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Mushrooms, sometimes called toadstools, are fleshy bodies of fungus that grow above ground on soil or on a food source. They can be separated from the plant world in a kingdom all their very own called Myceteae because they do not contain chlorophyll like green plants.
Without the process of photosynthesis, some mushrooms obtain nutrients by breaking down organic matter or by feeding from higher plants. They are described as decomposers. Another sector attacks living plants to kill and consume them and they are called parasites. Edible and poisonous varieties are mycorrhizal and also are found on or near roots of trees such as oaks, pines and firs.
For humans, mushrooms may do one of three things-nourish, heal or poison. Few are benign. The 3 most popular edible versions of this ‘meat of the vegetable world’ will be the oyster, morel and chanterelles.
They may be used extensively in cuisine from China, Korea, Japan and India. In fact, China will be the world’s largest producer cultivating over half of all mushrooms consumed worldwide. A lot of the edible variety in our supermarkets have been grown commercially on farms and include shiitake, portobello and enoki.
Eastern medicine, especially traditional Chinese practices, has used mushrooms for centuries. Within the United States of America, studies were conducted within the early ’60s for possible ways to modulate the immune system and also to inhibit tumor growth with extracts used in cancer research.
Mushrooms were also used ritually by the natives of Mesoamerica for thousands of years. Called the ‘flesh of the gods’ by Aztecs, mushrooms were widely consumed in religious ceremonies by cultures through the Americas. Cave paintings in Spain and Algeria depict ritualized ingestion dating back as far as 9000 years. Questioned by Christian authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, buy psilocybin Canada use was suppressed until Western psychiatry rediscovered it after World War II.
