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| Photo credits: www.google.com |
1. The advice of an expert always matters. As a newbie, it's very important to be accompanied by an expert in mushrooms. So you can see how to recognize poisonous and edible mushrooms and what to look for when picking them up.
2. Show a real interest in poisonous species. Learn them first, pay attention to their characteristics and differences with other closely related species.
3. Never pick up mushrooms that you aren't sure about (100%). 'I'm not sure about this species, seems to be edible, should I try it?' -nobody wants to die for a meal, so be careful with such an attitude
4. Stick on at least 10 edible mushroom species. Be sure to learn and know those 10 species. Focus rather on those species without or with few poisonous look-alikes. If you choose the latter, be sure to learn the differences between them.
5. Pick up mushrooms from locations that you know. Good mushroom hunting areas are those that you used them before.
6. Always boil the mushrooms for 30 to 60 minutes before cooking them. Throw away the water. This procedure gives you a bit of insurance.
These are just few of the mushroom picking rules that cross my mind for the moment, be welcome to add some other rules that you consider important for people to know (comment below)
What you should know in case of mushroom poisoning
Timing. In case of poisoning with poisonous mushrooms time is crucial, so take attitude as quick as you can. Even the worst intoxication cases can be avoided like this.
Avoid vomiting inducers administration. The sick is vomiting by itself. Any vomiting inducer would provoke stomach pain. Exception makes intoxication cases with Amanita muscaria and A. pantherina in which vomiting inducers are administered. In this case large quantities of water, tea or warm milk should be consumed. A natural vomiting inducer is the repeated administration of salty cold water.
Coffee and tea. There are recommended also coffee and tea that keeps the sick awake.
Avoid alcohol. The sick person should never consume alcohol in case of poisoning.
In case of intoxications with the most feared mushrooms such as: Amanita phalloides, A. verna, A. virosa or A. citrina symptoms occur after 12 hours. In this case the stomach does not contain anything because in this time the consumed mushroom substances are already within the intestine. In this case vomiting inducers are restricted because such inducers would cause stomach pain, irritation and fatigue. In this case the sick person should be immediately consulted by a doctor who would apply intravenous injections with a litter of physiologic serum in order to dilute to toxins within the blood. The toxins will then be eliminated through urine. The sick should be kept awake with alcohol, or vinegar massage, and consumption of coffee or tea.
Purgatives are indispensable in case of mushroom poisoning because part of toxic substances are within the intestine. For an adult the dosage of a saline purgative is 40-50 g sodium sulphate or magnesium sulphate dissolved into 250 ml of water. After an hour the sick person should be treated with tea: 500 ml water with Borrago officinalis or Agropirum repens.
Note: sometimes mushroom poisoning occurs in case of the old edible mushroom exemplars. The symptoms are usually vomiting, cramps, pale face, etc.
The best is to prevent the occurrence of mushroom poisoning by reading the above posted golden rules.
Don't Let Children to Pick Up Mushrooms
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| Photo credits: www.google.com |
Poisonous mushrooms are really dangerous for children especially because their immunity system is still weak compared to ours. As we all know, 1-3 year old children are very tempted to grab random things around and to swallow them if possible. The little girl in the picture above seem to be very fascinated by Amanita muscaria.
Imagine a child playing in the garden and finding a small poisonous mushroom what would happen in such a case?
I remember when a father came with a piece of mushroom to our lab desperate to identify the species because his 2 year old son got into hospital because of it. However, we couldn't identify it because it was a young mushroom without spores and well developed features (such characteristics are important in the identification process). I don't know the rest of his story but certainly I'm sure of one thing: don't let children play with mushrooms, or check the garden for mushrooms before leaving your child to play around Care must be taken because children are extremely vulnerable to poisonous substances.
Another story is the one of a whole family hospitalized because of eating poisonous mushrooms. One day a jar full of mushrooms in vinegar. The recipe adopted to store the mushrooms is a great one but the mushroom type within the jar was the problem: they were some Inocybe spp. (poisonous). Someone from the family went into the forest to pick up mushrooms, and he found lots of them in the same area. He pick them up without being sure of their edibility and he put them into jars with vinegar, and then he and his family ate some of them, besides they gave a jar or two to their relatives. They all got into the hospital.
References:
Bahrim M. 1979. Msuhrooms in food industry and in the culinary art. Ed. Technica, 1-205.
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