Thoughts on Eating Fungi

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Hi all. I'm making this thread because I've noticed that human beings, in general, have a weird and self-contradictory attitude towards eating fungi.

Let's talk about mold. When food is moldy, we throw it out. All mold is bad for you. Right? Well ... no. Blue cheese has blue in it because it has Penicillium mold in it.

Therefore, not all mold is bad. So, if humans are willing to eat moldy cheese, why are we disgusted by all other types of moldy food? Mold is just a fugus. Mushrooms are also fungi ... and we deliberately put those on pizza.

Another Thing: How come we almost never put shelf fungi on pizza? Shelf fungi is basically a mushroom that grows from a tree truck. Why isn't that a pizza topping?

Another Thing: Many animals eat lichen. Why don't we use that as a pizza topping? How come every fungus is repulsive ... except for mushrooms and one particular type of mold?

Another Thing: Yeast is also a fungus. We use it to make bread and booze. In other words, bread and booze has fungus in it ... so why are we so disgusted by moldy bread? It's just another fungus.

Because moldy bread just smells and tastes really bad?

And a lot of fungi and molds are toxic and inedible?

molds that grow on stale food and blue cheese molds aren't all the same. some of them have no taste at all or can make you sick, and those clearly aren't the ones that you put in cheese



see above

molds and mushrooms are hardly the same



because shelf fungi aren't mushrooms, a few species are toxic, and they probably don't taste like mushrooms even though, yes, most are nontoxic.

why don't we make pizza sauce from eggplants? eggplants are basically purple tomatoes, why aren't those used for pizzas?



lichens are a composite organism made of fungi and cyanobacteria in a symbiotic relationship. "many animals" also eat feces, and their own young.

why are we repulsed by most fungi? blame thousands of years of seeing fungus grow on decomposing flesh, dead trees, stale food and being led to think "fungus = bad" save the few species we saw other animals eat and followed suit.



yeast are motile, unicellular and basically completely unlike all other fungi.

so they both belong to the fungus kingdom, yes.

would you eat pizza made of ground up pine needles? i mean, it's just another plant just like tomatoes.

It IS a rather inane topic.

Fungi are not a species (like cattle).

Not a family of species (like ungulates).

They are not a class (like mammals, or birds, or fish).

Nor a phylum (like all vertabrates, or all arthropods).

They are what is called a "kingdom" (like all minerals, all plants, or all animals... to use the old fashioned divisions).A big gigantic taxon with a huge array of various species.

So its as if you are telling us that "humans have a contradictory attitude toward eating animals. They relish beefsteak, but balk at eating other humans, or balk at eating cockroaches".

Or "humans have a contradictory attitude toward eating plants. They relish relish, and asperagus, and rice and potatoes. But balk at eating poison ivy, and at eating tree bark."

Or saying "humans take mineral and vitamin supplements, but balk at consuming other members of the mineral kingdom. Humans don't snack on rocks much, nor an iron filings much, nor do they eat spent uranium rods from nuclear reactors."

Gosh....humans can be so finicky!

I've gotten food poisoning a few times from eating moldy bread. I have some colorblindness & have a hard time seeing if there's mold on bread.

All of this.

It's also the same with bacteria. People eat yogurt which contains live bacteria, but when they think of bacteria in other foods they think it's the bad toxic variety that can poison you.