Pleurotus intolerance ??
paulz at PUCCINI.CRL.UMN.EDU
Wed Oct 2 19:35:24 EST 1996
>Has anyone out there ever heard of anyone developing an intolerance to
>oyster mushrooms. I have picked cooked and eaten them at least five
>times in the last two months without incident, but today was different.
>For one thing, they did not taste as good as usual (had a stronger
>mushroom flavor) and several hours afterwards I developed a bad case of
>particularly NOXIOUS gas which persisted through the evening, accompanied
>by a somewhat metallic taste in my mouth. I did not feel horrible, but
>it was unpleasant. Could I have picked mushrooms slightly past their
>prime? Was it the chili I ate in the same meal that gave me gas?. I
>have gotten a metallic taste from mushrooms several times before, once
>years ago after tasting a Hygrocybe conica and once recently after
>nibbling on a Phylloporous sp. (Gilled Bolete).
My former master's advisor, Neil Anderson, worked on mating in several
Pleurotus species, and fruited them aftificially under a variety of
conditions. He found that when oyster mushrooms fruit under very high
humidity, such as a mist chamber, they can cause symptoms that resemble
food poisoning, even though the mushrooms appear quite fresh and are
cooked. At least one causal agent is apparently a fluorescent Pseudomonad.
The same problem occurs sometimes when the oysters found in the wild have
grown under particularly steamy conditions. Paul
Paul Zambino, Ph.D.
USDA Forest Service
Forestry Sciences Lab
5985 Highway K
Rhinelander, WI 54501
EMAIL: paulz at puccini.crl.umn.edu
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