How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Canning. Canned mushrooms with their liquid may contain up to 100 times as much
sodium as fresh mushrooms. Riboflavin, the most important nutrient in mushrooms, is not
destroyed by heat, but it will leach out into the salty liquid. Riboflavin is sensitive to light;
mushrooms in glass jars should be stored in a cool, dark cabinet.
Drying. Dried mushrooms should be sold and stored in a tightly closed package that pro-
tects the mushrooms from moisture, and they should be kept in a cool, dark place out of
direct sunlight. They should be stored in the refrigerator only if the refrigerator is less humid
than the kitchen cabinet. Properly stored dried mushrooms may remain usable for as long
as six months. To use dried mushrooms, cover them with boiling water and let them stand
for about 15 minutes. Then rinse them thoroughly to get rid of sand and debris in the folds
of the mushroom.
Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Adverse Effects Associated with This Food
Mushroom poisoning. About 100 of the more than 1,000 varieties of mushrooms are poison-
ous. In the United States, nearly 90 percent of all mushroom poisoning is due to two species
of Amanita mushrooms, Amanita muscaria and Amanita phalloides. Amanita muscaria contains
muscarine, a parasympathetic-nervous-system poison that can cause tearing, salivation,
sweating, vomiting, cramps and diarrhea, dizziness, confusion, coma, and convulsions.
These symptoms may show up anywhere from a few minutes to two hours after you eat the
mushrooms. Muscarine poisoning is potentially fatal. Phalloidin, the toxin in Amanita phal-
loide mushrooms, is a liver poison whose symptoms include all those attributed to muscarine
poisoning, plus jaundice from liver damage. These symptoms may not show up until two to
three days after you eat the mushrooms. Phalloidin is a potentially lethal poison; the death
rate for phalloidin poisoning is 50 percent.
Food/Drug Interactions
False-positive test for occult blood in the stool. The active ingredient in the guaiac slide test for hid-
den blood in feces is alphaguaiaconic acid, a chemical that turns blue in the presence of blood.
Alphaguaiaconic acid also turns blue in the presence of peroxidase, a chemical that occurs
naturally in mushrooms. Eating mushrooms in the 72 hours before taking the guaiac test may
produce a false-positive result in people who not actually have any blood in their stool.
Alcohol/disulfiram interaction. Disulfiram (Antabuse) is a drug used to treat alcoholism. It
causes flushing, difficulty in breathing, nausea, chest pain, vomiting and rapid heart beat if
Mushrooms