What are the health benefits of mushrooms?

What are the health benefits of mushrooms?

Susan Silberstein & Marilyn Joyce (Health and Nutrition Educator & Heath Counselor) gives expert video advice on: Which fruits and vegetables are the most beneficial?; Why are fruits and vegetables so important in my diet?; Are frozen or canned fruits and vegetables healthy? and more...

They are, after all, a fungus. So you know we have to think in terms of how valuable are fungus-type foods in our diet. And, overall, the white mushroom is not that nutritious. There's a little bit of nutritional value but nothing very much to speak of. Now when you move into the cremini mushroom—the brown mushroom—there's more value. There's a deeper color. And as we know from any research on phytochemicals, that there's more phytochemicals, or plant chemicals, inherent in colored food, generally speaking, than there is in white, plain food. So that's one step up. But the difference is really significant when we start talking about maitake and shitake mushrooms. In these particular mushrooms they've found in research—a lot of research—that there are beneficial extracts from those mushrooms that have actually been shown to reduce tumor growth and tumor development in general in individuals who are experiencing a cancerous tumor. So there have been benefits shown with respect to cancer. There's research going on regarding heart disease and how these mushroom extracts might affect that. There's been very positive results so far. I expect that we're going to find down the road that these extracts are very valuable in general for most degenerative illnesses. That's what we're beginning to see in what's going on in the research right now.