Friday, June 02, 2006
The Earth is the Mushroom's Gut
A more fitting title would be Vitamin D From Mushrooms, but I caved to
the peculiar.
Good news1 for vegetarians who wear sunscreen. Mushrooms may soon be
able to satisfy humans' need for vitamin D:
"... a single serving of white button mushrooms - the most commonly
sold mushroom - will contain 869 percent the daily value of vitamin D
once exposed to just five minutes of UV light after being harvested."
- Light-zapped Mushrooms Filled with Vitamin D
That's a lotta D. It hinges on being a little too much D. The 869% of
400 IUs is 3476 IUs. Intakes of as little as 2000 IUs can result in
nausea, vomiting, anorexia, hypertension, calcification of soft
tissues (heart, lungs, kidney, blood vessels), and kidney failure.
Children are especially vulnerable. Still, there's more of a problem
with too little vitamin D in Americans' diets than too much. And with
vitamin D's emerging roles in cancer and the immune response,
techniques for boosting intake are worth exploring. Maybe they'll work
out the dose issue before the buttons hit produce aisles. (Pictured is
Cantharellus tubaeformisa, a type of chanterelle mushroom thought to
be naturally high in vitamin D2.)
The primary source of vitamin D in food is from animal tissue, which
supplies the D3 (cholecalciferol) form of the vitamin. There's some
vitamin D in plants, in the form of D2 (ergocalciferol), but the
amount is, or was thought to be, a pittance compared to what liver,
fish (an alternate reason to down some omega-3 rich salmon), and milk,
especially fortified, provide. The biological actions of D3 and D2 in
the human body are thought to be equivalent. Although cats, birds, and
monkeys have been shown to discriminate between the two, favoring D3.
More On Mushrooms
Mushrooms aren't technically plants. They don't intake carbon dioxide
and give off oxygen as plants do. They intake oxygen and release
carbon dioxide, like we do. They have no chlorophyll, so they don't
photosynthesize for energy. Yet like us, they need photosynthesizing
plants for food, and for the O2 they give off. All of this and more
makes a mushroom closer to an animal than a plant in taxonomy, but a
mushroom isn't an animal either.
In fact, somewhere between the time I finished grade school and now,
biologists created 3 more Kingdoms besides plants and animals. One of
them is the Fungi, under which mushrooms, molds, and yeasts fall. The
other 2 are Monera (bacteria), and Protista (algae, protozoa).
While trying to discover what in blazes mushrooms are doing with the
vitamin D they make (I can't imagine it's being used to build strong
bones), I ran across these fun fungi facts:
Fungi digest food outside of their bodies. They release enzymes into
the surrounding environment (we release enzymes into our gut) which
break down organic matter from plants into a form they can absorb
(also done in our gut). The earth is the mushroom's gut.
The part of the mushroom we eat is actually its reproductive
structure, which sounds a little freaky when you consider that fungi
are closer to being animal than plant.
One of the largest living organisms on earth is a mushroom. It's about
38 acres in size, weighs about 100 tons, and lives in Michigan. It
grew from a single s****e, and is thought to have been growing since
the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago.
Some fungi are carnivorous. "Predatory fungi [use] a remarkable array
of trapping devices to attract, capture, kill, and digest [their
prey]." (Wayne noted this in his comment on my previous post.)
Some fungi are bioluminescent, they glow in the dark. This might make
them attractive to night eaters - snail, cockroaches, crickets -
giving the s****es of those particular mushrooms an advantage in future
germination. But it looks like science doesn't fully understand the
glow-purpose.
No wonder people spend a lifetime studying these creatures.
Who loves ya.
Tom
Jesus Was A Vegetarian!
http://tinyurl.com/634q5a
Man Is A Herbivore!
http://tinyurl.com/4rq595
DEAD PEOPLE WALKING
http://tinyurl.com/zk9fk
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