Mushroom foraging is fun, but can be toxic, warn experts

Damp weather at this time of year can be the perfect conditions for dedicated mushroom foragers in the UK. It can be a risky business—there’s always the risk of foraging a toxic mushroom that could make you sick—but it’s growing in popularity with many sharing their latest finds on social media. Mushroom havens like Ashridge Woods in the English county of Hertfordshire attract the foraging community. Their eyes scan the ground for mushrooms not only to pick but to eat. Marina Muttik is known online as the Foraging Mermaid, she’s been foraging all her life. Her parents are Russian and she says foraging is much more popular in Russia than in the UK, so she started following her parents on foraging expeditions as a child. She now runs workshops and educates the community about foraging through her social media channels. But for every delicious edible mushroom, there's always the risk of foraging a toxic mushroom that could make you sick or, in rare and extreme cases, even result in liver failure and death. “It can absolutely be dangerous. There are deadly mushrooms around, and you have to watch out for them,” she says while taking a break from foraging. Building up knowledge of what’s safe and what’s not takes time. Muttik even admits she can sometimes find identification difficult and has to pick the wider foraging communities’ brains. “There’s no easy rules when it comes to mushrooms. So, that’s why you kind of have to look at all of the features. You have to look at where they grow, how they look, how they smell, [and] sometimes how they taste. There’s a lot of features to take into account,” she says. Professor James Coulson is a toxicologist at Cardiff University. He recently examined data from the National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) from 2013-2022 and discovered an average of 128 cases of mushroom poisonings in the UK every year. Toxicology expert Coulson reminds us that foraging for mushrooms should be approached with extreme caution. This article was provided by The Associated Press.