Facing fatal temptation, how to become a "mushroom hero"?

Wild mushrooms are delicious, but some people mistakenly pick poisonous mushrooms, and some people are poisoned by improper processing. According to statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2010 to 2020, there were 10,036 mushroom poisoning incidents in my country, more than 38,000 people were poisoned, and 788 people died after failed treatment.

Science and Technology Daily reporter Zhao Hanbin, planner Zhao Yingshu, Teng Jipu, Lin Lijun

With the arrival of the rainy season, fungus lovers have become active again in the north and south, in the mountains, on gentle slopes and on grasslands.

They were searching for the same kind of organisms, which are called "fungi," "mushrooms," and "wild mushrooms" in the Southwest and mushrooms in most other places.

The "lucky ones" who come across a cluster of mushrooms will happily pick a bag and take them back to enjoy a feast, but a huge crisis may be approaching, quickly and silently.

Wild mushrooms are delicious, but some people mistakenly pick poisonous mushrooms, while others are poisoned by eating them improperly.
According to statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2010 to 2020, there were 10,036 mushroom poisoning incidents in my country, more than 38,000 people were poisoned, and 788 people died after failed treatment.

The 2021 China Center for Disease Control and Prevention Weekly pointed out that mushroom poisoning is one of the most serious food safety issues in my country. There were 327 mushroom poisoning incidents throughout the year, involving 923 patients, including 20 deaths. A total of 74 poisonous mushrooms were identified in the incidents. The top five provinces for mushroom poisoning incidents are Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Fujian and Guizhou.

Why are wild mushrooms so highly regarded?

Fungus enthusiast Li Yan, whose ancestral home is in Dali, Yunnan, grew up in Kaiyuan City, Honghe Prefecture, and now works and lives in Kunming.

Li Yan said that among the common wild mushrooms, she likes chicken mushroom, porcini, dry mushroom and blue mushroom the most. The most fragrant ones are dry mushroom and "Jian Shou Qing" among the porcini. "The fire should be big and the oil should be plenty. When it is fried with pickled meat, green chili and garlic slices, half of the people in the community will drool!"

From ancient times to the present, wild edible mushrooms have been regarded as "mountain delicacies". In Japan, it is revered as the "peak of food" on land, and in ancient Rome it was regarded as "food of God". Among the approximately 210 countries and regions in the world, 47 countries have a tradition of collecting wild edible mushrooms and collect wild edible mushrooms for the purpose of selling them.

What makes food lovers salivate is not only the crisp texture of wild edible mushrooms, but also the irresistible umami flavor in the wok.

Almost all edible fungi contain eight essential amino acids that the human body cannot produce on its own. Yang Xukun and others from the Institute of Quality Standards and Testing Technology of the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences studied the amino acid composition of morels, boletus, chicken mushrooms, black chicken mushrooms, matsutake, dry mushrooms and truffles in the Kunming market and found that, except for morels, the umami amino acid content of the other six wild mushrooms was above 20%, among which truffles had the highest umami amino acid content, reaching 28.65%, indicating that the taste of these wild mushrooms is so delicious that it is far beyond the reach of common vegetables and fruits.

Glutamic acid and aspartic acid are characteristic amino acids among umami amino acids, and glutamic acid has the strongest umami taste. Sodium salt of glutamic acid is the main ingredient of monosodium glutamate and chicken powder.

"The vitamin content in edible fungi is also particularly high, far exceeding that of ordinary fruits and vegetables. In addition, it is rich in minerals and certain special biologically active substances, which can enhance the body's immune function, which is also its charm." Hua Rong, deputy director of the Kunming Edible Fungi Research Institute of the China National Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, introduced that from a nutritional point of view, the nutritional content of most edible fungi is between meat and fruits and vegetables, and can be called a health food with high nutritional value.

The best among them is Tricholoma matsutake, a mycorrhizal fungus that lives in symbiosis with the roots of pine and oak plants. It has very strict requirements on the growth environment and mainly grows on mountains between 2,000 and 4,000 meters above sea level in Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Heilongjiang, Jilin and other places. It is delicious and expensive, and has not yet been cultivated artificially. The fruiting bodies of Tricholoma matsutake contain precious biologically active ingredients such as Tricholoma matsutake double-stranded polysaccharides, Tricholoma matsutake alcohol and Tricholoma matsutake polypeptides, which are highly praised. It has attracted countless fans in Japan and South Korea and is the "king of fungi" among wild edible fungi.

my country is the world's largest producer and exporter of Matsutake mushrooms, with output accounting for more than 90% of the world's total, while Yunnan's Matsutake mushroom production accounts for more than 70% of the country's total.

What kind of ruthless character is Jianshouqing?

Recalling what happened two years ago, Kunming citizen Ms. Pu is still scared.

One weekend in July of that year, her son, daughter-in-law and grandson came home for dinner. She picked the best porcini mushrooms on the market, fried them with green peppers and garlic, and the whole family ate them that night. "The mushrooms are fresh and crispy, and there is nothing wrong with them."

The next day at noon, she heated up the small half plate of mushrooms left in the refrigerator in the microwave and ate them with her husband.

"Unexpectedly, an hour later, both of them felt weak and dizzy!" Sister Pu recalled. Fortunately, they took advantage of their blurred consciousness to call 120 emergency number. After 10 days of hospitalization, both of them recovered, but they still felt seriously injured.

The fungus that infected the Pu couple is also known as "red onion" and "red Jianshou". After the cap and stem are mechanically damaged, they will slowly turn light blue to light blue.

The genus Boletus belongs to the Boletaceae family, which is a new genus and species named by mycologists in 2005. This fungus is abundant in Yunnan, Guizhou and other places. The protein content of each 100 grams of fungus is as high as 56 grams, which is a high-quality protein source.

"Lanmao Boletus is rich in protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, polysaccharides and other functional ingredients, and has a unique taste. However, this fungus is slightly toxic and is a conditionally edible wild edible fungus. It must be heated thoroughly before it can be eaten. If you just heat it in a microwave like Sister Pu did, there will be great hidden dangers." Researcher Sun Dafeng, director of the Kunming Edible Fungi Research Institute of the China All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, introduced.

In the human brain, the occipital lobe is responsible for processing language and visual information, while the hypothalamus is responsible for processing long-term memory. Normally, these two areas are unrelated, but the psilocybin contained in the sapling can establish an abnormal connection between the two. As a result, the situation of "watching little people dancing" and "appreciating blockbusters" on the Internet appeared. The poisoned person will overlap what he sees with the pictures in his memory, and hallucinations will occur, including delusions, fear and other symptoms.

In 2006, a study by Johns Hopkins University in the United States found that humans will experience ecstatic hallucinations after ingesting psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. This was the first time that people discovered the hallucinogenic mechanism of hallucinogenic drugs since they were regulated in 1960.

More than 200 years ago, Forres, the "father" of fungal classification, lamented: "In my research, there is nothing more difficult than boletes." The difficulty lies in the unclear boundaries of the genus and the relationship between genera, as well as the inconsistent standards for species division and the difficulty in defining species within complex groups.

More than 10 years ago, Yunnan was still a severely affected area by mushroom poisoning, especially porcini, and the losses were very heavy.

"Porcini are very important to the people of Yunnan, accounting for almost half of the wild edible mushrooms," said Yang Zhuliang, director and researcher of the Key Laboratory of East Asian Plant Diversity and Biogeography at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. However, there was a lack of comprehensive research on them in the early years, and it was impossible to elucidate their nutritional components or poisoning mechanisms.

Today, mycologists are able to study boletus using modern molecular biology methods. Yang Zhuliang's team published 138 new boletus species, accounting for one-third of the number of boletus species reported in my country. At the same time, they also found out the richness of Yunnan - there are more than 300 species of boletus in more than 40 genera, and more than 60 species are commonly eaten.

"So far, we can clearly tell everyone which porcini are edible, which ones can cause 'little people', and which ones are poisonous or even fatal," said Yang Zhuliang.
Why are toadstools so poisonous?

Southwest my country is a paradise for wild mushrooms.

There are more than 2,500 known species of wild edible fungi in the world, about 1,000 of which are known in my country. Nearly 900 of them are found in the southwest, accounting for 36% of the world's total edible fungi species and 90% of the country's total. Among them, there are about 100 precious and important edible fungi.

However, there are about 400 species of poisonous fungi in my country, half of which are found in the southwest region.

If the green onion is not eaten properly, it will make people dance wildly, cry and laugh. This may make people laugh, but the Amanita phallus, which causes 70% to 90% of deaths, is not funny.

In April this year, a Shenzhen hospital received six patients who were poisoned by eating mushrooms. Before that, they went to a park in Pingshan to pick mushrooms. After eating, they had diarrhea and vomiting. They had eaten the "poison king" of mushrooms - the deadly Amanita phalloides.

In Yunnan, there have been more than one food poisoning incidents caused by the deadly Amanita phalloides. The most severe single poisoning incident in recent years was in June 2019 in Luolang Village, Wangzishu Township, Longchuan County, Dehong Prefecture, where seven migrant workers were poisoned after eating about 2 kilograms of deadly Amanita phalloides they had collected for lunch and dinner.

The deadly Amanita phalloides is named "white poison cap" because of its white color. The amatoxin in it can cause serious damage to human liver and kidney cells, leading to organ failure. This toxin is resistant to high temperature, acid, alkali and salt. Conventional cooking methods cannot destroy its toxicity. If treatment is not timely, consuming 50 grams can be fatal.

"my country's 12 highly poisonous Amanita species are distributed across the country, from temperate zones to tropical zones." Yang Zhuliang said that reducing such mushroom poisoning incidents can effectively control fatal mushroom poisoning.

In the southwest, there is another poisonous fungus that is not as toxic as Amanita, but has a very high lethality rate and is very deceptive - it has no frightening scales, and its stems do not wear "skirts", and it looks harmless to humans and animals. It is the subsparsely pleated Russula, commonly known as "fire charcoal fungus".

In July 2019, the news that a 2-year-old girl named Jiadao from Mandan Village, Mengla County, Xishuangbanna Prefecture, was poisoned by eating charcoal mushrooms and was sent to the provincial capital for emergency treatment along with her parents, once touched the hearts of people in Kunming and Jinghong. The girl's parents died one after another. Fortunately, after the hospital's full efforts to rescue her, Jiadao recovered.

The Russula sparsely fleshed mushroom, which is native to East Asia, has a mortality rate of up to 51% after accidental ingestion, making it the second largest "killer" of wild mushrooms in southwest my country in recent years.

Researchers found that the toxin in the subsparsely pleated Russula is russula cycloprop-2-enecarboxylic acid, which can cause rhabdomyolysis. The lethal dose for mice is 2.5 mg per kilogram of body weight. Its effect is similar to that of muscarinic acid, which can inhibit the central respiratory system and cause respiratory failure in patients.

In addition, the well-known Coprinus comatus is a representative of the edible mushrooms of the Coprinus family. The content of coprinus in various Coprinus comatus mushrooms varies. The metabolites of coprinus comatus after entering the human body can inhibit the body's decomposition of ethanol. This means that if you want to enjoy the delicious mountain delicacies and have a few drinks with friends, you may experience symptoms such as nausea, regurgitation, and accelerated heartbeat. Although it will not be directly fatal, it will also lay a landmine for the body.

How to tell if mushrooms are poisonous

The famous writer Wang Zengqi studied at Southwest Associated University and lived in Kunming for seven years. For many years afterwards, he could not forget the taste of Kunming.

In his essay "Rain in Kunming", he wrote: "Porcini mushrooms are the color of beef liver, smooth, tender, fresh, fragrant and delicious. When frying porcini mushrooms, you must put more garlic, otherwise it will make people faint."

In many places, you can often hear so-called "experiences" such as "add garlic when frying mushrooms. If the garlic doesn't turn black, it means it's non-toxic" and "the mushrooms that react with silverware and rice and turn black are toxic." In July 2019, Master Jiang from Chuxiong, Yunnan, used garlic to "test for poison" and ended up sending his entire family to the ICU.

Qiu Xi, who has been engaged in the promotion of natural science and cultural communication for many years, told Science and Technology Daily that these folk methods of identifying poisonous mushrooms have no scientific basis. Some poisonous mushrooms contain oxidizing substances that can change the color of garlic, but some poisonous mushrooms do not have this property, so the fact that garlic does not change color does not prove that the mushrooms are definitely non-toxic. At present, there is no experiment to prove that garlic can remove toxins from poisonous mushrooms.

Qiu Xi also made a video to explain why some members of a family were poisoned while others were fine after eating porcini mushrooms together. "The mushroom behind the spatula was a 'slippery fish' that always stuck to the bottom of the spatula handle and was not heated enough. Whoever ate it in the family got poisoned."

In addition, many methods of identifying poisonous fungi that are circulated among the people are not reliable.

Myth 1: "Mushrooms with bright colors and good looks are poisonous" and "Red umbrellas, white stems, lie on the board together at night". In the southwest region, the typical red umbrella and white stem of the big red mushroom is not only edible, but also nutritious and delicious; while the small brown-scaled and ugly-looking Amanita muscaria and the autumn helmet spore agaric are extremely poisonous; the red-topped and white-scaled Amanita muscaria is very beautiful, but it is indeed poisonous, and the equally beautiful red and yellow Amanita phalloides is a famous edible mushroom in China and abroad. Therefore, it is absolutely not allowed to generalize.

Myth 2: “Things that don’t breed maggots, aren’t eaten by insects, taste bitter, or have a fishy smell are poisonous.” In fact, many poisonous fungi are harmless to insects. The famous Amanita phalloides is often eaten by slugs.

Myth 3: “Injured mushrooms that change color and ooze juice are poisonous.” This is not entirely true. For example, the injured parts and milky juice of Lactarius pine and Lactarius redus turn blue-green, but they are delicious edible mushrooms.

Hua Rong introduced that other misconceptions include "thrush on the cap, rings on the stalk, and fungus stalks are poisonous". This type of poisonous fungus accounts for a large proportion, but fungi with these characteristics are not necessarily poisonous. Many poisonous fungi do not have any special characteristics, such as the ordinary-looking poisonous powder mushroom, which is very poisonous. Therefore, using these popular sayings to identify poisonous mushrooms, which are of various types, different shapes, and complex toxin components, is not only unsafe, but even very dangerous.

Experts have repeatedly reminded that if you pick wild mushrooms yourself, you must first determine whether they are edible. Otherwise, even a single poisonous mushroom can kill you.

Anyone who experiences dizziness, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, irritability or other discomfort within 10 minutes to 72 hours after eating wild mushrooms may have suffered from the so-called "eating mushrooms" that is often heard in the southwest.

"From a clinical point of view, there is currently no specific drug to treat patients poisoned by amatoxin, but comprehensive treatment can be used in the early stage, especially within 48 hours, such as digestive tract cleaning, blood purification, and drug liver protection treatment, so that patients can have a certain chance of survival." Zheng Fenshuang, director of the emergency department of the Affiliated Hospital of Yunnan University, introduced how patients can alleviate the symptoms of poisoning in the first place? First, drink a lot of warm water and induce vomiting, then use spoons, chopsticks, etc. to stimulate the throat and induce vomiting to reduce toxin absorption; second, seek medical treatment as soon as possible, and family members are advised to bring bacterial samples for identification, which can effectively help doctors determine treatment measures and judge prognosis.

At the same time, those who ate the same meal should immediately go to a nearby hospital for observation and treatment, regardless of the severity of their symptoms.

How to manage the market and popularize science

Li Juanjuan, Wan Rong and others from the Nutrition and Food Hygiene Institute of Yunnan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducted an analysis of wild mushroom poisoning in Yunnan Province in 2015. That year, Yunnan Province reported 373 wild mushroom poisoning incidents through the National Foodborne Disease Outbreak Reporting System, poisoning 1,570 people and killing 33 people.

The report shows that the hazard level of wild mushroom poisoning in rural areas is significantly higher than in urban areas, and households are a high-incidence place for wild mushroom poisoning. Effective measures should be taken to focus on monitoring and management of high-incidence seasons, high-incidence areas, and high-incidence places.

Yang Zhuliang is known as "Mr. Mushroom" for his years of spreading knowledge about the scientific consumption of wild mushrooms. The two criteria he summarized in recent years, "Mushrooms with hats on their heads, skirts around their waists, and shoes on their feet, and mushrooms with the above characteristics should not be eaten; mushrooms that you are not familiar with should not be eaten" have been deeply rooted in people's minds.

In Kunming's largest vegetable market, Zhuanxin Market, you can see colorful posters of "Common Poisonous Mushrooms in Yunnan" everywhere. The bold words "Do not pick, do not purchase, do not process, do not eat" are a warning.

This poster, which is a must-have in vegetable markets and towns across Yunnan, is a popular science work by Yang Zhuliang's team and has now been updated to the 2022 edition. At the same time, high-definition pictures also frequently appear on mobile new media terminals.

In order to avoid "seeing small people" caused by improper processing, the 2022 edition of the poster directly put the "Lanmao Porcini" loved by Yunnan people on the "blacklist".

For a long time, disease control and market supervision departments in various parts of Yunnan have attached great importance to the popularization of knowledge about wild mushrooms, strengthened market early warning and supervision, and emphasized that high-risk foods such as wild mushrooms should not be allowed in public canteens or served at weddings and funerals.

"Since wild mushroom poisoning is relatively concentrated in certain areas and at certain times, all localities should establish and improve supporting policies and enhance the enthusiasm of supervision. Grassroots villages and communities should visit households and mobilize the masses to the greatest extent possible to recognize the dangers of blindly eating wild mushrooms. At the same time, improve the medical treatment facilities for wild mushroom poisoning to truly protect the lives of the general public." Hua Rong believes.

Short videos have become one of the most vivid means of communication. With the participation of new media in publicity and promotion, the incidence of wild mushroom poisoning has been declining.

"Then please learn to identify the appearance of each type of mushroom. Who says those who are cautious and careful are not heroes?" Recently, "Mushroom Hero" produced by the Mangshi Market Supervision Bureau of Dehong Prefecture and Dehong Radio and Television Station has been trending on major video platforms.

The idea of ​​"being cautious when eating mushrooms" is being implanted in more people's minds. At a press conference held by the National Health Commission on June 27, Li Ning, director of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, said that through local governments strengthening the timely issuance of risk warnings in areas with high incidence of poisoning and increasing targeted scientific publicity for consumers not to pick or eat wild mushrooms, the number of poisoning cases and deaths in the country has been significantly reduced.

The 2021 "China CDC Weekly" pointed out that in the past three years, Yunnan Province ranked first in the country in the number of deaths from eating poisonous wild mushrooms, but the number has declined significantly.

Be careful, these mushrooms are poisonous!

The deadly Amanita phalloides, the amatoxin in which can cause serious damage to human liver and kidney cells, leading to organ failure.

Amanita phalloides

Jianshouqing, also known as "red onion" and "red Jianshou" among the people, will slowly turn light blue to light blue after the cap and stem are mechanically damaged.