A tasty meal with mushrooms is a culinary pleasure indeed. But after scouring the net lately, Granny has found out that mushrooms are not only quite filling and nutritious, but you can even use these natural marvels for building materials!
My Dears,Does this happen to you, too? You hear about some subject or idea that sounds interesting, you take what was supposed to be a quick look round on the web and next thing you know you’re engrossed for hours on end – after which you’re a good deal more informed (or in some cases confused). You jump from one site to the next, and from one video to another – it’s great! Well, I recently came across the subject of “vital” or medicinal mushrooms and the term “beta-glucans”. That piqued my curiosity, I looked into it, and at the end of the day I even knew about “mycotecture”: buildings made with mushrooms, believe it or not!
Fungus among us
Just about everyone has tasted mushrooms. I really like eating them from time to time myself. You can’t beat bread dumplings topped with mushroom sauce! But my granddaughter Laura in Berlin is a real “mycophile”, and not just because they’re low in calories and rich in important nutrients. It all started with a gift set for growing mushrooms at home, where they’re free from heavy metals and radioactive contamination. Laura’s big on DIY and now she raves about the freshness of her home grown mushrooms: she says they’re so much more aromatic than supermarket mushrooms trucked in from far away. What’s more, growing your own is more sustainable because it involves less packaging. The kit she received included a pre-inoculated substrate to grow the mushrooms in as well as soil to cover them over with. It’s easy to harvest your aromatic homegrown mushrooms after only two or three weeks. A single set will yield several harvests. And it’s all organic. So what more could one ask for!Anyway, Laura and I were recently talking about mushrooms and she raved about a German YouTube channel that’s all about wild herbs, wild plants and mushrooms. My favourite subjects! One episode was about so-called “vital mushrooms”, which have played a vital part in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years, and on the healthy beta-glucans they contain. You can imagine how curious that made me! So, without further ado, I set about finding out more.
Immune-boosting beta-glucans
Beta-glucans are made up of several linked glucose molecules that are not broken down by stomach acid, so they can do good things for the small intestine. Beta-glucans are what’s known as dietary fibre, or roughage, and found in cereals and mushrooms. In fact, they’re apparently far more bioactive in mushrooms than in other sources like oatmeal, barley or yeast. In any case, to put it in a nutshell, beta-glucans boost the immune system and lower cholesterol and sugar levels in the blood.Homegrown oyster mushrooms
The oyster mushrooms (aka hiratake) in my local wholefood shop had often caught my eye in the past, though I’d never actually dared to give them a try. But one of the YouTube videos I watched was a beautiful exploration of the oyster mushroom, which blew me – and my hesitation – away. Above all, I wanted to reap the health benefits of its beta-glucans. Oyster mushrooms contain plenty of proteins and all the B vitamins, and almost no fat or carbohydrates, so they’re very popular with vegetarians and vegans. They tend to grow on dead wood and help decompose it, but you can grow them at home, too. So I ordered a mushroom growing kit like the one Laura has, then followed the instructions to a T and now I have to wait. In about eleven weeks I hope to be harvesting my first very own oyster mushrooms. I’ll let you know whether I’ve succeeded in homegrowing one of the oldest mushrooms cultivated in Germany.Mycotecture
Whilst delving into the subject for hours on end, I eventually happened upon the German Architects’ Association website. In the 2/2021 issue of the Bavarian regional branch’s quarterly newsletter, Ulrike Steinbach writes under the heading “Building with Renewable Raw Materials”:The food industry is only interested in the fruiting body [i.e. the mushroom], the mycelium was previously just waste. But this waste can be used by the building industry in future to produce building materials at minimal energy and material costs.
A lot of research is being done in this field to figure out how the many different varieties of mushrooms can be used as “myco-materials”. Fungus-based building sounds awfully promising for the future! My mushroom-loving grandmother would never have believed it possible.
Packaging
Architect Benjamin got the idea for his tower from packaging that had long been produced in New York from cornstalks and mycelium. The mushroom “roots” grow within a short time in such a way as to fill all the empty spaces in the material and thereby “glue” them shut. The dried product is then extremely sturdy. And it’s all biodegradable! You may have already held a purchase in your hands wrapped in such “mushroom packaging” without even knowing it!Fungus-based soundproofing
A few more clicks brought me to the website of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a German organization for applied research self-described as a “trailblazer and trendsetter for innovative developments” that’s “helping to shape our society and our future”. Looks like I’m getting back into science in my old age!On the website, I came across Julia Krayer, who’s researching eco-friendly fungus-based sound absorbers. She and her colleagues grow mycelium threads in the lab for this purpose. The mycelium is first mixed with a vegetal substrate made up of straw, wood and waste from food production. The mix can then be printed into any desired shape using a 3D printer. The mycelium filaments spread throughout the fine-grained substrate to fill the mould, after which the product is dried in a kiln to kill the fungus. The open cell walls of the resulting material can absorb sound, so the end result is an eco-friendly and sustainable soundproofing material.
Actually, everything we produce ought to be as sustainable as possible and with the least possible harmful impact on nature. I see mushrooms as a very promising way of going about that. For me, they have lately become wonders of the natural world. I’ll be keeping my eyes open and an ear to the ground for developments in this field of research. And in the meantime, I’ll keep you posted on how my oyster mushroom farm is doing!
Warm regards – and stay curious!
Your Trude
February 2022