ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: Mushroom nutrients and health benefits | Professor Tim Spector & Merlin Sheldrake

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Today we’re discussing mushrooms. Neither animal nor plant, mushrooms are entirely unique. Their novel chemistry provides us with powerful - and often surprising - health benefits. So, how can we take advantage of this mushroom magic? Tim Spector and fungi expert Merlin Sheldrake explain how and why you should invite more mushrooms into your diet. 🥑 Make smarter food choices. Become a member at zoe.com for 10% off with code PODCAST 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ *Naturally high in copper which contributes to normal energy yielding metabolism and the normal function of the immune system Free resources from ZOE: Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition  Gut Guide - for a healthier microbiome in weeks MenoScale Calculator - learn about your symptoms 📚 Books from our ZOE Scientists: Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello, and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're discussing mushrooms. Neither animal nor plant, mushrooms are entirely unique, and their novel chemistry provides us with powerful and often surprising health benefits. So how can we take advantage of this mushroom magic? Tim Spector and fungi expert Merlin Sheldrake explain how and why you should invite more mushrooms into your diet. They taste fantastic.

They have this amazing range of chemicals that give you this umami taste, this savoury taste, which is sort of mimicking meat in many ways. And some people, it's better than meat particularly if you've got a range of different mushrooms and you've you've slow cooked them even get more taste if you dehydrate them and rehydrate them in many cases so you actually get even more savory flavors and more chemicals but as well as being super tasty you know there's a lot of water in them. So once you've got rid of the water, they have huge amounts of protein, about 25% protein, pretty good amounts of fiber as well. All these chemicals we've been talking about that have a whole variety of these effects.

They're a source of selenium. They're actually a source of vitamin D. And they sunbathe like humans. And they can- You mentioned this before. Is it really true that if you leave them out in the sun before eating, they have more vitamin D and they sunbathe like humans. You mentioned this before, is it really true that if you leave them out in the sun before eating, they have more vitamin D? It is. I mean, it depends slightly on the variety, but some of them are really good at converting natural steroids in

them to vitamin D, which is a steroid. And basically you can get half of your vitamin D amounts from eating portions of mushrooms. Is it just a lucky byproduct for us that these mushrooms are so nutritious and have all of these chemicals we don't access elsewhere? In some sense. I mean, it's also important to remember that they haven't been busily evolving for over a billion years to give us vitamin D. How selfish of them. Although, obviously, it is irrelevant when we're talking about what it's like to eat them. But they need these molecules themselves to do a lot of the basic things that they need to do.

So, for example, when we use fungal drugs like penicillin, which is a very famous drug produced by a fungus, the fungus is producing that antibiotic to defend itself from bacteria. When we use it in our lives, we are rehousing a fungal solution within our bodies. And so I think that you can think of a lot of the nutritional content of mushrooms as something similar. It'll vary from compound to compound, of course. We talk a lot about diversity as we think about what you're eating. And in a sense, what I'm hearing is like, fungi aren't even plants. So I guess to make it very, to think of this very simple, it's hardly surprising you're

getting more diversity in the same way you're describing these fungi carrying out tasks that plants can't do. Similarly, it's perhaps not surprising that you might have access to like these different sorts of complex chemicals from fungi that we wouldn't just get through our normal plants. Or am I stretching this too far? I think there's lots of things that fungi can do for us chemically that plants can't. Because they're so chemically ingenious, because they produce all these different compounds to do all these different things. In fact, lots of the chemicals that you'll get by eating a plant have originally been concentrated or even made by a fungus.

Much of the phosphorus that's in your body would have passed through a fungus on its way to the plant that fed you. And is it okay to eat them raw or should I always be cooking my mushrooms? Unless you're very careful, you're better off, I think, cooking them. There are quite a few poisonous types and there are other ones that just by cooking them, you get rid of those nasty chemicals and they're easier to eat. And it's often easier to get the nutrients from them if they're slightly cooked as well, because they have this special layer, chitin, which is very hard to break down and gives it that structure. And also they're full of water as well. So if you're cooking them, you actually get rid of a lot of the water

and you get actually more flavors that way. So that's my view. I don't know whether you eat lots of raw mushrooms, but I think they taste better cooked generally. And so that's the way I... Easier to digest. They're breaking down the cell walls for sure. The times when I might eat them when they haven't been cooked formerly cooked with heat is when

they've been fermented so if you're eating like a mold like koji which is used to make soy sauce and miso um you haven't cooked that but it has been transformed through a fermentation process cold cooking yeah we call that so yes no i've started fermenting mushrooms it's quite tricky but uh they do taste amazing and how do you access this because most people will feel like if they go to their local grocery store and mushrooms maybe there's like one type of mushroom or you know i think we start to see a few more but still not very many and i at least have been told by my mother again i feel like there's a long list of things that my mother told me not to do on this podcast. But one of them was not to eat random mushrooms that you find in the forest because you're likely to kill yourself.

So how do people, I assume that not eating random mushrooms is a good idea, Merlin? It's definitely a good idea. Because quite a lot of them are genuinely poisonous. There are some poisonous mushrooms which will give you a really a bad time and potentially kill you so i mean the general rule of thumb is that you never eat a mushroom that you've found unless you can positively identify it what that means is that um you're not just saying well it's not that and it's not that so it must be this what you're saying is i know for a fact that it's this that's a high bar for most people listening to this yeah just wandering into their local park and seeing a mushroom but there are lots of ways to to learn about you know what mushrooms are which just like you can learn about what trees

are which or what birds are which and and and um it's actually a really exciting thing for many people to do and so and there's lots of great resources online and for those who want to learn more so i wouldn't discourage anyone for from doing that it's not like you need to become like the expert who knows all mushrooms overnight i think there are about 300 edible types of mushroom I read somewhere, but about 30 are cultivated. And they're the ones you'd see in the shops. So up to 30, I guess, is the most you're going to see probably in this country. And most of us aren't going to see 30.

They're maybe going to see a few. So that brings me back to the question at the beginning about dried mushrooms. And are they still good for your health or does it need to be fresh in the way that i think you talk about a lot of other plants you say if they just sit out there for months there's not much you know yes left in them i was surprised when i was reading this that there are studies looking at the nutritional content of of dried mushrooms and i think a lot it's done on shiitake mushrooms, but porcini as well, which the Italians often store dried.

And they are just as nutritious. They've looked at the chemical composition and are super healthy. And some people think they have more taste when they're rehydrated. You have to add water back into them, usually warm water. And so these seem to be very very healthy so it's a bit like our stories about canned tomatoes or beans some

of these things which you might think are not healthy because they're dried you know are actually actually still really good for you and i think it shouldn't stop people eating mushrooms out of season by eating these dried ones i think that's the message um although you should find a reputable source because it's sometimes when dried mushrooms are imported um you can't tell you by looking at the fragments of dried mushrooms so you can't confirm just visually that it's the species it says it is and there are cases of um contamination or um the wrong kind of mushroom ending up in your bag of dried mushrooms you're not really getting the variety that you want or the diversity. They're just giving you a bunch of the cheapest ones.

Yeah, or there are a few thrown in with the ones you want, and those might not be the ones you want to be eating. So reputable source. But button mushrooms are the sort of common ones in the UK, and they're often the cheapest, and they're cultivated in large amounts. And although they look fairly dull compared to some of the exotic ones you see i think they've still got plenty of nutrients is that right because they sort of look like the white bread of mushrooms but you're telling me that actually they still

i feel like they can't have any nutritional value whatsoever but you're telling me that actually i'm being unfair i think you are yes uh certainly i apologize there may be better ones in my life but you might be you'll be generally paying more for uh the better ones but berlin probably knows the differences between all of the uh the varieties but i still think there's no such thing as a bad mushroom i think that's my i'd agree with that i'd agree with that i i personally think there are ones that taste a lot better and and more and more available actually like oyster mushrooms or shiitake mushrooms, which I would always choose over a button mushroom. I would agree that there's no such thing as a bad edible mushroom.

But for those that don't like or have not liked as a child, for example, button mushrooms, there may well be mushrooms out there that you do like because there's quite a range of flavours and textures. I hope you found the information in this week's episode useful. If you're interested in improving your gut health, you might want to download our free gut guide. It's packed with recipes and science-backed information to help you on your journey towards better health. Go to zoe.com slash gut guide to download it for free. Or if you're

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