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What is a mushroom, exactly?
Ask the average consumer and they’ll likely reply that mushrooms are short stems with lid-like caps on the top, found in the produce section as well as growing in the wild. But defining exactly what constitutes a mushroom has become a contentious debate among supplement product makers, who are taking their fight to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for resolution.
This debate isn’t just a squabble over nomenclature. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the nutritional supplement market saw a massive boom. Millions of new consumers bought fungal health products of all types, from mushroom powders and capsules to extracts and coffee. Experts predict the North American mushroom market, currently valued at $11.99 billion, will nearly double in the next seven years, reaching $20 billion by 2030. Regulating the definition of a mushroom puts billions of dollars on the line, pits some of the industry’s star players against one another and could impact consumer health as well.
Mushroom Disputes: The Mycelium vs. Fruiting Body Debate
The lay understanding of a mushroom (i.e., the stem with a cap depicted in the popular red-and-white emoji) is technically called the fruiting body. The mushrooms we see popping up after rain are actually the fruits of a much larger organism. The majority of the fungus exists underground, in the wood, soil, dung or other material the fruit is sprouting from. This unseen structure is called the mycelium, and it looks like a network of tiny white threads or filaments.
While fungi are not plants, it’s helpful to think of mushrooms or fruiting bodies as analogous to fruit, like apples, and the mycelium as the actual body of the fungus (akin to the branches, trunk and roots of an apple tree). While plants and trees grow in soil, mycelium grows in what’s called substrate (soil can be a substrate, but fungi often grow in a combination of wood, dung, coir or grain).
If you’ve ever seen the documentary Fantastic Fungi, you already know that mycelium can be enormous as well as ancient (the largest one living, found beneath Oregon’s Blue Mountains, spans more than four square miles and is estimated to be 2,500 years old). Mycelium is essential to the health of our environment, as it helps decompose dead and decaying organic matter in its quest for nutrients.
But is a mycelium a mushroom? The fight within the mushroom industry right now is over whether companies can define mycelium as mushrooms. Proponents say the mycelium is technically a mushroom and offers nutritional and bioactive compounds that benefit human health.
Critics deride mushroom products made with mycelium and substrate as “filler,” and that the main benefits of mushrooms are principally located in the actual fruiting body. This cohort wants the FDA to label mushroom products made with fruiting bodies differently than those made with mycelium and substrate.
Mushrooms’ Biggest Players Weigh in as the Regulatory Battle Heats Up
The fight over how to define mushrooms involves some of the industry’s biggest and most powerful players. Nammex, an organic functional mushroom ingredient supplier, recently submitted a citizen petition to the FDA calling for specific labeling requirements. The petition argues that any product containing other fungal parts besides the cap and stem, (i.e., mycelium or the substrate it was grown in) should not be allowed to be sold as a “mushroom” or “containing mushrooms.”
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The Natural Products Association (NPA), the leading trade association for dietary supplements, natural health and functional food products, has submitted a similar petition, urging the FDA to mandate that only products containing actual fruiting bodies be permitted to label their products as mushrooms.
Shroomer, a publication dedicated to covering fungi’s worldwide economic, cultural and environmental impact, says that many mushroom supplements use “deceptive marketing tactics, suggesting that they contain the genuine fruiting bodies of functional fungi….Since mycelium grows easier and faster than fruiting bodies, it’s commonly used in many functional mushroom supplements.” Mycelium does contain beneficial compounds, but overall, the fruiting bodies contain much higher concentrations of these compounds.
However, leaders at some of the biggest mushroom product sellers in North America — most notably Paul Stamets’s company, Fungi Perfecti, as well as LLC, M2 Ingredients Inc., Gourmet Mushrooms, Inc., and Monterey Mushrooms Inc. — fired back against the fruiting body purists in an open letter published on the Fungi Perfecti website. “We continue to be concerned by confusion seeded by Nammex of widely-accepted and settled terminology,” the letter states. “We advocate for truth and scientific accuracy in labeling. In our opinion, Nammex’s proposals do neither.”
Paul Stamets calling for mycelium to be defined as mushrooms is akin to Michael Jordan calling to move the three-point line. As one of the mushroom community’s most revered figures, Stamets’s word on fungi is usually accepted as law. His brand, Host Defense, proudly incorporates mycelium into its products, and its website points to research showing that mycelium does have immune system benefits. Stamets has his critics, who acknowledge him as a singular pioneer in fungi cultivation and education, but question the science around some of his health claims.
Defining mushroom products reflects a larger problem in the supplements industry: there is precious little oversight and no need for FDA approval. Many product makers would welcome stricter standards to prevent spurious or misleadingly labeled products from entering the market.
In an interview with Dennis Walker’s Mycopreneur Podcast,Skye Chilton of Real Mushrooms (Nammex’s parent company) acknowledged that changes in labeling could change the industry for everyone. He also cautioned consumers to watch out for what he called “fairy dusting:” Brands that add just enough of a trendy mushroom to a product to charge high prices, but not enough to affect the buyers’ health. “People know what mushrooms are,” Chilton said. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.” We don’t know whether the FDA will intervene in the mushroom conflict — in the meantime, I’d urge consumers to do their homework, read labels and find out how your supplement maker defines the word “mushroom.”
