Dear Editor:
The submission by Roy H. on mushrooms bothers me on a survival skills level. It bothers me because mushrooms are a poor source of calories. Just 4 calories for the white button kind ranging up to 22 for Portabella mushrooms. They’re mostly air and spores. Yes, they have lots of vitamins in them – but I could spend all day foraging for mushrooms and end up expending more calories than I gain. Let’s assume I find enough to pay me back for finding them, if they’re the white caps we’re familiar with and I spent 1 hour gathering them (hypothetically) then I expended somewhere between 200 and 300 calories finding them. divide 300 by 4 and you’ll have to eat 75 of the things to make it worth your effort. Given that most of the calories I burned were basal metabolism, it still gives so little return on effort to be useless in a survival situation. Oh, and then there’s the whole “Will eating this thing kill me?” and if it wont kill me, will it make me throw up all the food I’ve eaten today and dehydrate me? The risk, is too high. I don’t care if you’re an expert or not, if you’re foraging for mushrooms you’re not looking for threats. Mushrooms don’t grow on the plains, they grow in the shade (wooded areas) in general and your ability to scan for threats is directly limited by the terrain that mushrooms grow in. Okay, so take a buddy to stand guard. Now that’s two people that need their calories replaced.
I’m being as candid as possible here because I consider it risky behavior for a survivalist. Flavoring for our food occurs in so many other plants that the benefits of mushroom gathering for variety’s sake is negated. I suppose it’s nice to know what mushrooms are poisonous, or not, but in any grid-down scenario it’s not worth the risk. It puzzles me that the appearance of the mushroom article appears in a survival oriented web log. The paragraph on eating mushrooms should be included with the paragraph on jumping off of cliffs, don’t do it. Further, in any scenario where you are down to either eating mushrooms or starving, then I posit that if you know what mushrooms are good because you spent your time learning about them, then you have failed utterly at surviving. The time you invested in finding and identifying edible mushrooms in your area could have been spent delivering pizza (nods to Dave Ramsey), taking the money you earned from that and buying a pail of hard red wheat. I don’t study other useless topics, and I don’t consider learning about mushroom foraging as beneficial in a grid-down survival situation. If I am just sitting around with nothing to do and want something productive to do, there are always plenty of tasks to expend energy on that don’t involve poisoning yourself. There’s a reason you don’t ever see any of the pseudo-survivor reality television shows personalities eating mushrooms when they get dumped in the wilderness, the reason is that it’s a bad thing to show people to do and they didn’t want to risk getting ill themselves. In his article he talks about stumping a mushroom expert with a photo and description of a mushroom, and this is supposed to instill confidence in us for eating them? All that being said, mushrooms are cool and tasty – but not a survival food. – Jim in Colorado
Hello,
There are a few points I’d like to make. I am an avid mushroom hunter and have been for years; but that doesn’t give me any more qualifications than still being obviously alive.
First I’d like to stress that I do not consider mushroom a valid survival-diet constituent. As the author said, many, many species will kill you or make you very ill, and even a benign bout of diarrhoea isn’t as benign when you are at risk of dehydration. In addition, it stinks more than regular feces and you won’t be able to bury it properly. All of this for “food” that, unlike what is stated, holds very little nutritional value: only water and some minerals. They would have an utility as flavoring, to avoid this appetite fatigue that has been mentioned several times recently, but that’s that.
The tips given to identify the edible species vary widely by location, but here are some I know from experience: Many boletes with red pores are edible, at least as many than those that aren’t. Several are extremely tasty, too. As for blueing, it has absolutely nothing to do with toxicity, and none of the most toxic species (here in Europe where none will bring anything more serious than strong bowel upset) blues at all. From my experience, none of the species that grow on acidic soil are really toxic, either. Soil composition and tree species growing around are the 2 main factors to find most species, since most grow in symbiosis with roots or on specific rotting wood.
Morels contain a substance that will destroy your red blood cells and are called hemolysins. They are destroyed over a certain temperature, so you are safe as long as you cook them thoroughly and for several minutes. Better know that if you’re on your first mushroom hunt and find any!
Most species have gills, and many are edible indeed without any sinister twin to fool you. Just dumping a whole group of species because they share one characteristic with the few deadly ones is a bit short-sighted, especially if you’re planning on relying on them for survival (you won’t, they’re barely “food”.) A spore print itself will give you very few clues about the species, apart from the fact that they did have a round cap and gills arranged in a wheel pattern. Different species have white, beige, pinkish or brown spores and various colored gills, but the actual spore color will only show when the mushroom has reached maturity and may be rotting on its foot and crawling with worms. Even looking at the spores shape with your survival pocket field-microscope will only give you some more clues to narrow down your choice.
Even with limited knowledge, you will quickly be able to tell if you’re sure enough of your identification to eat your find. Getting an exhaustive guide and perusing it at leisure will quickly make you see which clue to look for, and which section of the book to search when you’re in the woods. I wholeheartedly agree with the advice given: “If you ever have any doubts whatsoever about the identify of the mushroom you’ve found, then don’t eat it.” I’d even go further and advise not to pick it up, and carefully wipe your hands after handling a specimen. From my experience, the common advice to go show your haul to a pharmacist holds very little utility: most of them don’t know mushrooms and will look it up in an old guide showing a couple of species and giving few indications about the botanical identification clues. Unless you are blessed with a professional who takes a personal interest in the matter, the only use in asking a pharmacist is that they may have some of the chemical substances used to find a particular component. Once again, it is only useful if you know what to search for beforehand. – Frenchy