Are there enough mushroom eaters out there?
This week’s Economist reports that Alethia Vázquez-Morillas of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City and her colleagues have found that
cultivating the right type of mushroom on soiled nappies can break down 90% of the material they are made of within two months. Within four, they are degraded completely. What is more, she says, despite their unsavoury diet the fungi in question, Pleurotus ostreatus (better known as oyster mushrooms), are safe to eat. To prove the point she has, indeed, eaten them.
Bioremediation: Bottom feeders | The Economist.
So if you see markets flooded with cheap oyster mushrooms in a couple of years, you’ll know why. But are enough people going to follow Dr Vazquez’s example and eat them?
Good question, although I suspect that if people had the faintest idea of what “feeds” the foods they are happy to eat, they would recoil in disgust just as thoroughly.
Previous studies of the use of what used to be called “night soil” have generally concluded that it is a bad idea because humans tend to concentrate heavy metals. I would like to know how the mushrooms do on that score.
I agree, hard to make farming squeaky clean. And thanks for the comment about heavy metals. This is something you know much more about than I do.
I can see it now.. the Brooklyn Park Slope Mother’s who Compost set up a farmer’s market table selling Precious Baby Oyster Mushrooms.
The mind reels at the marketing potential.
A new opportunity for you, Judith!