Chapter 6 Conclusions

Both cultivated and wild-growing edible mushrooms are consumed as a delicacy, because of their characteristic smell, taste, and texture, or as a healthy food, because of their low calories and high fiber content. Recent global production of cultivated species exceeded 10 million tons and is increasing rapidly. Available information on proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, minerals, numerous minor components, and health-stimulating and adverse compounds of culinary mushrooms are presented in this book. Available nutritional data deal mostly with raw mushrooms, whereas information on the changes in nutrients and biologically active compounds during various preservation, culinary, and processing treatments and storage has been limited. Even more scarce are data on bioavailability.