News

In this post: some very confident sounding people with very, very bad ideas about how toxic mushrooms work.

Please don't pick and eat mushrooms in the wild unless you've had actual experienced people teach and train you.

Here are some facts you need to know:

• You cannot cook fungus toxins out. They are not potatoes.

• Every "obviously" safe mushroom has at least one species of look-alike that can be dangerous. You need more knowledge than a single picture in a field guide.

• You cannot taste mushroom toxins, they taste just like any other mushroom.

• A poisonous mushroom doesn't kill you fast, it takes days or weeks for the toxins to work on your organs. These toxins can exist in a spectrum from "mild stomach ache" to "you're doomed without several new organs very soon." depending on what you ate and how much.

• Knowing how to identify safe mushrooms is not an identity, don't act like people are stupid if they can't tell as easily. There are a lot of people who don't know how much they don't know.

All of those involved in this were people who used to forage in their respective home countries. They knew regional edible species before moving to California, as a result they identified what they thought was edible, but as it happens was deadly poisonous.

Please don't come away with the opinion that you cannot identify mushrooms or that the process is somehow mysterious, that's not the case. If you are considering getting into mushroom identification, please get in touch with your local mycological society: https://namyco.org/ as they are an excellent resource and it's a whole lot of fun. Don't rely on anyting a "AI" will provide you, either forward or backward. Don't ever just guess or YOLO it. When in doubt, throw it out.

Articles like this come out every time these unfortunate events occur, and since mushrooms are culturally stigmatized, the facts of the events are brushed over and uneducated attitudes and stigmas are spread and continue fester--which is a shame as it provoakes a very fearful attitude towards mushrooms in general.

Please educate yourself extremely well if you plan on eating wild mushrooms

So unsettling that some mushrooms are delicious in a risotto or omelette and others will fucking murder you.

19 months! Who feeds foraged mushrooms to an infant?!

I live in the PNW, where there are several varieties of poisonous mushrooms, including death caps. Apparently people can safely forage for mushrooms - but it scares the crap out of me because of the exact scenario in this article.

Are these linked to "AI identification"?

Who the fuck is giving a one year old child some mushroom they found in the woods?

They're about a billion different forms of mushroom and they all look mostly the same why would anyone risk it?

There are old mushroom hunters and there are are bold mushroom hunters. There are very, very few old, bold mushroom hunters. There are only a few deadly mushrooms so why not aquatint yourself with them before eating them, and dying?

None are ICE goons. I checked.