is not particularly dramatic, if you're replacing your fillet steak with a, you know, mushroom, then actually that will have a benefit because we know that too much red meat is bad

for you. So there's a thing about eating mushrooms as part of a varied diet that's good, but as a kind of magical food to make you live forever, unlikely, I think. So is it just that the data isn't there and you think it is beneficial for health? Or do you think that it's like a good thing, like lots of different plants are, but even if we did a great experiment, you're not going to see any impact? I think the data is a very challenge for a couple of reasons. So one is that we talk about mushrooms in inverted commas, but that's a bit like talking about plants, you know. And if I was saying to you, you know, does eating plants correlate with long life? Well, yes, it definitely does. If you don't eat any plants, you're not going to live very long. So I think there's a big

problem there that we talk about kind of, you know, mushrooms generally. And we're not able to distill in to individual levels of detail. Secondly, of course, it's actually pretty, recent. I mean, in some cultures, people have been eating mushrooms for a long time. In most Western European, US cultures, it's a very small number of species for a very short period of time. And those are the areas, of course, where most of these long studies have been done. So the data is not just the data is not there, but the experience of people is not there to draw on. That might change going forwards now that people eat more species. There is the potential to really look in more detail, particularly in other cultures where, you know,

a broader diversity of fungi have been eating for a longer period of time and maybe we'll see something interesting then. One of the big things I hear is about brain aging. Is there any evidence around this or any reason to think even that it might matter? One of the points about fungi is that this is a huge diverse group of organisms, right?

One and a half million species. And they are amazing chemists. So they can produce just wild molecules. And perhaps the best example is, you know, antibiotics, right? Penicillin is a fungal. product. I mean, now we make it synthetically, but it was a fungal product. And so they can make incredibly impressive chemicals. So, you know, at face value might mushrooms, in inverted commas,

help us live forever, absolutely, because somewhere out there, there might be a species making something really important. If we're thinking about kind of the small number that we eat at the moment, it's part of regular diets, there's been quite a lot of interest in whether particular species might help protect your brain. And lion's mane is the one that's often quoted as a kind of, you know, lions mane fungus live forever. And there is a little bit of data suggesting that it's worth at least looking at this in more detail. So, for example, some extracts of lions made and actually some other species seem to, in a laboratory setting in a dish, stimulate nerve growth. And so, you know, at face value, you might say, well, creating a few more neurons, especially if you're losing neurons due to, you know, dementia or something else, might not be a bad thing.

So there's a kind of plausible biological mechanism. In terms of kind of studies in people, the jury is very much out. So there have been some studies demonstrating slight improvement or a slowing in reduction of brain capability in people with early, mild cognitive decline. Small studies, not highly replicated yet. So, you know, be cautious, but perhaps slightly promising. There was one interesting study that people often talk about a lot. on social media where people without any cognitive decline, relatively young people,

showed an improvement in their mental score on a kind of classical test, which actually is a test where it's very rare to see things that improve that score in people who don't have cognitive decline. So you might see online, people say, well, your IQ will go up if you eat this, which is off based on those kind of studies. Again, very, very small, very limited. There has been at least one study, which is showing the opposite, which is showing if you have it, your ability to recall words drops.

And so, like much of science, I think we are still a long way from a kind of solid answer. And so when you look at all of that, you know, I think a lot of what you're taught, right, is to discern the different quality of evidence across these studies. What's your guess about mushrooms and their ability to have any impact here? Yeah, I think I would happily wager a mortgage. payment on the fact that somewhere out there in the fungal kingdom, there will be, you know, fungal products that are going to be massively beneficial for medicine and therefore longevity. And I wouldn't rule out the possibility that, you know, in the future, there will be particular

species or particular extracts that will be recommended for everybody to take. If you enjoy it, it fits in with your lifestyle. There's no evidence of harm. But I definitely wouldn't, you know, go out of your way to take a particular mushroom supplement in the hope that it will help you live forever. The other, I think, big area that I read a lot of claims is around immune health and inflammation. Like, we've seen more and more this overlap between that and the microbiome. So I think most of our listeners are sort of aware that long-term inflammation is not something you want to have,

but we all have this, like, high level of long-term inflammation living in the Western world compared to the past. Is there any evidence that eating mushrooms can have any beneficial impact there? So I think it's really important to think about again about this kind of breadth of the fungal kingdom here. And because I spent quite a lot of my life working on fungal diseases that kill people, I do want to kind of emphasize the fact there is a spectrum here, right? There are fungal species that are probably very good for us and we eat. There are fungal species that, you know, you really don't want to get. This is your, I have athletes foot, but even though it is a fungus, it's not a good thing I was thinking.

Exactly. Athletes foot definitely not great, although that's more in the annoyance. But there are, you know, a handful of fungal species that are potentially fatal, particularly for people who have weakened immune systems. I think really important to stress here that if you are thinking about how can I prop up my immune system because it's already impaired, I've got a genetic disorder or I've got HIV positive or something. You know, diaterally absolutely fine. But if you read someone's magical thing about sniffing a fungal spore, just don't do that. But that notwithstanding, I think one of the interesting things about fungi generally is that many of the molecules that are present,

in the fungus, particularly on the surface, do have quite potent immune effects in humans and other animals. That's largely, I have to say, because the immune system has evolved to react to and get rid of fungi. It's not a good thing to have fungi growing in your lungs, for instance. If you think about that cell wall of the fungus, most fungal species have a molecule called beta glucan inside that fungal cell wall. That's a really potent immune stimulus. So if you put beta Glucan into somebody, their immune system lights up because it's trained to say, here's something I should react to and get rid of it. And in fact, we use B2Glucan as what's called an adjuvant to help some vaccines

really generate a good immune response. And so there are definitely immune effects in fungi. Less clear is the kind of ability of fungi to suppress the immune system. So there are specific examples, particularly in some pathogenic fungi, of molecules that the fungi I use to deliberately suppress the human immune system. But that's for their own advantage, right? That's because they want to grow. And so I definitely wouldn't recommend people expose themselves to those too. Unhear at the moment whether similar molecules in fungi that are not harmful might be beneficial. So, so yeah, jury still out. Probably a last thing to say on that,

though, is there's also a sort of secondary effect in that fungal products are really important for influencing the microbiome of the gut. So, for example, many of the sugars and the carbohydrates that fungi make are really good kind of food stuffs for the bacteria in your gut. And so there has been quite a bit of evidence that some mushroom species will help stimulate a kind of good microbiome for one of a better word. And, of course, the good microbiome can have a very strong positive effect of your immune system. So it's interesting, you're wrapping up on a topic that obviously we love on this show

and you're saying that perhaps one of the most valuable things that these mushrooms are doing is actually to be food for our gut microbes, and they might then be producing these compounds that are beneficial for us. Exactly, exactly. This is a lot like a plant where, again, there's lots of things here that I can't digest directly, and so if I want to get the benefit, I need to get the microbes to sort of break it down for me. Yeah, exactly. So we often sort of overlook, I think, the fact that your microbiome is just this wildly complicated, system. And if you think about the relationship, bacteria and fungal species have been evolving together for, you know, obviously far, far longer than we have. And so there are some really quite

complicated signals. So if you look, for instance, out in soil, you know, there are really well-documented situations where a bacteria might make a molecule, the fungus picks it up and behaves differently, it produces a different molecule, the bacteria changes its behaviour, there's a complicated conversation going on. We're only just starting to scratch the surface of that, but very reasonable, I think, to think that when you eat a mushroom, you're probably plugging into that evolutionary, conserved kind of communication system and having an impact on the bacteria that live in your gut. Are there any funguses that should be growing in my gut, or is it now clear that bacteria are great? But that's, again, one of these big distinctions.

We don't want any of these fungi, and therefore our immune system does not play nicely with them. That's really good and very, very live kind of topic in, you know, if you go into social media, people with strong views there. Historically, you're right. So people have historically sort of said fungi growing in your gut, bad thing. And in some circumstances, that is definitely true. Like most things about the gut microbiome, you don't want dominance of a particular species, for instance. That said, it's really only in recent years that we've started to understand a bit more about what appears with the kind of natural fungal microbiome of the gut. And that's largely speaking because they are massively outnumbered by the bacteria. So early genetic sequencing, you know,

you just take your abundant DNA, and it's only with the advent of technologies which allow us to look at very rare, very low levels DNA that we start to see these fungal species. And I think kind of an emerging view that there are definitely some species that are probably quite good to have in your gut, still very unclear which ones those are and what they might make the difference for them. But I think that's a realisation that fungi are kind of everywhere and are part of your natural microbiome, very important. And in fact, you know, outside of the gut, so skin, for example, you know, we're covered in interesting fungi. They do all sorts of weird, wonderful things. My favourite example being some called malacizia that grows only really on the human head and, in fact, is only able to reproduce in the presence of human sweat excretions. So there you go.

You're now kidding me. Nope. There is a fabulous demonstration that this particular fungus is completely required. So I have a colleague who says it's a creepy feeling to think that there's an endangered species that can only have sex on your head. There is a fungus that can only grow on the human head and can, cannot reproduce unless it gets the particular sweat that comes off from the human head. Yeah, it's the oils that you produce in your head that seem to be a signal for it to sporulate, so to produce reproductive organs.

That's fascinating. This is this example of how we are this ecosystem with these tiny microbes, and that includes fungi. We talked about bacteria a lot. You're saying there's fungi that absolutely only coexist with us. You know, you might think that's just a parasite, but it's, is your view that on the skin, some of these fungi are actually beneficial to us? Yeah, absolutely. And in two different ways. So there are probably some species that are genuine sort of symbionts. So they're there. They never do any harm and they're kind of good for, you know, whatever reason they might be helping to sort of digest things you don't want or they might be kind of helping to regulate the immune system. But also there are,

there are species that are sort of at face value potentially bad news. But their presence helps with this kind of maintaining a normal immune system. So one that's often, often talked about is candida. And there's a sort of whole world out there of kind of candida syndrome and candid things. And people, so candida is absolutely a fungal pathogen that can cause serious disease. It can cause, you know, vaginal thrush or all thrush, sometimes systemic lethal fungal infections. But all of us have candida all the time. If I'm going to go and swab my armpit, you'd find candida there. And that's not a bad thing. It's there. It's kept in check by the immune system and it's probably helping to keep our immune system in balance. So, you know, as with many

of these things, you don't actually want to be a steracite. It's good to have a healthy microbiome, even if it includes things that can on occasion go bad. Absolutely fascinating. I also heard that mushrooms might have a cholesterol lowering compound. Is that true? That is true. So they produce in their cell wall this molecule that we mentioned earlier, beta-glucan. So the main structural component to the cell wall is kited, that thing that's in lobsters and beetles and things. But they also have this layer called beta-glucan. And beta-glucan is a, it's a polymer, so it's a chain of sugar molecules, glucose molecules. We talk about beta-glucan, but actually this is a whole family of molecules, because if you think about joining your sugar molecules together, you can put branches on

them, you can do different things. So their structures are all quite different. However, what appears to be pretty clear now is that when we eat beta-glucan, it can kind of form a sort of gel in our guts. And that gel is actually very effective at absorbing cholesterol, keeping it away from your cells, especially LDL, so the kind of bad cholesterol, and then essentially getting pooped at the other end without you taking up too much. So this is the same group of molecules that is what makes oats really good for you. So our recommendation to eat oats, oats are greater helping to lower cholesterol. Fungi produce less beta-glucan than you have in oats, but nonetheless quite a significant amount. So if you're already having oat porridge, great. I wouldn't swap that out for a mushroom in the morning.

but if you're taking mushrooms additionally, it's another good way to help lower cholesterol. Are you a massive mushroom lover, but some of your family are not convinced? Why not share this episode with them right now and explain why you're right? I would like to talk about actionable advice about how can I actually add mushrooms successfully into my diet. Could we talk about the cooking for a minute? Because I always feel that when I cook mushrooms, it feels like the darn things, basically disappear. Like, there's really big. You've got on some heat and it just like shrinks and shrinks. And so I've always sort of felt, well, I've probably killed everything that is of any value

because it all shrunk away. Is this right? Not necessarily. So heat does remove, particularly of vitamins. You know, levels of vitamin drop quite dramatically when you heat, especially for a long periods of time. Having said that, of course, depending on what you're doing with your mushroom, you might not be heating for very long. So if you're kind of frying a mushroom, you know, you're thinking about those big, fat, delicious field mushrooms, you know, you might give it. a minute on one side and 30 seconds on the other and you're done. So actually, in that sense, you're retaining kind of more vitamin than if you're going to put in the oven for an hour.

Probably the bigger risk with boiling is the water solubility. So a lot of these things that are in mushrooms are highly water soluble. So vitamins, B and C, but also things like potassium are very water soluble. So if you're going to boil your mushrooms and then throw away the thing they were boiled in, that is leaching out quite a lot of your nutrients. Clearly, if you're boiling it in a pasta sauce and you're going to eat your pasta sauce, not a problem. You've just moved your potassium from inside the mushroom droughts. A bit like I think of how it's brought up to do carrots. If you're putting a

great big pot of water and then you throw away the water, it's like literally you're throwing away the good stuff. The good stuff. Yeah, exactly. I mean, my usual best rule is the best way to cook something is the way that you're going to eat it. So if you're someone who will only eat a mushroom if it's been cooked for a long time, then that's fine because the alternative is not treated at all. What about preparing the mushrooms? One of the thing I'm always struck by is the mushroom comes, it always feels like it has like dirt and mud on it. I always feel like, well, I got to like sort of scrub the dirt off it. It also puts me off a bit eating it. You know, back in the old

days, you say, oh, you should peel your mushrooms. Actually, you know, that's a relatively, if you're worried about the dirt component, there's a relatively limited value in peeling because as we know, the bottom bit doesn't have a skin on to peel anyway and the stalk doesn't and so on. So you're still, you know, you're not removing that much. So I wouldn't worry about peeling for sort of aesthetic and general kind of taste reasons, it's a good idea to give them a polish off or a wash off and to get rid of any soil that's left on them. The world of raw mushrooms, I think, is one that we've got to be slightly cautious about because, like any raw food, there will be other organisms present there, bacteria, viruses, whatever. And so they are potentially a risk. Because of the way mushrooms

grow, and the fact they're quite difficult to clean well, that is potentially slightly higher than with other foods. So if you think about an apple, for instance, you know, it's relatively easy to clean the surface of an apple in a way that you can't do with the mushroom. If you're picking a mushroom straight from the field, you've got no control over what's on that mushroom. And so, as with all foods, the risk of potential food poisoning is higher. I might caution against eating that one raw. The last thing to say is there are some compounds in many fungus species, including fungi that we eat, which can be slightly harmful. I want to kind of caution here, but there's a kind of level thing, but there are molecules called hydrazines, for example,

example, that in laboratory studies appear to be damaging for DNAs, their potential carcinogens cancer causes. They're at pretty low level, so this is definitely not a reason to not eat mushrooms, but they are also broken down rapidly by heating. So if you're someone who's really wild around mushrooms and eats a lot of mushrooms, eating a really large level of mushrooms raw is maybe not a great idea, and I might be tempted to cook them a bit more, partly for the food poisoning reason and partly for this kind of question of residual damaging agents. My takeaway from this is I probably don't need to worry about the dirt as much if I'm going to cook it. And so I can probably be a bit more relaxed and not let my OCD loose on the mushroom.

Yeah, I think if you can get over the psychological barrier of eating a bit of sterilized horse manure with your pasta sauce, you're fine. It would have been easier if you hadn't put it that way. What about how to cook mushrooms in a way that actually just maximizes the pleasure, and taste. It's very difficult to eat something that's good for you that you really dislike. So I would encourage people to kind of go out and try different mushrooms because there's lots out there and they're all very variable. Loads of people, I think, like you said, your son and my son also really dislike mushrooms when they're young because of the kind of slimy texture. Quite a lot of people actually

get over that when they're adults, but they often don't know. So I think if you're listening to this and you're an adult and you think they're like mushrooms, but I haven't tried them for 10 years. Give it another world because maybe they're not as bad as you remember. this is a hugely diverse kingdom. So we have to think about this, not as mushrooms, but as vegetables in the same way that a courgette is not the same as a sweet corn. And so I think kind of testing different ways, using them in different kind of settings is a really good thing to do.

Think about the way of cooking it. So some mushrooms become much more edible, you know, when you fry them. Some become quite tough and stringy. Some are great when they're ground and powdered. Some just taste like dust. And so there's a sort of sense on, of the diversity of mushrooms out there and also the kind of way you're preparing them. And last thing I think is think about the kind of meal you're using them in and the strength of

experience. So I think there are a lot of people out there, for example, we've had a very bad experience with truffles because they get this thing that looks absolutely tiny. They'll chop that up and throw the whole thing in and then they realize that, you know, they're tasting truffle for a week afterwards. These are really potent species, some of them. So go steady, try it as you go. A bit like, think of it and maybe as a bit more like spices than, you know, kind of a core component if you're thinking about these more unusual ones and test the flavors first before you put the whole family off. There's a diversity that we just don't appreciate.

Because they're relatively new, the diversity of them is relatively new to the Western diet, I think. So we're still like, well, what is this weird-looking thing and how do we cook it? And if someone's listened to this and saying, I want to add some more mushrooms to my diet, I'd like to maximize the potential benefit from doing that. So, yes, I'm only going to eat it if it tastes. nice because obviously I'm not going to stick with it otherwise. What would you be saying about the specific types of mushrooms that they should be trying to add? The single easiest thing to do is

a few fried mushrooms. So it's quite easy to add them as a sort of supplement side to things you're eating. If you don't like mushrooms or someone your family doesn't like mushrooms, you know, I think like with many foods, you can get around that by sort of small and invisible incorporation. So I think there's many a child who avows a hatred of mushrooms, but if you chop them really fine and put them in their a source, you know, they won't particularly notice. These days you can quite often buy even from sort of supermarkets these kind of mixed boxes of different mushrooms. If you're someone out there who's only

ever had the classical kind of white butter and mushroom, you're like, I wonder, you can pick up a kind mixed box from mainstream supermarkets and give it a whirl, you know, an oyster mushroom or, you know, some of these kind of slightly more exotic ones. That might open your eyes a bit more and, you know, and then if you really get into it, you can discover

a whole world of interesting, you know, pig's ear, truffles growing on elder plants and all sorts out there. And is one of the takeaways from this that just like when we think about plants, one of the biggest things that we talk about is like trying to get this diversity of plants because they're feeding all of these different microbes. Should I simply be thinking about this as I really want to get a diversity of mushrooms into my diet rather than there's just like one mushroom which is the best mushroom and so I should just make sure I'm only eating that one? We don't have the data on that yet, obviously, in the same way that we do for plants. but I'd be pretty confident in suggesting that diverse mushrooms is probably better than a lot of a single one. And actually, you know, that's kind of a good rule for life.

Like, binging on a single thing is generally not advisable. So even if you love mushrooms, you know, I wouldn't eat a kilo a day. So think about that kind of diversity, particularly when we're thinking about the impact on the microbiome. You know, the microbiome loves diversity. So different fungal substrates for your microbiome to grow on is probably going to be beneficial. Given all of this, Robin, do you eat mushrooms? And if so, what do you eat? I do eat mushrooms. I love mushrooms. And actually, I mean, like many people, I'm sure, listening to this, mostly it's your traditional kind of field mushroom type thing. But, you know,

if I get the chance, I do like an oyster mushroom in particular, occasional truffle. You know, if I'm eating a mushroom, my kind of favorite way is fairly sort of straightforward. So, you know, heaping mushrooms next to an English breakfast is great. One of my go-to recipes as a student back in the day actually was, you know, these really big fat field mushrooms that are usually quite expensive, but, you know, top tip, last thing on a Sunday at supermarket, they're usually selling them off cheap because they're going to be horrible tomorrow. You can stick some breadcrumbs and some lemon on that and a bit of cheese on the top. Stick it under the grill. Great. And relatively, oh, and the cheese is not so great for you, but everything else in there is pretty good for you.

Amazing. I'm getting hungry. Just think about it. Finally, if you were going to give one tip for someone listening for how to add more mushrooms to their diet like next week. You've given us many tips, but what would be your one tip? Can I do a tip and an anti-tip? So my anti-tip is, please don't do this by going to go out and thinking, that's the thing, it looks like a mushroom on my floor, not going to pick that. That's a very bad idea. Do go to a supermarket or reputable retailer first. That's my anti-tip. My top tip, I think, would probably be to just think about mushrooms a bit more like we think about vegetables rather than this kind of special thing. So if you're thinking, I'm going to do chicken fillet tonight, you know, I'm going to do some carrots. What else should I do with it?

Think about a mushroom rather than a frozen pea, or maybe as well as a frozen pea. Think about mushrooms as a kind of vegetable component that you can put into pasta sauces or things rather than this special thing that you have to somehow put your mushroom cook hat on to deal with. I love it. Robin, I'm going to try and do a little summary and just correct me where I get anything wrong. So the thing that's sticking with me most of all is that there's a fungus that can only grow on the human head. And ever since you pointed that out, I've been thinking about this while looking at your head. And it shows how we coexist with fungi at this incredibly deep level. The other thing I think, which is extraordinary, is this idea that humans are actually closer

to fungi than plants are to fungi. And that does sort of transform the way you think about them as clearly being this source of all of these compounds that you're just not going to get, even if you are eating a lot of diverse plants. And that definitely shifts my thinking about, like, oh, I'd really like to have more of these mushrooms in my diet because I'm really trying to get that diverse diet. And one of the reasons why they probably work is you're saying mushrooms are great food for your microbiome. So actually, your microbes are going to love this. They're going to feed a whole bunch of good microbes. They can break them down in a way that our body can't and then give us these other benefits. I clearly need to have some oyster mushrooms

in my diet because apparently there's a hundred times more vitamin D. And so, Since I do live in northern climes in the winter, I can see the oyster mushrooms that I need to remember to put in the sun are a way forward. There are some amazing nutrients that are inside these mushrooms. You describe this thing that I had never heard of before, the ergo thionine, that is like a whole amino acid that I didn't even knew existed, that I can't make, that I don't get from plants. And you said, like, in the lab it has some really interesting properties. for some reason, like all our human cells can take it in, but we don't really know what it does.

And interestingly, even just like a button mushroom can have this. And this is just an example of the way and like how unique they are. And you talked about them being full of potassium and selenium and vitamin D and vitamin C and beta glucans, all of these things that you don't have. The other thing that I was really struck by is the idea that we probably all do have fungi in our gut, but it's just at very low levels compared to bacteria. So it's going to be small. And the latest science is suggesting that we shouldn't think that all fungi is bad for us

just because we know that you can have overgrowth in various ways. So actually probably it's natural and good to have this low levels inside us. And I think that would be a fascinating thing to understand more in the data as this continues to grow. And then finally we talked about how do you get mushrooms? and I think what's striking is any way that you get the mushroom is basically going to be good. So like a dried mushroom, it's still going to be good. It's not like you've lost all the value. If you cook it, it's actually still going to have benefits.

The only thing to be cautious of is if you boil it, make sure you drink the liquid. Otherwise, you are literally putting it into the liquid and throwing it away. And that is very easy to add because it is something that you can eat as a side. So if you're finding it otherwise difficult, you can always just put, you know, fry some mushrooms, put it on, on the side. And so for me, like my final takeaway is, I need to stop thinking about it as occasionally I have this special mushroom dish and just think, I need to make sure that I have like mushrooms in my supermarket shop each week so that I am eating some mushrooms every week alongside the rest because I'm just going to up this diversity. And it's this amazing, whole new, like, kingdom of

things. Like, surely I should be trying to get some of that into my diet. That sounds like a perfect summary. I hope you've convinced yourself. to go into the world of mushrooms. I'll end this episode with something I think you'll like, a free Zoe gut health guide. If you're a regular listener, you know just how important it is to take care of your gut. Your gut microbiome is the gateway to better health,

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We'll also send you ongoing gut health and nutrition insights, including how Zoe can help. To get your free Zoe gut health guide, head on over to zoey.com slash gut guide. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time.