How to Clean Mushrooms

The best way to clean fresh mushrooms is to wipe them, one at a time, with a damp cloth or paper towel or to use a soft mushroom brush to remove any dirt. You can lightly rinse them, but dry them immediately and gently with paper towels. Don't soak fresh mushrooms in water or they will become soggy, making browning very difficult.

How to Store Mushrooms

Prepackaged mushrooms should stay in the package, but loose mushrooms or those in an open package should be stored in a paper bag or in a damp cloth bag in the refrigerator. This allows them to breathe so they stay firm longer. Storing mushrooms in a plastic bag causes them to deteriorate quickly.

How to Saute Mushrooms

Lisa Holderness Brown

Sauteing mushrooms sears the outsides to a lovely and flavorful brown while keeping the insides juicy. Learn the secret for cooking mushrooms perfectly and five simple ways to savor them.

Sauteing is a quick, versatile way to cook any kind of mushroom, including basic button, cremini, stemmed shiitake, portobello, and morel mushrooms -- or better yet, a mix of your favorites. While the cooking process only takes minutes, there are a few tips that assure the tastiest results. Savor them as a side dish, seasoned simply with sea salt and cracked black pepper or embellished with herbs and more. Start the process with the freshest mushrooms you can find and our pointers for cleaning and slicing them.

Medicinal mushrooms and weight loss

Products which help with weight loss are abundant. One issue is these food items are not usually included in a regular eating routine. Junk, processed and fast food items tend to be an average diet. Rather, an ordinary diet should contain food items which are 
homemade, natural and nutritious.

Processed, fast and junk food products normally are abundant with calories, saturated fats and simple carbs. This fat is located in shortening, margarine and hydrogenated oil. Simple carbs are found in buns, breads and muffins. Additionally, junk, processed and fast foods usually furnish small amounts of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Thus, dining on junk, fast and processed foods furnishes huge quantities of food calories however hardly any nutriments. Regular intake of junk, fast and processed foods brings about excessive pounds as well as health conditions. Therefore, whenever feasible try and watch consumption of these food products.

A wonderful food to lose weight is a mushroom, for example shiitake, maitake and reishi. These foods supply a number of valuable nutrients that help in reducing pounds. Plus, mushrooms have small amounts of calories. Hence, eating mushrooms does not cause excessive weight.

Besides assisting in reducing pounds, shiitake, reishi and maitake mushrooms provide health advantages. Studies have proven shiitake mushrooms will lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and heal infections. Studies have proven maitake mushrooms can treat cancer, prevent cancer and control blood sugar. In addition, this mushroom has been shown they can reduce blood pressure. Reishi mushrooms are used for a variety of ailments like cancer, inflammation, heart disease and ulcers. Plus, reishi mushrooms have anti-microbial components that could inhibit HIV.

There consist of quite a few techniques for adding mushrooms in healthy, homemade and scrumptious foods. Mushrooms are generally added in eggs, soups and pasta dishes. Also, mushrooms can be added on top of salads, meats and pizzas. Therefore, making healthy, homemade and scrumptious foods that assist with weight loss utilizing mushrooms will be simple.

A few individuals might not like the taste when eating reishi, shiitake and maitake mushrooms. Therefore, if eating a mushroom is not desired, a different choice is taking a vitamin supplement or an extract, so those valuable nutrients are ingested.

Even though typical eating routines include fast, junk and processed food products, reducing excess weight will be tough consuming those kinds of food products regularly. Including mushrooms packed with nutriments in eating routines will be beneficial whenever trying to eliminate unwanted weight. Nutrients are important concerning weight loss because a human body must have abundant nutrients to function effectively.

More fresh mushrooms check here

The Health Benefits of Mushroom Consumption

By Dr. Mercola

Mushrooms contain some of the most potent natural medicines on the planet. Of the 140,000 species of mushroom-forming fungi, science is familiar with only 10 percent, according to world-renown mycologist Paul Stamets, who has written six books on the

topic.

About 100 species of mushrooms are being studied for their health-promoting benefits. Of those hundred, about a half dozen really stand out for their ability to deliver a tremendous boost to your immune system.

It's important to eat only organically grown mushrooms because they absorb and concentrate whatever they grow in — good OR bad. This is what gives mushrooms their potency. Mushrooms are known to concentrate heavy metals, as well as air and water pollutants, so healthy growing conditions is a critical factor.

While it may sound strange, we're actually more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom, as we share the same pathogens, meaning bacteria and viruses.

As a defense against bacterial invasion, fungi have developed strong antibiotics, which also happen to be effective for us humans. Penicillin, streptomycin, and tetracycline all come from fungal extracts.

The Many Health Benefits of Mushrooms

The FASEB Journal recently published nine studies on mushrooms that were also presented at Experimental Biology 2013, which detailed a wide variety of health benefits,1 including:

• Weight management: One study2, 3 found that substituting red meat with white button mushrooms can help enhance weight loss. Obese participants with a mean age of just over 48 years ate approximately one cup of mushrooms per day in place of meat. The control group ate a standard diet without mushrooms.
At the end of the 12-month trial, the intervention group had lost an average of 3.6 percent of their starting weight, or about seven pounds. They also showed improvements in body composition, such as reduced waist circumference, and ability to maintain their weight loss, compared to the control group.
• Improved nutrition: One dietary analysis4 found that mushroom consumption was associated with better diet quality and improved nutrition.
• Increasing vitamin D levels through your diet: Consuming dried white button mushroom extract was found to be as effective as taking supplemental vitamin D2 or D3 for increasing vitamin D levels (25-hydroxyvitamin D).5
• Improved immune system function: Long chain polysaccharides, particularly alpha and beta glucan molecules, are primarily responsible for the mushrooms' beneficial effect on your immune system. In one study, adding one or two servings of dried shiitake mushrooms was found to have a beneficial, modulating effect on immune system function.6 Another study done on mice found that white
  
  button mushrooms enhanced the adaptive immunity response to salmonella.7

Parasitic Fungi Showing Promise for Immune Disorders and Cancer

Cordyceps, also called caterpillar fungus or Tochukasu, is a favorite of athletes because it increases ATP production, strength and endurance, and has anti-aging effects.8

This parasitic mushroom is unique because, in the wild, it grows out of an insect host instead of a plant host. It has long been used within both traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine.

It has hypoglycemic and possible antidepressant effects, protects your liver and kidneys, increases blood flow, helps normalize your cholesterol levels, and has been

used to treat Hepatitis B.

Cordyceps has antitumor properties as well. Scientists at The University of Nottingham have been studying cordycepin, one of the active medicinal compounds found in these fungi,9 and the one identified as a potential cancer drug. More recent studies suggest it also has potent anti-inflammatory characteristics that may be helpful for those suffering from:

• Asthma
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Renal failure
• Stroke damage

A question that was begging for an answer was how cordycepin could produce so many different beneficial effects at the cellular level. Researcher Dr. Cornelia de Moor told Medical News Today:10

"We have shown that cordycepin reduces the expression of inflammatory genes in airway smooth muscle cells by acting on the final step in the synthesis of their messenger RNAs (mRNAs) which carry the chemical blueprint for the synthesis of proteins. 

This process is called polyadenylation. Commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs either work much earlier in the activation of inflammatory genes, such as prednisone, or work on one of the final products of the inflammatory reaction (e.g. ibuprofen).

These findings indicate that cordycepin acts by a completely different mechanism than currently used anti-inflammatory drugs, making it a potential drug for patients in which these drugs don't work well. 

However, it is a surprise that cordycepin does not affect the synthesis of mRNAs from other genes, because nearly all mRNAs require polyadenylation."

According to Dr. de Moor's research, the mechanism responsible for cordycepin's many varied effects may stem from its ability to alter the synthesis of many classes of rapidly induced genes that help counteract inflammatory genes, thereby slowing down otherwise rapid cellular responses to tissue damage. It may also help prevent over-activation of inflammatory responses.

"However, it also indicates that cordycepin could have adverse effects on normal wound healing and on the natural defenses against infectious diseases," the featured article states.11

"Dr. de Moor said: 'We are hoping to further investigate which genes are more dependent on polyadenylation than others and why this is the case, as well as test the effect of cordycepin on animal models of disease. Clinical testing of cordycepin is not in our immediate plans, as we think we first have to understand this drug in more detail before we can risk treating patients with it.'"

Foragers, Beware of Toxic Mushrooms

An November 2012 article in The Atlantic12 highlighted recent cases of lethal food poisonings related to eating wild mushrooms, and the need for caution when foraging food:

"Of the over 10,000 species of mushrooms, only about 50 to 100 are toxic. About 6,000 Americans each year end up eating them. Over half of those cases involve unsupervised small children. So if you're considering treating that special person in your life to a wild mushroom-based dish, take the following into consideration: Over 90 percent of deaths, including these most recent ones, are caused by amatoxins."

As mentioned in the article, the North American Mycological Association13offers critical information on a number of toxic mushrooms and the symptoms they cause, including those for amanitin (amatoxins), which is one of the most serious:

• Stage 1: A latency period of 6 to 24 hours after ingestion, in which the toxins are actively destroying the victim's kidneys and liver, but the victim experiences no discomfort.
• Stage 2: A period of about 24 hours characterized by violent vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and severe abdominal cramps.
• Stage 3: A period of 24 hours during which the victim appears to recover (if hospitalized, the patient is sometimes released)
• Stage 4: Relapse, during which kidney and liver failure often occurs, leading to death. Patients may also "bleed out" and die due to the destruction of clotting factors in the blood. There may be more than one relapse.

Warning: If you have any reason to suspect that someone has ingested an amanitin-containing mushroom, DON'T WAIT for symptoms to appear! There is no antidote for amanitin poisoning, and the best hope is to rush the person to the hospital where the toxins can be removed before being fully absorbed into the body.

It's also important to eat ONLY organically grown mushrooms because they absorb and concentrate whatever they grow in — good OR bad. This is what gives mushrooms their potency, for better or worse. Mushrooms are known to concentrate heavy metals, as well as air and water pollutants. One way to know what you're getting is to grow your own. You can find a variety of DIY garden kits available online,14 which will eliminate any questions about what kind of mushroom you're picking.

Improving Your Nutrition with Mushrooms

Two years ago, I interviewed Steve Farrar, who worked and studied mushrooms professionally for the last 30 years. The first 20 years he spent growing them and working primarily with gourmet chefs, but in the past decade, he's started applying his expertise of mushrooms to health purposes. According to Farrar, Americans consume about 900 million pounds of mushrooms a year, but 95 percent of that is just one species: the common button mushroom and its relatives, the Crimini and the Portabello mushrooms.

Granted, the button mushroom is an excellent low-calorie food, especially for diabetics. It contains a number of valuable nutrients, including protein, enzymes, B vitamins (especially niacin), and vitamin D2. However, there are many other types of mushrooms worthy of consideration if you want to improve your diet. I'll review a few of my favorites below. Farrar's focus has been on growing various gourmet mushroom species, particularly the wood decaying mushroom species, which differ greatly from your average button mushroom in terms of biology, nutrition and medicinal value.

 http://angelmushrooms.yolasite.com/

Good or Bad for Weight Loss -- mushroom

Mushrooms are common additions to many Asian dishes such as stir-fried Chinese mushrooms and mushroom chicken and are used in some classic French and American dishes as well. The mushroom, which grows from a spore rather than a seed, is a fast growing fungus that matures on a substrate such as a log, a compost bed, or even cardboard. Mushrooms can be a valuable addition to your weight loss efforts because of

their excellent nutritional profile and deep flavor.

Calories and Nutrients in M​​ushrooms

The calories and nutrients vary slightly between mushroom varieties. The standard button mushroom, found in most grocery stores, has just 21 calories in 1/2 cup of cooked mushrooms, no fat or cholesterol, 2 g of both fiber and protein, and just 2 mg of sodium. Mushrooms also give you selenium, which assists your body in making certain proteins and may also help protect your body from exposure to dangerous substances such as heavy metals. A 1/2 cup of button mushrooms also has 1 mg of iron and 277 mg of potassium.

Weight Loss Benefits of Mushrooms

The low calories and excellent nutritional profile of mushrooms makes them a smart addition to your dieting efforts. The fiber in the mushroom increases your satiety level and the low calories means you can eat a relatively large volume of mushrooms without greatly affecting your diet. For example , 1 cup of grilled portabella mushrooms has only 35 calories. If you use the grilled mushroom instead of a hamburger patty inside a whole wheat hamburger bun, you save yourself 157 calories and 12 g of fat.

Using Mushrooms in Your Diet

Mushrooms take on the flavor of the cooking liquid you use, making them an ingredient you can add to a variety of foods. Use mushrooms in an egg white omelet for breakfast or add 1 cup of sauteed mushrooms to your lunch salad or vegetarian submarine sandwich. Dinner time is an excellent opportunity to experiment with mushrooms. Add them to soups, stews, pasta sauces, baked chicken dishes, or roast a pan of whole mushrooms in a 400 degree oven.

Research on Mushrooms and Weight Loss

Nine studies were recently presented at the Experimental Biology 2013 conference detailing some of the health benefits of mushrooms for weight loss and general health. One study, led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University and published in the "FASEB Journal," found that participants who used simple button mushrooms instead of red meat lost more weight and maintained that weight loss more effectively than the participants who did not substitute mushrooms for red meat.

Experiment with the varieties of mushrooms available at your local grocery store to find the type you enjoy the most. When you use mushrooms regularly, you may find yourself eating less meat and increasing the number of vegetables you consume, which will help you control your calories and lose weight. Avoid picking wild mushrooms that grow outdoors as many of those mushroom varieties can be poisonous to humans.

http://angelmushrooms.yolasite.com/

By Diane Carbonell

Natural Weight-Loss Foods--Mushrooms

NUTRITIONAL VALUES BUTTON MUSHROOMS

Fresh, Cooked

Serving Size: 1/2 cup pieces

Calories: 21

Fat: 0 g

Saturated Fat: 0 g

Cholesterol: 0 mg

Carbohydrate: 4 g

Protein: 2 g

Dietary Fiber: 2 g

Sodium: 2 mg

Riboflavin: <1 mg

Niacin: 4 mg

Iron: 1 mg

Potassium: 277 mg

Zinc: 1 mg

Selenium: 9 mcg

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When you're trying to lose weight, calories are the name of the game. And mushrooms provide a big blast of deliciousness for very few calories. When watching your weight, it's important to take out the fat, not the flavor.

Mushrooms are standard fare in Asian cultures, and Americans are learning to appreciate them for their texture and flavor. They are low in fat and sodium, and they contain a super-powerful flavor enhancer called glutamic acid, the same amino acid (a building block of protein) found in MSG (monosodium glutamate). Besides lending wonderful flavor to foods, mushrooms contribute more nutrition than you might think.

Health Benefits

Mushrooms provide an unusual array of nutrients, not unlike those in meat, making them a particularly appropriate food for vegetarians. Cooked mushrooms are an unexpected protein source, which, even though incomplete, is easily complemented by grains. They also shine in iron, riboflavin, and niacin; offer decent amounts of potassium, selenium, copper, and zinc; and they are full of fiber.

Selenium is helpful for the body's glutathione peroxidase, which is a potent antioxidant. Another powerful antioxidant, a phytochemical called L-ergothioneine, is plentiful in portabella and crimini mushrooms (crimini are a common, brownish variety of button mushrooms) and is not destroyed by cooking.

When possible, stick to cooked mushrooms. They're higher in nutrients than raw mushrooms; for the same volume, you get two, three, or even four times the nutrients. That's because cooking removes water from mushrooms, concentrating nutrients and flavor. Moreover, hydrazines, which are toxic natural compounds in raw mushrooms, are eliminated when mushrooms are cooked or dried.

Some researchers have found that cooked enoki, oyster, shiitake, pine, and straw mushrooms, as well as the more popular button mushrooms, have antitumor activity. Wood-ear mushrooms exhibit blood-thinning properties that may help prevent the dangerous clotting that contributes to heart disease.

Selection and Storage

All supermarkets stock the white button mushroom, and many have expanded their selection to include the popular shiitake; trumpet-shaped chanterelle; sprout-like enoki; small, brown, intensely-flavored, spongy-capped morel; huge oyster; hearty-flavored portobello; and crunchy, often dried, Chinese wood-ear.

When selecting button mushrooms, look for those with caps that extend completely down to the stems, with no brown "gills" showing. If mushrooms have "opened," meaning the gills are showing, they are older and won't last as long. They are perfectly acceptable to use, but they'll have a stronger flavor. The color should be creamy white or soft tan. Avoid those that have dark-brown soft spots or long, woody stems. Growers used to add sulfites to the packages to maintain their white color for longer periods of time, but this practice was discontinued, which is good news for those who are allergic to these additives. Mushrooms like cool, humid, circulating air. So store them in a paper bag or ventilated container in your refrigerator, but not in the crisper drawer. Do not store them in a plastic bag; otherwise they'll get slimy. Mushrooms only last a couple of days, but you can still use them for flavoring even after they've turned brown.

A caution: Picking wild mushrooms can be hazardous to your health. There are too many poisonous varieties that fool even the most experienced foragers. So play it safe and stick to cultivated varieties of wild mushrooms.

Preparation and Serving Tips

Don't wash mushrooms; they absorb water like a sponge. Use a mushroom brush or wipe with a barely damp cloth. Don't cut mushrooms until you're ready to use them; they'll darken. Use the trimmed stems to flavor soups. Mushrooms cook quickly. Overcooking makes them rubbery and tough. If you saute, go easy on vegetable oil. They'll absorb it like water and become greasy. Try cooking them in a bit of wine instead. Due to their high water content, mushrooms add liquid to a dish once they cook down.

Mushrooms definitely give you more bang for your caloric buck. To achieve your weight-loss goals, it's important to eat flavorful, satisfying foods so that temptation doesn't have a chance.

http://angelmushrooms.yolasite.com/

by About the Natural Weight-Loss Authors