It's time for another year to eat mushrooms!
Recently, Yunnan, the "big province of eating mushrooms", released the "Common Toadstools (Poisonous Mushrooms) 2022 Edition in Yunnan", which updated the wall chart of common toadstools in Yunnan, and also launched a small program to identify poisonous mushrooms.
This has also sparked discussions among netizens. With the identification applet, can mushrooms be eaten safely?
The safest way should be to never eat it!
The reporter learned that from May to October every year, news of poisoning caused by eating wild mushrooms has become common in China, and there are dozens of sporadic cases every year in Jiangsu.
Many people think of poisonous mushrooms as "red umbrellas and white poles". This is actually not true. Common poisonous mushrooms look rather "disgraced".
Yangzi Evening News/Ziniu News reporter Yang Yan
Mushroom poisoning incidents in Jiangsu mostly occur in summer and autumn
As the temperature warms up and the humidity rises, wild mushrooms enter a period of vigorous growth, which is also a period of high incidence of poisonous mushroom food poisoning.
According to the report of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, 25 provincial-level administrative regions in my country will conduct research on 327 mushroom poisoning incidents, involving 923 patients and 20 deaths, with an overall mortality rate of 2.17%.
Mushroom poisoning is one of the most serious food safety problems in my country.
Sun Hao, deputy chief physician of the Emergency Medicine Department of Jiangsu Provincial People's Hospital (The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University), told the Yangtze Evening News reporter that the seasons of high incidence of poisoning by eating poisonous mushrooms vary from one country to another, and Jiangsu has more seasons in summer and autumn. .
Edible poisonous mushroom poisoning is medically classified as food-borne poisoning and needs to be reported to the state.
In Jiangsu Province, there will be dozens of cases of mushroom poisoning in a year, which are relatively scattered and occur in various cities.
Jiangsu Provincial People's Hospital has also received consultation needs for poisonous mushroom poisoning cases in Nanjing, Suzhou, Huai'an, Suqian and other places. Some patients have multiple organ damage after eating wild mushrooms, and even if the condition is more serious, they may not be rescued.
Edible mushroom poisoning is far more than "seeing the dancing villain"
Every year during the mushroom season, there are many news of hallucinations caused by mushroom poisoning such as eating mushrooms, and "eating mushrooms and seeing a dancing villain" has even been searched on Weibo.
Netizens who have been "stricken" vividly describe the hallucinations caused by poisoning, and seeing the colorful "dancing villains" and other fantasy scenes, even netizens who have not tried it are also itchy, wanting to "try it by themselves" poison".
Although the discussion on the Internet is very happy, the doctor still advises everyone not to think of "testing the poison with one's own body".
Sun Hao, deputy chief physician, said that there are different types of mushroom toxins, and different toxins may cause 5-7 different symptoms. Among them, liver toxicity, kidney toxicity, hemolysis and other types have a high risk of death.
There are also some poisonous mushrooms that can cause gastroenteritis-type, neuropsychiatric and other symptoms.
The hotly discussed "seeing the dancing villain" on the Internet belongs to the neuropsychiatric symptoms caused by mushroom toxins. Through medical observation and symptomatic treatment, most patients can be cured and discharged. The severity is relatively mild, but it can be confirmed It can still cause damage to the nervous system, so don't try those poisonous mushrooms that may be hallucinogenic because of curiosity.
Don't try to identify, don't eat mushrooms in the wild
Many people think that the brighter the color of the mushrooms, the more likely they are poisonous mushrooms, so be careful of those mushrooms with "red umbrellas and white stems".
Sun Hao, deputy chief physician, said that this is definitely a misunderstanding.
Many common poisonous mushrooms in Jiangsu actually look "unremarkable" and "disgraced". They look a lot like shiitake mushrooms and mushrooms that can be bought in supermarkets, and it is not easy to identify them.
There are many folk methods to identify poisonous mushrooms, such as mushrooms that eat insects or raw maggots are non-toxic, mushrooms with scaly mucus are poisonous, etc., but they are not accurate.
Some tutorials also suggest that high temperature or deep frying can detoxify, which is not safe.
The chemical structure of mushroom toxins is quite stable, and neither high temperature nor deep frying is sufficient to destroy them, and the risk of poisoning still exists.
In conclusion: there is no easy, quick and efficient way to identify whether a mushroom is poisonous or not.
Therefore, Deputy Chief Physician Sun Hao suggested: Don't try to identify poisonous mushrooms, and don't pick and eat wild mushrooms, which is the key to prevention.