21st Century Guidebook to Fungi, SECOND EDITION, by David Moore, Geoffrey D. Robson and Anthony P. J. Trinci

Table of Contents

1. Chapter 10: Fungi in ecosystems
2. Chapter 11: Exploiting fungi for food
   1. Fungi as food
   2. Fungi in food webs
   3. Wild harvests: commercial mushroom picking
   4. Cells and mycelium as human food
   5. Fermented foods
   6. Industrial cultivation methods
   7. Gardening insects and fungi
   8. Development of a fungal fruit body
   9. Chapter 11 References and further reading
   10. Buy a PDF of Chapter 11
3. Chapter 12: Development and morphogenesis

Chapter 11: Exploiting fungi for food

Fungal biomass is a high-quality food source because it contains a good content of protein (typically 20-30% crude protein as a percentage of dry matter), which contains all of the amino acids which are essential to human and animal nutrition. Add characteristically low fat content to the protein, a chitinous wall as a source of dietary fibre, useful vitamin content, especially of B-vitamins, and carbohydrate in the form of glycogen and a good food source can be considered an ideal food. Judging from archaeological and similar finds, mushrooms, toadstools and bracket fungi have been used by man since before recorded history for both food and medicinal purposes.

We currently depend on fungi and fungal products every hour of every day and this chapter will concentrate on the human fungal foodstuffs and beverages in current use (Moore, 2001; Zied & Pardo-Giménez, 2017; Koul & Farooq, 2020; Singh et al., 2021). However, before turning to this aspect we want to deal with the ways that other animals make use of fungi. Fungi feature prominently in food webs, and wild fungi are picked commercially, too. But it’s not solely a matter of ‘picking mushrooms’; fungal cells and mycelium are used as human food, and fungi are used to prepare many commonly-used fermented foods, so there is a need to consider several different industrial cultivation methods. Finally, to make the point that we are not the only animals that cultivate fungi, we will discuss the relationship between gardening insects and their fungi, though we will describe these mutualisms in detail in Chapter 15.

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Updated June, 2021