Edible Mushrooms and Stupidity

Transported a guy recently who did something (IMHO) that was very stupid. He ate two wild mushrooms.....

From looking at the guy and his suroundings, you could tell he was physically fit and the 'outdoor' type. He admitted to being a hiker and gave the air of having the knowledge that he knew what he was doing.....lol... He ended up calling poison control because 2-3 hours before calling 911, he had eaten 2 wild mushrooms that he found (in his yard I believe)and he not had vomiting and diarrhea.

Now from what I remember, People always told you NOT to eat any wild mushrooms....they did allow for one caveat and that was 'unless you were absolutely certain what kind they were'... and even with that statement, they would usually follow it up with something like....but even then it is not a good idea.....don't know what happened to him (ultimately) so can't report on that.....but has the 'instruction' changed?

I have looked into wild edibles and even those I am positive of I have leave me thinking.....is it REALLY safe.....?

I can't stand the texture of mushrooms and can not eat them anyway, but was curious if the instruction has changed at all.....

Morel mushrooms are very distinctive. Beyond that I have yet to learn and I do not experiment. A local mycology professor does occasional mushroomhunts and I hope to go on more of them.

Unless you REALLLLYYY know, leave the 'shrooms alone.

You should not eat anything that you do not know for certain.
That applies to all plants and animals, not just mushrooms.

Knowing them includes whether it is edible and which parts and at what times of the year.
You know about shellfish, you might know about red tides and dangerous seasons for clams. You also need to know about local pollution sources and local algae blooms.

With fin fish you have the same thing. Some fish fresh from the sea can have toxic flesh or internal organs. We don't think of fish as being deadly poison but that is the truth concerning some of them.
Look up Fugu or Ciguatoxin poisoning for a couple eye openers about fin fish.

About the parts of the plants or animals I give two examples.
Potatoes are good food, but only the tubers are food and the rest of the plant is poison, and if the tubers turned green from being exposed to light they are as deadly as the leaves are. Seals are edible meat, but if you eat too much seal liver you get poisoned because they are too rich in Vitamin A.

Then there is the problem of how individuals react. Peanuts can kill people with allergies to them. Plenty of foods safe for me are deadly to some people.
There is even a lot of stuff on the supermarket shelf that can kill you.
So you should not eat anything you can't ID properly and know well.

To eat a wild mushroom without knowing what it is, well that is just begging for Darwin's Rules to be applied specifically to you.

Even Ron Hood mis-identified (and was temporarily put down) by a wild mushroom.

I've worked with some Russians for whom mushroom gathering was a hobby (actually a common social activity) and for the life of me I could never tell what they were looking at to determine edibility.

Dismissing a whole class of wild foods because you don't have time or interest to learn them makes common sense, but avoiding a potential resource because of fear of the unknown might not.

If you look at the list of poisonous mushrooms and compare them to a list of all mushroom species there are not very many of them.
If you look at a list of known edible mushrooms there are not a whole lot of them either.
There is an awful lot of mushrooms which are regarded as inedible or unknown edibility because they are to tough, to slimy, to small or taste horrible.
So the thing is to learn which ones are worth bothering with and concentrate on them.
You might want to be aware of the most dangerous ones so you can avoid them, but if you follow the don't eat unknown stuff rule you are OK picking stuff you know to be good.

I would like to add that if you compare poisonous to safe species the mushrooms are a safer kingdom than the green plants are.
The number of poisonous plants in relation to safe plants is much higher than it is with the mushrooms, and some of them are poisonous in much more interesting ways.

Edit: I think Dweste is pointing out that you should get some education about them so you can use them safely.

You got it.

Mushrooms have almost no nutritional value and some are rather impressively dangerous so the risk/reward is somewhat skewed toward you being screwed.

Mushrooms are a very good source for proteins, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium selenium and fiber.
These nutrients are often deficient in greens or tubers.

Mushrooms get a much worse rap than they deserve.

What mushrooms lack are fats and oils, and most other wild foods lack fats and oils too.

For you to get fats you need things like nuts, some of the oil seeds like sunflower or animal sources like meat, fish, insects, grubs and other bugs.

Again, the truly and impressively dangerous ones are easy to learn, and the worthwhile ones are easy to learn too.

You should be able to learn the top 5 edible mushrooms in your area pretty easily. One field trip with the local mycological society in the spring, again in midsummer and once more in the fall would likely set you up quite nicely.

I'll second that, Scafool. Mushrooms are some of the most useful wild edibles (in temperate woodland at least). I grew up in a family where gathering mushrooms has a long tradition that goes further back than anyone can remember. It actually takes very little effort to learn the basics - how to identify several of the most common edible species and which ones to avoid at all cost. But this is one thing that can't be learned from a book and it's highly location-specific. You need some hands-on guidance and a bit of practice.

Pick only those mushrooms you're totally sure about and you'll be fine. I've eaten plenty of mushrooms in my time, can't say I'm a big fan but they're a decent source of food. Too bad they tend to grow only in specific locations. Also, the weather has to be just right, warm and wet.

Maybe he thought the mushrooms were of the magic variety. There will be Gnomes running around under his hospital bed right now..

"Maybe he thought the mushrooms were of the magic variety".


That brought back a flashback of "magical" proportions

Mike

i've had several common types of mushroom and found them to be fine cooked as a add-on to a meal..chicken of the woods is a yellow shelf mushroom thats nice fried in butter,same with inky caps before they get "inky" puffballs the same,fried but they need to be young,morels are found on canoe trips and go with lake trout..what i don't eat are mushrooms that look like the ones you get in stores as there are a few that without doing spore prints and such can cause nasty reactions.i would not eat any mushroom in a survival situation,in fact i don't think i would eat any wild plant.

Mushrooms may have a few nutrients, but their calorie content is pretty low. Not much of an exchange in relation to the possible danger.

If you know nothing, then of course you risk everything eating foods unknown to you.

If you learn a few common edible mushrooms in your area and stick to them, then you can eliminate the danger at least as much as you can buying food at the supermarket.

If you find mushrooms a tasty addition to your food, then you can be ready when opportunity knocks.

Edit: Eliminate the stupidity not the mushrooms.

Sigh.

I don't like mushrooms, so I guess I'll have to stick with the stupidity. 8-)

It's not nearly so good in sauce.

My Great Uncle & Aunt would collect mushroom and bring a bag back for my Grandmother. She would put them aside. The next day she would call them up and ask, "How are you feeling today?" If they were okay, she would eat the mushrooms. To my knowledge they never had any trouble during everal decades of collcting.

BTW, a great identification book for the Northeast is George Baron's Mushrooms of Northeast North America: Midwest to New England. Beautiful book that's well orgaized for easy idenfication and is loaded with wonderful photos that mak basic identification easy, although I would not recomnd using it as way to entify whether or not a species is edible. I, like others here, caution against samply shrooms unless one has been trained properly. He also has a website, http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gbarron/index.htm. Another interesting website is Tom Volk's Fungi.

BTW, the link to George Barron's book takes you to my Amazon affiliates page. I get a small portion of any sale as store credit. But I'm not offering the link as a way to promote myself (I have yet to sell any product because I don't promote it!), but rather to point out the links in the upper right corner under Browse By Category. This will open pages that list various nature books and field guides I have read and would recommend to fiends and Scouts. In fact, all of the books are in a large tool chest library that I haul to Scout outings to teach for advancement and merit badges. I would welcome any recommendations on other books that could be added to my "library."

Gotta watch out even if you know exactly what you're doing. I read an article a long time ago about a family from Korea who moved to the US. They found what they thought were some of their favorite mushrooms growing wild, picked them and cooked them up. Almost wiped out the entire family.

My grandfather used to pick mushrooms, I regret not asking him to teach me.

Collecting wild mushrooms is a pastime for many people. Like everything else, you need to learn what is good and what is not. A friend who did this also told me that you never eat mushrooms that grow in your yard (for most people) because of the chemicals most people put on their yard. The mushroom concentrates these in their flesh. Only gather from wild areas or areas you know not to be chemically treated.

Bill

a long time ago I had heard (second hand) about a family that liked to pick mushrooms and consume them. Apatrently they went out one day picked some. One of the daughters was not feeling herself and chose not to consume them.

Not long after eating the mushrooms everyone who consumed the mushrooms died. The girl who did not eat any survived. The moral is that most mushrums are poisonious, and Identifying them may not always be 100%.

Out of all the edible plants I know of and of those that are experts on edibles, eating mushrooms is considered an unwise choice.

Are there experts on mushroom eating that know all the forms of mushrooms and there variations, heck yeah,, I know I am not one of them.

I am sorry the man eneded up in the hospital, and I hope he recovers.

And how many die from eating the "safe" food from the supermarket - every year? You would think the "experts" would advise people against shopping for food.

Just learn the two or three unmistakable and edible wild mushrooms common to your area and don't experiment with others.

Or choose not to learn and then please do not each any wild mushrooms.

I think one of the main issues with eating mushrooms, barring the "shark attack" stories (people dying, etc, from misidentification), is that, with the exception of a few varieties, a LOT of the poisonous ones look similar to non poisonous ones-and, once poisoned, there really isnt any way to rid yourself of it, IIRC. Once its consumed in a large enough quantity, your goose is cooked, so to speak.
Now, this is likely true for most plants as well-but, for the most part, there are some distinctive, easily identifiable differences between poisonous varieties & their edible cousins; enough to keep you from getting sick, or worse, if you are following your guide.
Mushrooms are not to my liking-I can identify exactly 3; puffballs, chicken of the woods, and tinder fungus. Two of which are edible. But, I think only in the most EXTREME case would I eat the first 2 (I dont think tinder fungus is edible), as I despise them. But, sometimes, beggars cant be choosers.
It would be nice to find a local mushroom expert, and spend a day identifying them! Just for the experience.

Thanks for the book links Bill.
I will be taking another look at some of the ones you recommended.

Don't be so complacent about the green plants.
There are a huge number of deadly plants.
Not only do most of the really deadly ones look just like the edible ones, but a lot of them will kill you if you just walk too close to them.
People have been killed by sleeping under some of the poison dripping trees.

It is very unwise to go near anything green. Green things kill.

Any poison-drippers in North America?

Mushrooms are delicious and learning to identify them is interesting.
However:
In most survival situation food is not a high priority - most of us have more than enough 'stored resources' to last a week or so.
If you get lost in the woods overnight then eating random mushrooms is unlikely to be a life enhancing strategy.
The stories archive here is full of cases of people getting stung/bitten/injured trying to catch and eat something after they have been lost for a couple of hours.

I think our esteemed host mentions this in excusing why he felt obliged to include a fishing kit in the PSK.

NobodySpecial, you have that part totally right.
Most of us should be able to go ten days at least before depleting vitamin or mineral reserves and possibly much longer on stored fats for calories.

One of the main reasons to teach trapping and foraging along with shelter building is to keep people from wandering off.
If they stay near the wreck or last known position they are easier to find.
Setting up a shelter, a fire and doing a bit of food gathering also helps people mentally. It helps them if they feel they are doing something positive to help themselves survive.

I wonder how long it has been since we had a thread about what the priorities for somebody who got lost or marooned are?

Dweste; The poison dripping trees are hiding out in the state of Incognito.
They try to keep their poison dripping skills hidden and commonly use large branches to kill people with instead.

Only the smaller poison drippers like Cow Parsnip, Giant Hogweed, Poison Oak, and Poison Ivy usually let themselves be found out.

Where is Blast on this thread? Seems right up his alley.

Aha! I thought so!

Be sure to read the intro paragraph atop each category page. For example, on the Geology page I highly recomend the DK book, it's got a great intro and identification key. It's a good starter book. While the Simon & Schuster book is much more advanced and a great reference into crystology, but not well suited for beginners or general geology.

Good point! I'd like to add that ANY amount of food (that doesn't wreck havock on your system) will be a huge morale booster and greatly increase your odds. You can live for a while without any food at all, but observations are that it is highly unpleasant, and it will reduce your strength, mental abilities and thermo regulation. A small amount of food will make you function soooooo much better.

Food will not be my top priority, but if I have time and energy on my hands (such as waiting by a wreck) I would certainly try to find something to eat when the other priorities are met.

Setting aside the debate about the "calorie content" of mushrooms, the main reason to harvest them is that they are DELICIOUS! At least morels, chanterelles, and portobellos are and all can be found in the wild.

If you are interested, there are a variety of detailed guidebooks available that discuss the specifics of identification.

The first step is to get familiar with the deadly mushrooms.

Then learn what type of edible mushrooms are in your area and then see what deadly/poisonous mushrooms resemble those and then see how to distinguish them. This is a decent starting point for the western US (http://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Prom...2622&sr=8-4).

If you don't know what you are doing, don't eat wild mushrooms. And, by the same token, if you don't know what you are doing, don't drive a car, fly a plane, operate an arc welder, go boating, go swimming, etc.