Fungi Friday Fans — We’re back with yet another issue of your favorite Friday, lunch time read!! Slow week over on the farm, as we’re currently just in the waiting game for the first crop to finally pop. Checked in on the mushrooms last Sunday, but nothing quite yet, so fingers crossed for this week. Hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday weekend, and assuming we have something to showcase, I promise next week we’ll have pictures for you!
Lets get in to the articles…
This startup makes carbon-neutral, high-protein pasta from fungi
For feature number one this week, a food related use case of mushrooms that we haven’t yet talked about here in our first 33 releases of the publication: mushroom protein pasta! Through the usage of mycelium, it’s actually possible to generate a low carb, high protein flour that can be used in all sorts of recipes that typically call for the wheat variety. And the best part, its sustainable.
The process to create this flour substitute actually involves utilizing a normally discarded sugar water byproduct of food and beverage manufacturers. Allowing fungi and bacteria to consume the organic material in this wastewater, not only saves the food and beverage companies money, but also allows for a cost effective way to produce this carbon neutral flour product that can then be sold to food manufacturers. As the article puts it “It’s a decentralization of food production versus relying on one particular region to produce a specific type of food and then ship it all over the world . . . bypassing the supply chain constraints that we have right now, and just growing and delivering straight to the source.” and to me, that’s pretty cool!
Mushroom Ice Cream? Yup, And It’s Pretty Magical
Now if mushroom pasta isn’t quite your style, here’s an even more odd one for you… how does mushroom ice cream sound? The collaboration between Salt & Straw, a Portland based specialty ice cream shop and Wunderground, a Seattle based adaptogenic mushroom coffee and tea company seems to actually be bringing this combination to life.
The goal: “To create delicious functional beverages that deliver crave-able experiences, inspire wonder and make our minds and bodies healthy, focused, and strong—an antidote to the new normal of stress and anxiety. We embrace business practices that inspire meaningful human connection, build healthy communities and minimize impact on the environment” and honestly, i’m actually intrigued!
Mushroom magic: 5 ways fungus-based technology will change the world
And for our final feature of the week, let’s get cosmic and talk about how fungi and fungus-based technologies might just change the world! The article breaks down five potential use cases, most of which we’ve covered on this tiny side of the internet before. When it comes to changing the world though, always worth a refresher, so here they are:
How fungi could save agriculture in a warming world
How fungi could transform mental health treatment
How fungi could revolutionize building and product design
How fungi could clean up our planet
How fungi could save the bees
We’ve covered 1, 2, 3 and 4 quite a bit here at Fungi Fridays, but I’m honestly not sure we’ve ever discussed number 5, so let’s break that one down a bit further. This one actually traces back to the 1980s, but was more recently studied in 2018 done by none other than Paul Stamets, where he and a bunch of other researchers noticed bees collecting tinder fungus and reishi mushroom in order to fight the lethal deformed-wing virus. It’s still not known whether these extracts simply help the bees immune system to fight the virus, or actually kill the virus altogether, but in either case, seems like an important substance in a world where bee populations have been on the steady decline. After all, bee’s pollinate the world and without them, we humans and many other creatures would be in big trouble!
Want even more? Here are some other interesting, mushroom focused reads of the week:
Plants tamed fungi to colonize land half a billion years ago
What’s the Safest Way to Try Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Right Now?
As always, thank you for reading this weeks edition of Fungi Friday’s! If you enjoyed what you found, please feel free to forward to friends also interested in the Fungi Community!
Connect with me on Twitter @BowTiedMushroom
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