Shiitake Mushrooms: The Good, The Bad, and The Balance

Shiitake Mushrooms

 The Good, The Bad, and The Balance

At 12 pm my lunch looked and smelled delicious. From a plain white plate, it was staring at me with its 2 yolks of eyes. A little bit of kale together with some onion and broccoli made a perfect canvas to showcase the earthiness of a handful of mushrooms gathered to the center and the southernmost part of the plate. And the best part, it was all lightly steamed: just how I like it!

12:20 pm was when I noticed that something was wrong. It seemed that my esophagus and the stomach were on fire but in a very different way than, say, when you overdid it on spicy foods. It felt like I have swallowed some broken glass. At the same time, I started feeling an eerie weakness and dizziness, and had to lie down, just in case. At that point, having been mostly healthy and relatively young, I felt like panicking… a little. On the other hand, I had almost no doubt that what I was experiencing was somehow related to what I just ate. I started listing the ingredients of my lunch in my head: kale, eggs, broccoli, a teaspoon of olive oil, some salt, onion, mushrooms…

Mushrooms have always been a regular part in my diet. And how could they not! By now, all of us probably heard of the benefits of adding mushrooms to our diet: they’re rich in vitamin D, high in fiber and low in calories, among other things. Recently, studies have also showed that at least one kind of mushrooms, named shiitake, might have a unique inhibiting effect on cancerous tumors. According to the research, the effect may be caused by the unique ability of the mushrooms to selectively damage the blood vessels leading to the cancerous tissue.

Although all of the ingredients sounded pretty harmless, if not actually good for me, it was the handful of shiitake mushrooms that led me to researching my lunch online. Starting with a not-so-scientific way to find similar symptoms others experienced after consuming shiitake mushrooms, and progressing to more reputable sources on nutrition, it turned out that RAW shiitake mushrooms contained chemicals named hydrazines that were actually shown to cause tumors in animal studies. Yikes! Furthermore, eating this type of mushroom almost raw, which was exactly how I did it, was known for causing digestive distress in some people, as well as dizziness and weakness similar to what I experienced.

But, wait, didn’t I say that mushrooms have been a regular part of my diet? That was my reasoning too, as I tried to identify what was different about the way my lunch went today. And then it hit me: usually I pair mushrooms with meat for dinner, which means they spend plenty of time in a hot pan with a lid tightly closed. With the breakfast-y vibe to my lunch today, however, I doubt that the contents of my frying pan were exposed to medium heat for longer than 4-5 minutes, which according to the mushroom experts I discovered, meant that I had them virtually raw.

The takeaway message of this adventure: cook your mushrooms thoroughly and be well!