How To Protect Yourself While Picking Mushrooms? Mushroom Picking Rules. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

With mushrooms, you can cook an endless number of not only delicious, but also nutritious dishes, mushrooms are dried and canned for the winter. It is not surprising that closer to autumn amateurs and professionals of "quiet hunting" go out en masse to pick mushrooms in the nearest (and not so) forest. At the same time, the number of poisoning by these gifts of the forest is sharply increasing. How to protect yourself from troubles by going to the forest for mushrooms, and how not to become a victim of low-quality mushrooms, we will tell in the article.

Content:

• Why do we love mushrooms?
• How can even edible mushrooms be dangerous?
• General rules for picking mushrooms

Why do we love mushrooms?

Mushrooms are a valuable food product and their composition is unique. There is a lot of water in mushrooms - 80-90%, and dry matter is represented mainly by proteins. Therefore, their other name is justified - "forest meat".

Almost all amino acids, including essential ones, are part of proteins. Mushrooms contain much less carbohydrates than proteins. And they are different from plant carbohydrates.

There is no starch at all in mushrooms. They contain glycogen - animal starch. Mushrooms have a specific sugar - mycosis or trehalose. Also, mushrooms contain various fatty substances. And their digestibility is high enough.

Mushrooms contain various organic acids (malic, citric, tartaric, fumaric and others) and a wide range of vitamins (A, B1, B2, C, D, PP). They are rich in iron, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sodium. They contain trace elements such as copper, zinc, iodine, fluorine, manganese.

Thus, mushrooms are a complete food product containing all the main substances - proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and mineral salts.

In terms of nutritional value, mushrooms can be divided into four categories:

• the first is a porcini mushroom, a mushroom and a real milk mushroom;
• the second - mushrooms of average quality (boletus, boletus, butter dish, bruise);
• the third - mushrooms, russula, chanterelles, honey agarics;
• the fourth - low-value mushrooms (some types of russula, rose pink, summer mushroom and others).

How can even edible mushrooms be dangerous?

Mushrooms are capable of accumulating salts of heavy metals and other harmful substances in quantities dangerous to humans. With the precipitation, the mushrooms get emissions from industrial facilities, exhaust gases from vehicles, various chemicals used for spraying in agriculture.

But the largest amount of dangerous substances enters the body of the fungus from the soil, where the mycelium develops. The most dangerous are water-soluble salts of heavy metals (mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic), radioactive elements (cesium-137, strontium), pesticides and herbicides. The latter are not destroyed during heat treatment and can cause serious harm to health.

According to their ability to accumulate cesium-137, mushrooms are divided into the following types:

• Accumulators (Polish mushroom, camelina, autumn butterdish, goat, ringed cap, yellow-brown flywheel, bitter).
• Strongly accumulating radionuclides (black podgruzdok, yellow chanterelle, pink volnushka, brilliant green, birch, black milk mushroom).
• Moderately accumulating radionuclides (autumn honey fungus, russula, porcini mushroom, boletus, green grass).
• Weakly accumulating (winter honey fungus, colorful umbrella mushroom, oyster mushroom, prickly raincoat, champignon, purple ryadovka).

General rules for picking mushrooms

When going for mushrooms, dress according to the weather, but with a prerequisite for protection from insects, and most importantly, from ticks. For this, clothes must be cuffed. Shirt with long sleeves. Pants tucked into boots (and socks). No slippers, sneakers or the like. A headdress is required. Hair is gathered in a bun. A repellent (insect repellent) is also useful.

Going for mushrooms, take some drinking water with you, it will come in handy. It is also better to go to the forest with an experienced mushroom picker.

It is better to go to the forest in the morning. The sun will not have time to "heat" the mushrooms, and they can survive until you start cleaning them. The collected mushrooms cannot be stored for a long time.

It is best to pick mushrooms in baskets. This will prevent them from overheating during collection and deteriorating. Collecting in a bag, you risk bringing home already spoiled mushrooms.

The plucked mushroom should be immediately cleaned of debris and earth, cut off part of the leg with the ground. Fold in a basket with the caps down (so as not to break and clog neighboring mushrooms). Long-stemmed mushrooms are best placed sideways.

It is important to choose the right collection point. Do not pick mushrooms near highways, industrial facilities, along railway tracks, near agricultural fields, dumps, cattle burial grounds and cemeteries. A safe collection area is considered to be 500 m from a country road and 1000 m from a motorway.

It is necessary to take mushrooms without signs of rot and wormholes, not old ones, since substances dangerous to humans quickly accumulate in them.

Do not pick mushrooms immediately after a dry period. Such mushrooms contain the maximum amount of radionuclides and salts of heavy metals.

You need to start processing immediately after returning from the forest. Mushrooms spoil quickly and decay products pose a health hazard.

It is possible to reduce the amount of radionuclides by soaking the mushrooms in salt water (for several hours), followed by boiling in salt water, and removing the broth.

Canned mushrooms can be stored in a cool room for no more than a year.

And finally. You can always check the collected mushrooms for the content of radionuclides in the territorial centers of hygiene and epidemiology, in the laboratory of veterinary and sanitary examination (available in the markets). To do this, you must provide at least 1 liter of mushrooms for analysis.

So, let's summarize and define the basic rules for the safe collection and storage of mushrooms:

• prepare clothes and collection baskets the day before,
• we dress correctly
• we go in the morning and are not alone,
• we collect in safe places,
• and only those mushrooms that are familiar to us, young and not wormy,
• upon returning from the forest, we immediately start cleaning and processing,
• we carry out preparations for the winter correctly, and store in a cool room for no more than a year.

Observing the elementary rules for collecting, processing and preparing mushrooms, you take care of your health and the health of your loved ones!