From a stir-fried puffball to a truffles pasta, mushrooms range from everyday staple food to a costly delicacy. Not just one variety, there are different types of mushrooms in the world that can uniquely tickle your taste buds, while some varieties can kill you. So, it means you can’t eat just any mushroom you spot in the wild! Edible mushrooms are tasty and rich in nutrition, and very low on fat, making them great health-enrichers. Stay on this page to know more interesting facts, differentiate mushroom varieties, and learn the difference between edible and non-edible mushrooms!

What is a Mushroom?

Mushrooms are fungi that had existed since ancient times, even before trees popped up on planet earth! Yes! Mushrooms as tall as an adult giraffe covered the ancient land. They are fungi species and are not considered plants. Hence they are not vegetables! Currently, there are 14000 different mushrooms species worldwide. Unfortunately, only a quarter percentage are edible, half are not edible but are not harmful, a few can make you sick, and one per cent of them are so dangerous that consuming them can be fatal.

Further, History reveals that Egyptian Pharaohs loved eating mushrooms and therefore declared them as the food for only the royal families and prohibited the ordinary people from eating mushrooms. On the other hand, the upper-class Greeks and the Romans made mushrooms a part of their unique cuisines. Interestingly, anthropology experts found that the Romans had employed taste testers who had to check whether the mushrooms going into the kitchens were poisonous or not!

Well! For us food lovers, since taste, flavor, and edibility quotient are most important, we will discuss 15 popular types of mushrooms in the world and see what’s good to eat!

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