7 ms·

Here's the central finding "Here is a simple experiment we did one summer afternoon in Kamilche Point, Washington. We compared several forms of organically gro

Here's the central finding "Here is a simple experiment we did one summer afternoon in Kamilche Point, Washington. We compared several forms of organically grown shiitake mushrooms, which had starting level of 100 IU/100 grams. We compared the vitamin D levels of three sets of mushrooms, all from the same crop. The first was grown and dried indoors. The second set was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing down. The third set of mushrooms was dried outdoors in the sunlight with their gills facing upwards for full sun exposure. The most vitamin D was found in shiitake dried with gills up that were exposed to sunlight for two days, six hours per day. The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 grams (see chart). Their stems, though, produced very little vitamin D, only about 900 IU. Notably, vitamin D levels dropped on the third day, probably due to over-exposure to UV." It's worth noting that this is Paul Stamets' work. He's definitely worth the google search if you've never heard of him and are into this sort of thing - super interesting guy. He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.

beerpls 3y ago
“He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.” As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion. There are plenty of brilliant professional scientists. There are also a lot of idiots in science. There are also a lot of brilliant people who decided that the scientific path was too restrictive or outright false, so they (brilliantly) invested their own scientific life force externally Having a science degree doesn’t make one less fallible to mistakes. If anything it makes people more likely to fudge to get ahead.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  Stamets makes some extraordinary health claims about mushrooms that afaik have never been clinically tested (ex. anticancer and antiviral applications). I think a grain of salt is appropriate in this case - but he could be entirely right!
- soperj 3y ago
  > As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion. I would take a lot of science with a grain of salt too. Looking at the recent peanut butter allergy studies for example. Original 2016 study used 10 jewish children in Britain vs. 10 jewish Children in Israel. This study caused policy change around the world. Australia went from under 25% to over 80% of people feeding their children peanut butter under the age of 1. It had no discernible effect on allergies to peanut butter at all. They've followed it up with a larger study, 100 jewish kids in Britain vs. 100 jewish kids in Israel to prove out their original theory.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Please post a link to the study.
  - pertymcpert 3y ago
    Huh? I thought very recently that link was established as being real?
  - aksss 3y ago
    https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-early-exposure-is-key-to-prevention/amp/ https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-earl... “That trial, involving hundreds of babies under a year old at high risk for developing peanut allergy, established that kids could be protected by regularly eating a popular peanut butter-flavored Israeli snack called Bamba. A follow-up study later showed those kids remained allergy-free even after avoiding peanuts for a year. Under the new recommendations, published simultaneously in six journals including the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, all infants who don’t already test positive for a peanut allergy are encouraged to eat peanut-enriched foods soon after they’ve tried a few other solid foods.” Early exposure seems to be the recommended path.
    - soperj 3y ago
      I get that it's the recommended path, it's been recommended since that first study in Australia and has had zero effect on peanut allergy rates even though # of people feeding peanut butter to their children under 1 has increased significantly.
- skadamou 3y ago
  I am open to the idea that someone from a background outside of academia could come up with some really brilliant scientific work. I just know that I am not capable of discerning what is solid science in fields different from my own so I typically rely on signals like an academic background (although not exclusively) to help me gauge the trustworthiness of a claim.
- tvink 3y ago
  The person in question is definitely a good example of someone you SHOULD take with more than a grain of salt. From what I could gather (mainly from /r/mycology) he's not really well respected in his field, and seems to be rather a salesman who draws premature conclusions and evangelises them. The Netflix documentary with him also had my "this sounds too good to be true" sensors going off more or less constantly.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - MivLives 3y ago
    In the documentary (I'm assuming Fantastic Fungi), he came off as one of those types that are first and foremost making money off it, but also believes some of what he's saying. I honestly just wanted that documentary to just be a Planet Earth style thing with mushroom footage, and less talking heads.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    stamets strikes me as a well-intentioned enthusiast who is more scientific than most. He did a ton of work on the actual techniques used today in a lot of commercial production and is a really interesting guy. It's also evident that he has sampled a little too much of his own more 'exotic' product.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    We've bought an oyster mushroom kit from him, as well as some soil inoculum. From an ecological standpoint I wonder how genetically diverse his inoculum strains are, and whether they can crowd out native strains of fungi.
  - nibbleshifter 3y ago
    I've read most of his books/publications, his work is good (and generally reproducable), but he is somewhat prone to grand statements. Thing is, a lot of labs will largely ignore fungi because they are fucking awkward to work with
  - beerpls 3y ago
AlanYx 3y ago
For someone not educated as a scientist, he has a remarkably solid history of academic publications. Pretty inspiring actually.
simple10 3y ago
It's interesting the vitamin D level dropped if over exposed to UV. I wonder what caused the drop.
- JLCarveth 3y ago
  perhaps UV?
- sva_ 3y ago
  It's unstable under overexposure of uv light https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/the-effect-of-temperature-and-storage-time-on-the-concentration-of-vitamin-d-in-human-serum.pdf https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/the-effect-of-temperatu...
- aksss 3y ago
  I think vit. D is generated from a reaction of a protein with UVB. UVA is rather destructive, so I would assume that’s what’s going on — to much UV-A on a part of the shroom that by design is shielded from direct exposure, is basically breaking everything down. That’s my .02.
verisimi 3y ago
Sounds so simple.... But how can one check vitamin D iu's for oneself? What machine is used, and how does it work? Or is this a public relations piece from the mushroom marketing board?
- JLCarveth 3y ago
  I would guess a GC MS[1] - [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Thanks. If that's it, it doesn't sound that amazing or accurate: > A nonspecific test merely indicates that any of several in a category of substances is present. Although a nonspecific test could statistically suggest the identity of the substance, this could lead to false positive identification. However, the high temperatures (300°C) used in the GC-MS injection port (and oven) can result in thermal degradation of injected molecules,[3] thus resulting in the measurement of degradation products instead of the actual molecule(s) of interest. from the wiki
godelski 3y ago
Interestingly enough I did a deep dive on mushrooms and vitamin D about a month ago. You can easily find a lot of papers that demonstrate sunlight and vitamin D with mushrooms, so don't take the unofficial training as a knock (we should always be skeptical, but verification exists). It's all about UV light. Some producers are now using UV to help increase the vitamin D of their mushrooms (along with killing bacteria) but they can also quickly lose it when in the fridge. So just set them out on the windowsill 15-90 minutes before you use them. The more the better. Surprisingly this even works for dried mushrooms, so just build the habit. If you don't, you basically shouldn't expect to be getting meaningful amounts of vitamin D from your mushrooms. The effects are this large. In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Is this a problem a lot of people have, the slimy mushroom thing? I don't do anything special or careful at all with mushrooms; I rinse them off, maybe halfheatedly salad-spin them, chop them up and put them in a hot pan with some fat. I've never had a slimy one.
  - quicklime 3y ago
    I used to carefully clean my mushrooms with a brush to keep them dry so they wouldn’t end up slimy. But someone told me that was a myth and I decided to try just quickly rinsing them instead. Never resulted in slimy mushrooms, and I was shocked at how much crap ended up in the rinse water.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      My current belief is that there's nothing you can do to a mushroom that a hot pan won't fix.
cushpush 3y ago
I actually appreciate his wealth of knowledge (Paul Stamets) and his presentation of facts, often I learn a lot and his holistic approach is something that most universities would find impossible to implement as curricula. While not a classically-trained scientist, he is an erudite scholar of the highest caliber and his continual contributions to science and furthering our understanding of the natural world more closely correlates to the inceptive motivations of Science than would be found in the modern day tower of ivory.
kadoban 3y ago
> The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 gram Isn't 46000 IU well into the dangerous range? This procedure sounds like an easy way to poison your liver. The number I found says 4000 IU is a recommended max. You could say that you should only eat <10 grams then, but how much variability is there in the amount?
- jjcon 3y ago
  According to this at least 5k to 50k daily appears to be safe: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611908/#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20long%2Dterm%20supplementation,day%20appears%20to%20be%20safe https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611908/#:~:text=In%20summa.... Not sure what happens if you eat 10 mushrooms though
  - peatmoss 3y ago
    Per 100g was the amount, I think. Need to eat a decent quantity at that rate.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  When it's from food the tolerance is much higher. It's a bigger danger when taking supplements.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    Is it? Interesting.
- valarauko 3y ago
  In many countries, the standard of care for low vitamin D is a bolus dose of 60K IU once a month is perfectly fine. It's only a problem if you were eating this much every day.
tomjakubowski 3y ago
The "100 IU/100 grams" starting point is with fresh mushrooms, before they were dried. It's not clear to me from the article whether "46,000 IU/100 grams" is per 100g of the fresh mushroom input or per 100g of the dried mushroom output. Mushrooms are ~80-90% water so it makes a big difference.
- rcme 3y ago
  It makes a big difference, but even if you removed 90% of the fresh mushroom's weight without changing vitamin D levels, you'd still only have 1000 IU / 100 grams.
jlpom 3y ago
He posted fake news about trace of life on Mars on twitter
beambot 3y ago
> He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt. Credentialing doesn't / shouldn't matter for science. The science should stand on it's own as long as you follow the scientific method, document your assumptions & results, and do work that is reproducible. Bonus points for good peer review. We should reserve the "grains of salt" for people who are sloppy or have been provably bad actors. </soapbox from someone who is "educated as a scientist">

beerpls 3y ago

“He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt.” As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion. There are plenty of brilliant professional scientists. There are also a lot of idiots in science. There are also a lot of brilliant people who decided that the scientific path was too restrictive or outright false, so they (brilliantly) invested their own scientific life force externally Having a science degree doesn’t make one less fallible to mistakes. If anything it makes people more likely to fudge to get ahead.

cwkoss 3y ago
Stamets makes some extraordinary health claims about mushrooms that afaik have never been clinically tested (ex. anticancer and antiviral applications). I think a grain of salt is appropriate in this case - but he could be entirely right!
soperj 3y ago
> As someone who was educated as a scientist, you should reevaluate this opinion. I would take a lot of science with a grain of salt too. Looking at the recent peanut butter allergy studies for example. Original 2016 study used 10 jewish children in Britain vs. 10 jewish Children in Israel. This study caused policy change around the world. Australia went from under 25% to over 80% of people feeding their children peanut butter under the age of 1. It had no discernible effect on allergies to peanut butter at all. They've followed it up with a larger study, 100 jewish kids in Britain vs. 100 jewish kids in Israel to prove out their original theory.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Please post a link to the study.
- pertymcpert 3y ago
  Huh? I thought very recently that link was established as being real?
- aksss 3y ago
  https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-early-exposure-is-key-to-prevention/amp/ https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-earl... “That trial, involving hundreds of babies under a year old at high risk for developing peanut allergy, established that kids could be protected by regularly eating a popular peanut butter-flavored Israeli snack called Bamba. A follow-up study later showed those kids remained allergy-free even after avoiding peanuts for a year. Under the new recommendations, published simultaneously in six journals including the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, all infants who don’t already test positive for a peanut allergy are encouraged to eat peanut-enriched foods soon after they’ve tried a few other solid foods.” Early exposure seems to be the recommended path.
  - soperj 3y ago
    I get that it's the recommended path, it's been recommended since that first study in Australia and has had zero effect on peanut allergy rates even though # of people feeding peanut butter to their children under 1 has increased significantly.
skadamou 3y ago
I am open to the idea that someone from a background outside of academia could come up with some really brilliant scientific work. I just know that I am not capable of discerning what is solid science in fields different from my own so I typically rely on signals like an academic background (although not exclusively) to help me gauge the trustworthiness of a claim.
tvink 3y ago
The person in question is definitely a good example of someone you SHOULD take with more than a grain of salt. From what I could gather (mainly from /r/mycology) he's not really well respected in his field, and seems to be rather a salesman who draws premature conclusions and evangelises them. The Netflix documentary with him also had my "this sounds too good to be true" sensors going off more or less constantly.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MivLives 3y ago
  In the documentary (I'm assuming Fantastic Fungi), he came off as one of those types that are first and foremost making money off it, but also believes some of what he's saying. I honestly just wanted that documentary to just be a Planet Earth style thing with mushroom footage, and less talking heads.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  stamets strikes me as a well-intentioned enthusiast who is more scientific than most. He did a ton of work on the actual techniques used today in a lot of commercial production and is a really interesting guy. It's also evident that he has sampled a little too much of his own more 'exotic' product.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  We've bought an oyster mushroom kit from him, as well as some soil inoculum. From an ecological standpoint I wonder how genetically diverse his inoculum strains are, and whether they can crowd out native strains of fungi.
- nibbleshifter 3y ago
  I've read most of his books/publications, his work is good (and generally reproducable), but he is somewhat prone to grand statements. Thing is, a lot of labs will largely ignore fungi because they are fucking awkward to work with
- beerpls 3y ago

AlanYx 3y ago

For someone not educated as a scientist, he has a remarkably solid history of academic publications. Pretty inspiring actually.

simple10 3y ago

It's interesting the vitamin D level dropped if over exposed to UV. I wonder what caused the drop.

JLCarveth 3y ago
perhaps UV?
sva_ 3y ago
It's unstable under overexposure of uv light https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/the-effect-of-temperature-and-storage-time-on-the-concentration-of-vitamin-d-in-human-serum.pdf https://www.sysrevpharm.org/articles/the-effect-of-temperatu...
aksss 3y ago
I think vit. D is generated from a reaction of a protein with UVB. UVA is rather destructive, so I would assume that’s what’s going on — to much UV-A on a part of the shroom that by design is shielded from direct exposure, is basically breaking everything down. That’s my .02.

verisimi 3y ago

Sounds so simple.... But how can one check vitamin D iu's for oneself? What machine is used, and how does it work? Or is this a public relations piece from the mushroom marketing board?

JLCarveth 3y ago
I would guess a GC MS[1] - [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mass_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mas...
- verisimi 3y ago
  Thanks. If that's it, it doesn't sound that amazing or accurate: > A nonspecific test merely indicates that any of several in a category of substances is present. Although a nonspecific test could statistically suggest the identity of the substance, this could lead to false positive identification. However, the high temperatures (300°C) used in the GC-MS injection port (and oven) can result in thermal degradation of injected molecules,[3] thus resulting in the measurement of degradation products instead of the actual molecule(s) of interest. from the wiki

godelski 3y ago

Interestingly enough I did a deep dive on mushrooms and vitamin D about a month ago. You can easily find a lot of papers that demonstrate sunlight and vitamin D with mushrooms, so don't take the unofficial training as a knock (we should always be skeptical, but verification exists). It's all about UV light. Some producers are now using UV to help increase the vitamin D of their mushrooms (along with killing bacteria) but they can also quickly lose it when in the fridge. So just set them out on the windowsill 15-90 minutes before you use them. The more the better. Surprisingly this even works for dried mushrooms, so just build the habit. If you don't, you basically shouldn't expect to be getting meaningful amounts of vitamin D from your mushrooms. The effects are this large. In addition to this, make sure when you cook, that you start your mushrooms dry. This isn't a vitamin D thing, but most people cook their mushrooms wrong. They have a lot of water in them to begin with. Start dry, then when you add things they will soak up surrounding flavors and have a better texture (people's main concern), being more meaty than spongy/slimy.

tptacek 3y ago
Is this a problem a lot of people have, the slimy mushroom thing? I don't do anything special or careful at all with mushrooms; I rinse them off, maybe halfheatedly salad-spin them, chop them up and put them in a hot pan with some fat. I've never had a slimy one.
- quicklime 3y ago
  I used to carefully clean my mushrooms with a brush to keep them dry so they wouldn’t end up slimy. But someone told me that was a myth and I decided to try just quickly rinsing them instead. Never resulted in slimy mushrooms, and I was shocked at how much crap ended up in the rinse water.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    My current belief is that there's nothing you can do to a mushroom that a hot pan won't fix.

cushpush 3y ago

I actually appreciate his wealth of knowledge (Paul Stamets) and his presentation of facts, often I learn a lot and his holistic approach is something that most universities would find impossible to implement as curricula. While not a classically-trained scientist, he is an erudite scholar of the highest caliber and his continual contributions to science and furthering our understanding of the natural world more closely correlates to the inceptive motivations of Science than would be found in the modern day tower of ivory.

kadoban 3y ago

> The vitamin D levels in these mushrooms soared from 100 IU/100 grams to nearly 46,000 IU/100 gram Isn't 46000 IU well into the dangerous range? This procedure sounds like an easy way to poison your liver. The number I found says 4000 IU is a recommended max. You could say that you should only eat <10 grams then, but how much variability is there in the amount?

jjcon 3y ago
According to this at least 5k to 50k daily appears to be safe: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611908/#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20long%2Dterm%20supplementation,day%20appears%20to%20be%20safe https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30611908/#:~:text=In%20summa.... Not sure what happens if you eat 10 mushrooms though
- peatmoss 3y ago
  Per 100g was the amount, I think. Need to eat a decent quantity at that rate.
hanniabu 3y ago
When it's from food the tolerance is much higher. It's a bigger danger when taking supplements.
- kadoban 3y ago
  Is it? Interesting.
valarauko 3y ago
In many countries, the standard of care for low vitamin D is a bolus dose of 60K IU once a month is perfectly fine. It's only a problem if you were eating this much every day.

tomjakubowski 3y ago

The "100 IU/100 grams" starting point is with fresh mushrooms, before they were dried. It's not clear to me from the article whether "46,000 IU/100 grams" is per 100g of the fresh mushroom input or per 100g of the dried mushroom output. Mushrooms are ~80-90% water so it makes a big difference.

rcme 3y ago
It makes a big difference, but even if you removed 90% of the fresh mushroom's weight without changing vitamin D levels, you'd still only have 1000 IU / 100 grams.

jlpom 3y ago

He posted fake news about trace of life on Mars on twitter

beambot 3y ago

> He is not educated as a scientist though so I usually take most of his stuff with a grain of salt. Credentialing doesn't / shouldn't matter for science. The science should stand on it's own as long as you follow the scientific method, document your assumptions & results, and do work that is reproducible. Bonus points for good peer review. We should reserve the "grains of salt" for people who are sloppy or have been provably bad actors. </soapbox from someone who is "educated as a scientist">