Friday Fungus: Agaricus bisporus - you know you like 'em!

We are overdue a set of statistics on the UK’s mushroom growing business and I know you are all waiting with baited breath. In the meantime – and to maintain calm and order – I thought I’d remind you of the last set of statistics that were published in April 2008 and relate to 2007.

The central revelation of the last set of statistics was that UK mushroom production was declining – the area of beds dropped 18% between 2004 and 2007. Home produced mushrooms account for less that a third of UK consumption – a disappointment that the Mushroom Bureau is trying to put right (and they have a lovely, funky little web site with some nice recipes too)!

My only worry is that the main effort in promoting mushrooms is to try to focus on their health value – as a “superfood”. Now while I know mushrooms are super, I have my doubts about the term “superfood”. However hard I try, I cannot be convinced that my considerable consumption of mushrooms is reducing my risk of succumbing to chronic conditions let alone getting cancer.

UK mushroom production – indeed commercial mushroom growing across much of the world – is dominated by the good old white mushroom (agaricus bisporus). And we should note that the mushrooms we call ‘portobello’ and ‘chestnut’ are just variants of the white mushroom. The Mushroom Expert – in describing the distribution of agaricus bisporus could not resist a little witty remark:

“Ecology: Scattered on pizzas, gregarious on salads, densely clustered in grocery stores--and occasionally scattered to gregarious on manured soil…”

While we are seeing more variety in cultivated mushrooms on grocery shelves – shitake are now quite common and we see a slow increase in the amount of oyster mushroom on sale – the traditional mushroom continues to dominate. In reality this is because it is very flavoursome, easy to cultivate, flexible, can be stored and is simply a very good vegetable to have around. All our obsessing (and boy do some of us obsess) about wild mushrooms and strange imported fungi from China should not distract us from the fact that the field mushroom is yummy!