Mushroom Advocacy - New Thinking in Nutrition

Author: Xu Shwei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: In the 1980s, Japanese scientists conducted a highly influential large-scale experiment: they divided 3,000 school-aged children into two groups, one group eating ordinary bread, and the other eating enoki mushroom bread. After a year, the children who ate enoki mushroom bread were found to be an average of 5.7 cm taller and 4.4 kilograms heavier than those who ate ordinary bread, with significantly improved memory and analytical abilities. Subsequently, scientists in Europe and America conducted similar experiments and reached the same conclusion. The reason is that enoki mushrooms are particularly rich in lysine, which is beneficial for children's intellectual development and healthy growth. As a result, enoki mushroom bread, biscuits, milk, and other children's foods became popular worldwide. Enoki mushrooms, also known as shimeji, pueraria, and hairpin fungus, are also called winter mushrooms because they prefer to grow in lower temperatures. Enoki mushrooms grow in clusters, with golden-colored fruit bodies, slender and long stems, and delicate caps, resembling golden needles. They also have a white variety, which is entirely white, like jade lilies. Wild enoki mushrooms are distributed worldwide. It wasn't until the 1930s that Chinese scholars such as Qiu Weifan successfully cultivated enoki mushrooms in jars. In 1964, Fujian Sanming Fungal Research Institute bred the Sanming No. 1 enoki mushroom, which became the dominant variety for large-scale cultivation in China. In 1988, Kenzo Morimoto in Kyoto, Japan, bred white enoki mushrooms, and after China introduced them, pure white varieties became available.