Health Benefits of Mushroom Foraging
Adopting mushroom foraging as a hobby comes with quite a few health benefits. Perhaps the most obvious ones are those that come with finding a bit of time to get outdoors for some hiking. Hiking is fantastic exercise for all ages. This type of exercise helps to improve blood pressure, boost bone density, and is a great overall cardio workout.
Searching for mushrooms along the way just provides more motivation to get out there and do it. While many people struggle to find a workout routine that they can stick to, mushroom foragers can get ample exercise without even thinking about it. This is because having a passion for finding and cooking wild edible mushrooms inevitably leads to quite a lot of hiking.
Aside from the physical benefits, walking in the beautiful Northern Californian wilderness definitely has positive effects on mental health. In fact, it has been shown that hiking can boost a person’s mood by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. Moreover, improving your overall physical condition helps to improve your mental health as well.
Now that we’ve covered the physical and mental benefits of hiking around searching for wild edible mushrooms, let’s talk about the nutritional benefits of fresh mushrooms. Of course, with so many different types of edible fungi, nutritional benefits can vary. That being said, there are certain nutritional benefits that all kinds of edible mushrooms provide.
For starters, eating mushrooms is a great way to get more protein and healthy fiber into your diet. Additionally, some types of wild mushrooms can be used as meat alternatives because of their texture and flavor. Pan-frying wild edible mushrooms is an easier, less expensive, and healthier way to satisfy meat cravings. Chicken of the Woods, for example, is a wild edible mushroom that tastes quite similar to chicken. These mushrooms can be found right here in Northern California.
If you do happen to be cutting down on meat or cutting it out of your diet altogether, getting D vitamins from non-animal sources can be a challenge. In fact, mushrooms are some of the only non-animal foods out there that contain D vitamins. White Button mushrooms, for example, are a great source of D vitamins.
Wild edible mushrooms also contain a ton of B vitamins as well as antioxidants such as selenium. These help to boost a person’s immune system. While some kinds of wild edible mushrooms are consumed mostly for their delicious flavors, other types are actually used primarily for medicinal purposes.
Medicinal mushrooms growing in Northern California include the Lion’s Mane mushroom as well as the Turkey Tail mushroom. They are often powdered or made into an extract so that they can be taken as a dietary supplement. With their amazing immune-boosting benefits, they have been shown to potentially improve heart health and combat major diseases like cancer and heart disease. Now that you know some of the many great reasons to forage for mushrooms, it’s time to give it a try!
Want to find your own? We have mushroom foraging classes all season in Marin, Sonoma, and the Santa Cruz Mountains.