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If you ever needed a good reason to eat more mushrooms, here it is: Adding mushrooms to your diet can increase the intake of key micronutrients that most of us actually lack (like vitamin D). without affecting the calorie intake found. The benefits have been found on both the diet of children and adults and are in line with a growing literature on the benefits of mushrooms.
More mushrooms, please
The finding is particularly relevant in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have shown low levels of vitamin D in patients diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, and there appears to be a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19, although there is no still conclusive results.
Fungi, the bodies of filamentous fungi that grow above the ground, have long been part of the human diet and are used both as food and as medicine. They offer many of the same nutritional benefits as vegetables, as well as attributes commonly found in meat, beans, and grains (like high protein counts). They are biologically distinct from plants and animals.
A group of US researchers modeled the nutritional impact of adding a serving of mushrooms, using dietary intake data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) – which includes a sample of 10,000 adults and children every two years. The focused on surveys from 2011 to 2016 for the study.
In a previous study, they had already found that eating mushrooms was associated with higher intakes of several key nutrients and better quality of the diet. However, the intake was low at 2.3g per day per capita or 20.6g per day among US consumers. Now they wanted to see what would happen if consumers started eating more mushrooms. Unsurprisingly, the more mushrooms people consume, the better their score for key nutrients.
Adding an 84-gram serving of mushrooms to the diet increased several nutrients that our diets often lack, the researchers found. This was the case for white mushrooms, crimini, portabella and oyster mushrooms. An increase in fiber (5% -6%), copper (24% -32%), phosphorus (6%), potassium (12% -14%), selenium (13% -14%) and zinc (5% – 6%) and riboflavin (13% -15%) have been reported.
The study also showed that one serving of UV-rayed fungi (fungi exposed to UV rays) reduced the population’s vitamin D deficiency from 95.3% to 52.8% for the age group 9- 18 years and from 94.9% to 63.6% for the 19+ age group. Just like humans, fungi naturally produce vitamin D after exposure to the sun or a sunlamp.
“This research validated what we already knew that adding mushrooms to your plate is an effective way to achieve dietary goals,” Mary Jo Feeney, nutrition research coordinator at the Mushroom Council, said in a statement. . “Survey data is used to assess nutritional status and its association with health promotion and disease prevention and to help formulate national standards.”
Studies have shown similar fungi behind it over the years. Mushroom eaters (people who ate two servings of mushrooms per week) performed better in brain tests and had an overall faster brain processing speed, according to a 2019 study. Additionally, in 2017, a study reported revealed that the mushrooms had high levels of ergothioneine and glutathione, two compounds with important antioxidant properties.
The study was published in the journal Food Science & Nutrition.
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