Mushrooms come in various shapes, sizes, and colours. The ones that aren’t toxic happen to be quite healthy and tasty. While there are specific nutrients in all the vegetables, a new research suggested that adding a mushroom serving to the diet could work wonders for the human body.
Although classified into food grouping systems by their use as a vegetable, mushrooms’ increasing use in main entrees in plant-forward diets is growing. Mushrooms are fungi – a member of the third food kingdom – biologically distinct from plant and animal-derived foods that comprise the USDA food patterns, yet have a unique nutrient profile that provides nutrients common to both plant and animal foods.
According to the research published in ‘Food Science and Nutrition’, adding a mushroom serving to the diet increased the intake of several micronutrients, including shortfall nutrients such as vitamin D, without any increase in calories, sodium, or fat.
Some key findings were:
1. Adding an 84g serving of mushrooms increased several shortfall nutrients including potassium and fibre.
2. The addition of a serving (84 g) of mushrooms to the diet resulted in an increase in dietary fibre (5% to 6%), copper (24% to 32%), phosphorus (6%), potassium (12% to 14%), selenium (13% to 14%), zinc (5% to 6%), riboflavin (13% to 15%), and niacin (13% to 14%) in both adolescents and adults; but had no impact on calories, carbohydrate, fat or sodium.
3. Mushrooms are exposed to UV-light and provide 5mcg vitamin D per serving. Vitamin D intake could meet and slightly exceed the recommended daily value (98%- 104%) for both the 9 -18 year and 19+ year groups as well as decrease inadequacy of this shortfall nutrient in the population when consumed consistently.
4. Adding mushroom to your diet can help in improving immunity as it stimulates microphages in the immune system which helps in enhancing its ability to defeat foreign bodies and making you less susceptible to serious illnesses.
5. When the mushroom is combined with exercise and few other lifestyle changes, it can help in losing weight and has been proven beneficial in the long-term.
6. If you are suffering from high blood pressure as mushroom has potassium in abundance which can help in reducing the negative impact of sodium.
7. As per the research, the National University of Singapore found that eating two 3/4 cup servings of cooked mushrooms per week may reduce your odds of mild cognitive decline.
8. Mushrooms contain a super-high concentration of two antioxidants, ergothioneine and glutathione, according to a 2017 Penn State study. When these antioxidants are present together, they work extra-hard to protect the body from the physiological stress that causes visible signs of aging (translation: wrinkles).
