Mushroom Coffee Trend All It’s Shroom Up To Be?

Mushroom Coffee Trend All It’s Shroom Up To Be?

Producer Potts  0:18  

 Okay, I know that you put this into your coffee every morning. But I see all of these advertisements for these fancy mushroom coffees? And are they truly all the Shroom? Up to be?

Dr. Sarah  0:40  

Yeah, so totally, mushrooms are a really phenomenal, healthy food. I like putting mushroom extracts into my coffee, because to me like I like bitter coffee, I don’t put any kind of, I mean, if you like sugar in your coffee, too, you could still do this. But I like the earthy bitterness of coffee, and the earthy bitterness of mushroom extracts just kind of blends in. So for me, it’s a convenience thing, because I’m not going to enjoy adding mushroom extracts to something else that I might consume in the day. But mushroom extracts are completely optional.

Producer Potts  1:18  

If we don’t want to get into the fancy mushroom coffee, or we just like our coffee that way we like it if we don’t want to get on that. Like, can I just add in some of the plain white button mushrooms, I can find out the grocer like is that good enough? Or what’s the deal with these mushroom coffees?

Dr. Sarah  1:33  

Yeah, let’s back up and just talk about why mushrooms are good. Maybe that’s where we should start this. So mushrooms are really cool. They’re culinarily and nutritionally classified as vegetables. But unlike all other vegetables, they’re fungi right there. They’re not plants, they come from a completely different kingdom of life. And part of the consequences of that, because they’re a very, very different form of life. They have some nutritional structures, some molecular structures that are unique, we can’t get those from plant foods. So one of the things that mushrooms have that are really, really special is a couple of classes of fiber, that don’t have a lot of other places where we can get them. So chitin and Titus and fiber in particular, the only other food sources of those types of fiber are like insect exoskeletons, so if you like crickets, or the shells of shellfish, so if you’re like softshell, crab, national crabs, maybe a little bit of an easier one. So the only other places we’re getting those fiber are less accessible foods than mushrooms. They also have some beta glucans, which is the same type of fiber that like oats and barley have that helped to reduce cholesterol. So some really cool fiber types. They also have a class of phytonutrients, called triterpenes, which are very beneficial, although there’s like 30,000 triterpenes. And maybe like 50 of them have been well studied. So there’s a lot more we don’t know about this class of phytonutrients than we do know, but the ones that have been well studied, they tend to be really great anti inflammatories, and that’s reflected in a lot of the research looking at medicinal mushroom extracts, they tend to be really great at helping the immune system work better, basically. So not just reducing inflammation, but context dependent, benefiting the immune system. So and that’s likely the combination of the fiber and the types of phytonutrients, like triterpenes. Mushrooms are also just crazy, nutrient dense, they have lots of vitamins, lots of minerals, not very much calories. But then the coolest thing that mushrooms have, like all of that is super cool. And that’s not even the coolest thing that mushrooms have. The coolest thing that mushrooms have is an amino acid called ergothioneine. So this is not one of the 20 amino acids that our bodies used to make proteins. But there’s like hundreds of these other amino acids that we still have in our bodies, and we still do stuff with them. Except they don’t make proteins and ergothioneine is one of them. ergothioneine has been shown to lengthen lifespan but also lengthen healthier, so it reduces risk of all of the diseases associated with aging. So much so that it has been nicknamed the longevity vitamin even though it’s not a vitamin at all. It’s an amino acid. So it’s this incredibly beneficial amino acid. And there have been studies that show that people whose traditional diets include a lot more mushrooms so they’re getting a lot more or refining also, on average have longer lifespans and healthier later years. So We see this in a lot of different sciences. And it’s probably because ergothioneine is a really strong antioxidant. So antioxidants in general tend to balance out a lot of the processes that are associated with aging. So antioxidants in general are really good. But the cool thing about an antioxidant amino acid is that it can get into places in our bodies that other types of amino acids can’t write. That’s also why it’s good to have like vitamin C and polyphenols that are water soluble antioxidants, but also vitamin E, which is a fat soluble antioxidant. So the more different places we can get antioxidants, the more we can benefit from them. So mushrooms have so many things that are really, really beneficial for our health. And all mushrooms have those things to different, right different levels, for sure. But you can get ergothioneine and chitin and chitin and beta glucan fiber types and cool polyphenols and triterpenes. And lots of vitamins and minerals from your regular old white mushrooms in the store or frozen mushrooms or canned mushrooms. And you can get it from the fancy like trumpet mushrooms and tacky mushrooms from the fancy grocery store. I find them from the mushrooms that I forage on my morning hikes. So you get them from all types of mushrooms. So if you like whatever mushrooms you like, whatever mushrooms, mushroom dishes, right, whatever mushrooms that go into that, that’s fantastic. One of the things that I like about mushroom extracts, they’re not all created equal. Not all of them are good quality. But a good quality mushroom extract has all of those nutrients in the extract. So you’re getting all of those cool, the fiber types, the triterpenes, the ergothioneine. And what’s cool is that a lot of the mushrooms that are typically used for mushroom extracts, like reishi, are really concentrated sources of those nutrients. So a small amount of powder gives you the same amount of nutrients as maybe a whole serving, I think it’s like one teaspoon of powder is the same as one cup serving fresh if I remember correctly, that’s worth double checking. Whoa, hold please while I double check that I’m glad I looked it up because it’s one tablespoon of mushroom powder and an extract that is equivalent to one cup fresh. But you could still get to three servings of mushrooms per week, which is where most of the science shows we’re getting all of the amazing benefits of mushrooms with like a teaspoon per day in your coffee, if that’s what you like. That’s about what I do. But I also eat a lot of mushrooms on top of that, because mushrooms are delicious. And also super, super good for you.

Producer Potts  7:46  

Awesome. I love that. So can you tell everyone where they can learn more about mushrooms and maybe take a deep dive into mushrooms if they are interested in doing that.

Dr. Sarah  7:59  

I have an entire section in my book on ergothioneine. But mushrooms are also one of the Nutrivore foundational foods. So I talked about ergothioneine and actually longevity, and how ergothioneine is helping us to live longer and healthier. But mushrooms is one of the neutral foundational foods, there’s 12 foundational food families. This doesn’t mean that they’re foods that you have to eat. I basically call a food a foundational food if it has something unique to offer us nutritionally which mushrooms clearly do. I’ve just rattled on about that for a surprisingly long time. So mushrooms have lots of cool stuff to offer us nutritionally that are really hard to get from other foods. So it’s a really good example to introduce the concept of a new tuber foundational food but not only is there like a whole section ergothioneine a whole section on fiber all of the neutral foundational foods get their own breakdown of the science showing how many servings is optimal either per day or per week depending on the food in chapter nine in my new book so I would say this is a great place to start to learn more about why mushrooms are amazing I wanted a mushroom fun, but I was convinced oceans are emotion emotion mushrooms are

Producer Potts  9:22  

you can just say they are all they shroom up to be. 

Dr. Sarah  9:25  

Can I tell you a joke? Yes. So I’ve got I’ve got this friend, friend mushroom and he gets invited to all the parties. And I just don’t I don’t it’s because I’m just not as much of a fun guy

Producer Potts  9:45  

Thank you, Dr. Sarah