[ryanblakeley]

I once took a group of young people foraging for mushrooms in the Willamette valley on a farm that had loads of these newts. I warned every body not to touch them.

After preparing dinner, one girl got very ill, as did I, while other people who ate the dinner were fine. I was so worried I'd mis-identified some mushrooms.

But turns out she had handled one of these newts and the bacteria had transferred to the mushrooms she picked. I contacted it from washing the mushrooms. I threw up several times that night.

In hindsight, had we not washed the mushrooms as thoroughly as we did, things could have gone much worse.

[sbierwagen]

Eating wild mushrooms has got to have the worst cost/benefit ratio outside of wingsuiting or recreational bear wrestling. In exchange for hours of study and a significant risk of death you get fifty to a hundred calories of food. Probably made sense in the tenth century when the average person was one bad harvest away from starvation, but it seems harder to justify today.

[lithocarpus]

Where I live mushrooms are by far the most abundant wild food. It's good exercise, very enjoyable "work", and they taste really really good with a huge variety of flavors.

Leafy greens also have very low calories per pound. We eat them for the nutrients not for the calories. Because of mushrooms and wild greens, I buy very little vegetables, all I need is relatively cheap (per calorie) foods to go with the wild stuff.

There is also risk of food poisoning with food from restaurants or the store.. not to mention the chronic poisoning of eating food grown with excessive pesticides etc.

For the most part the abundant edible mushrooms look very different from the dangerous ones. But yes you do need to know ID thoroughly if you go for certain species.

That said not everyone lives where edible mushrooms are abundant, I'm not trying to suggest everyone should do it.

[crazygringo]

Not even that much. A couple of cups of mushrooms -- a generous helping as a side dish -- has around 30 calories.

All the significant calories comes from the oil or butter they're cooked in.

I'm not sure it was ever about avoiding starvation, but rather just a different flavor to eat sometimes. When you're always eating the same local ingredients, food can get boring pretty quick. It's the same appeal of spices -- you got a new flavor!

[mock-possum]

Oh come on - Making cost benefit analysis of foraging and eating wild mushrooms into a matter of calories is wild.

The calorific value of a meal is one of the least important aspects - you might as well complain that the mushrooms don’t come in sufficiently varied colours to make it worthwhile.

It’s not about the calories. It’s about the experience - the taste, the texture, the satisfaction of knowing you did it yourself.

[TechDebtDevin]

Acccording to America's poisen center these are the numbers:

Calls to poisen control concerning mushrooms: 8,294 Of those calls, 4862 were of unknown origin, only like 3-400 are confirmed dangerous wild grown mushrooms, 2k+ are psylocibin. 3-400 is probably <1% of the amount of people who forage, so its a lot safer than driving a car I'm guessing.

(This was a quick scan)

https://piper.filecamp.com/uniq/dPhtQdu6eCQnIQ5R.pdf [page 174-175]

[soperj]

Honestly it's not hours of study. You identify the one mushroom that you're going foraging for, and then you need to know the ones that look like it so that you don't get those by mistake. It's pretty simple if you know what you're doing. Ie: Chantrelles have a symbiotic relationship with Douglas Fir trees, so you're only going to find them around Douglas firs.

[Vilian]

You can say that to any mildly dangerous hobby

[amanaplanacanal]

Eating plants at random must be more dangerous than eating mushrooms. I have heard that there are far more poisonous plants than fungi, and greens have almost no calories.

[reverendsteveii]

do you only eat the food with the highest calories:risk ratio?

[twdfhgy4556452]

Meh, there are a couple of mushrooms that are super easy to identify with no risk of confusing them with anaything dangerous (at least where I live). Stick to those and you're fine. Also, they are super tasty ;)

[tshaddox]

They’re also an acquired taste, which makes it even more absurd.

[imp0cat]

Well then, what do you think about eating fugu?

[hoseja]

Sorry but skill issue.

[jaggederest]

I'm honestly amazed I didn't get tetrodotoxin poisoning when I was a kid. We used to play with these rough skinned newts all the time, they were everywhere, and nobody was especially diligent about washing their hands.

[eszed]

Same! I even kept a couple of them in a terrarium. And, my dad was a PhD in zoology, so it wasn't like I lacked access to expert advice. It was a "they have toxins on their skin, so... Eh, maybe wash your hands a bit", not "wash your hands or the whole family dies" level of concern.

Makes me wonder if a) these toxicity stories are exaggerated, b) it's really regionally specific, c) toxicity has radically increased in the past ~40 years since I was playing with newts, or d) we got dumb lucky.

I loved this article. I didn't know anything about the newt / snake interaction; I wonder if my dad did.