Can You Eat Lion's Mane Raw? What Experts Say
Once you get into the wonderful world of foraging, it’s hard to go back. Delicious leafy greens, yummy fruits, and crunchy nuts are all literally right in your backyard. One other item that’s on many foragers’ checklists is lion’s mane mushroom.
This mushroom may be popular in supplement form, but it’s also a delicious edible mushroom that many people choose to eat right away upon finding it. Here’s everything you need to know, including whether you can eat lion’s mane raw, what its benefits are, and how you can increase its nutritional value.
Can You Eat Lion’s Mane Raw?
There are plenty of things you can eat straight out of the ground. Think about carrots, kale, raspberries, and onions. In fact, there are very few produce items we can’t eat raw.
That said, things are a bit different when mushrooms are involved. Many mushrooms are poisonous, and some are toxic only when you eat them uncooked. Luckily, lion’s mane mushroom is not one of those.
You can technically eat lion’s mane raw. It shouldn’t cause any side effects and it isn’t known to have any toxic chemicals in it. However, lion’s mane is much better when it’s cooked.
This mushroom is a delicacy in regions where it grows, and it’s well-praised for its seafood-like flavor. In fact, it’s often grilled, sauteed, or roasted as an alternative to fish or crab. You’d be missing out on these wonderful flavors if you decided to eat it raw.
What Are the Benefits of Lion’s Mane?
Lion’s mane mushroom doesn’t just taste good — it can also have powerful effects on our overall well-being. There’s a reason it’s one of the trendiest supplements, after all.
Some of the benefits of lion’s mane include:
- Supports Focus: Lion’s mane can encourage focus and concentration in healthy adults.
- Encourages Brain Health: This mushroom can support the body’s production of nerve growth factor (NGF), which is important for brain health.
- Supports Gut Health: Lion’s mane is full of prebiotic fiber, which can support a healthy gut microbiome.
- Encourages Mental Health: Lion’s mane can soothe feelings of depression and anxiety.
- Supports a Good Night’s Sleep: Lion’s mane can support high-quality sleep, possibly due to its benefits for mental health and gut health.
Does Eating Raw Lion’s Mane Still Have Benefits?
Sure, the benefits of lion’s mane are pretty incredible — but can you still get all of these benefits if you eat the mushroom raw? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Mushroom cells are surrounded by a hard protective substance called chitin. Chitin is resistant to the human digestive system, which means the mushroom can go through the whole digestive tract and still not release its beneficial compounds.
Processing lion’s mane mushroom by cooking it or extracting it can help break down the chitin, allowing the beneficial compounds to enter our bodies and get to work. Technically, raw lion’s mane still has all the same benefits — our bodies just can’t unlock them.
Where Does Lion’s Mane Grow?
Lion’s mane mushroom is a fuzzy white mushroom that looks a little bit like a pom-pom (not to be confused with its cousin, bear’s head tooth mushroom. It grows on hardwood trees in temperate areas of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
This mushroom can be found from late summer through early winter, although it is quite rare to find lion’s mane in the wild. Many people carefully cultivate this mushroom to make it more accessible and convenient.
How Can You Ensure the Nutritional Value of Lion’s Mane?
Most people don’t have time to wander around in the woods looking for puffballs growing out of trees. If this sounds like you, you’ll be happy to hear that you can still enjoy the benefits of lion’s mane. This mushroom is often sold in various mushroom blends or nootropic supplements. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when you’re looking for the best mushroom supplement.
Look For Extracts
This might sound hard to believe, but some mushroom supplement companies simply grind their mushrooms up into a powder instead of properly extracting them. This means that you may not actually experience the benefits that you’re hoping for.
At Everyday Dose, we make sure all of our medicinal mushrooms are properly extracted. In fact, we use a double-extraction process that helps remove even more beneficial compounds from the mushroom cell walls.
Opt for Wood-Fed
When lion’s mane grows out in the wild, it mainly consumes living or rotting wood. When it is grown in a controlled environment, however, some growers feed lion’s mane grain. The grain provides a filling source of nutrition for the mushrooms, but it’s nothing close to the rich nutrients found in their natural habitat.
To make sure your supplement has a similar health profile as wild mushrooms, make sure it is made with mushrooms that are grown on wood, not grain. For instance, the mushrooms we use in our Mushroom Coffee+ are all grown on actual trees and foraged by hand.
Use Fruiting Bodies
Finally, some supplement companies make their blends with lion’s mane mycelium. This part of the mushroom is similar to the roots of a plant. While it is technically part of the mushroom, it doesn’t have the same nutritional value as the actual visible part of the mushroom, called the fruiting body.
Mycelium is also impossible to remove from its substrate, which means that any supplement made with mycelium also likely has grain in it. Here at Everyday Dose, we use 100 percent fruiting bodies in our mushroom blends.
Wrapping Things Up
Lion’s mane mushroom is both a trending supplement and also a northern delicacy in many areas around the world. This is a fully edible mushroom, but if you eat it raw, you may not experience the full range of benefits that can come with this mushroom.
At Everyday Dose, we know that quality matters. That’s why we’ve done everything we can to make sure our mushroom blends are as effective as possible. Try them today and see the benefits for yourself!
Sources:
Lion’s Mane | LiverTox - NCBI Bookshelf
More Than a Mushroom: Benefits of Lion’s Mane | Institute for Natural Medicine
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