Fungi Friday's - September 16th, 2022
Issue #48
Hey Fungi Friday fam, welcome back!
Well … we knew starting a biz wouldn’t be “easy”, but slowly coming to the realization that maybe solar in the midwest wasn’t the greatest idea…
Yep, more power issues :( seemed to hold up better, but still not perfect, so we shall keep in iterating. 2022 was the test year anyways, right? Back to the drawing board once more on the power situation. We may need to try a hybrid sort of method soon.
With that, on to the weekly featured articles!
Mushrooms can extend grocery budgets, boost nutrition
It’s no secret inflation has been a major theme of 2022, so what better way to add some nutritional value to your diet AND celebrate national mushroom month as the same time than to add some fungi to your diet! According to Bart Minor, president of the mushroom council, “mushrooms can help consumers extend meat and other ingredients, and keep favorite meals on the menu in these inflationary times”. Mushrooms are nutritious, delicious and sustainable, making them a perfect tool for consumers trying to stretch their meat dollars. Meat inflation started before other categories due to the issues related to COVID at the meat processing plants, and prices have been rising for three years running. Mushrooms, on the other hand, have seen some price increases but inflation has been below that of total vegetables.
Concluding the article, it’s stressed that mushrooms are not necessarily a meat substitute, but they can be a way to stretch the meat dollar and create an even better tasting product. Mushrooms promoted with meat offer a win-win for both categories!
Finding Nuance in the Psychedelic Hype Bubble
Feels like week after week we find another article here highlighting the “ground breaking” “world changing” potential of psychedelic mushrooms, so this week we’re going to take a more grounded view and examine the nuances of this definite hype bubble. For anyone familiar with bubbles though, they often tend to pop, leading to a “trough of disillusionment”. The truth is, there very well may be some amazing new uses, and I personally have friends that swear that these substances have changed their lives for the better… and for what it’s worth, I fully believe it! But that’s not to say that these substances are a cure all for everything.
So how do we take a more nuanced view and separate the hype from what’s real? We get back to the real science. Per the article, “As scientists and clinicians, we have an ethical mandate to dispute claims not supported by available evidence. We encourage our colleagues to help deflate the psychedelic hype bubble in a measured way so that we can get on with the hard work of more precisely determining the risks and benefits of psychedelics.” Because that’s what good science is!
How to grow psychedelic mushrooms for the first time
And for the final feature this week, an anonymously written primer on how to grow psychedelic mushrooms, and to be honest, it’s not all that different than what we’re attempting to do with our restaurant quality oysters. The important aspects? Sterilization, inoculation, colonization, pinning and fruiting. And how does it typically go wrong? Contamination.
While still illegal in most places, we here at Fungi Friday’s believe it’s only a matter of time before that changes. There is just positive after positive study coming out and so much momentum behind these fascinating creatures that it’s going to be very difficult to hinder. And for that reason alone, the Iowa Fungi’s decided to learn to grow mushrooms to better position ourselves to one day enter this market. So while I’ll wrap this weeks feature with a disclaimer that the sharing of this article is for informational purposes only, and is not a recommendation to break the law in any capacity, i’m also adding it here as a resource to come back to… because fingers crossed, I think I will!
Want even more? Here are some other interesting, mushroom focused reads of the week:
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!
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