Are Wild Mushrooms Really Wild?

Posted on 2007/05/16 07:54:58 (May 2007).

[Monday 14th May]
Had spaghetti for dinner, with a tomato and wild mushroom sauce. Actually it was just a shop bought one as I was feeling somewhat lazy.

As an aside, I have often looked upon things labeled as containing "wild mushrooms" with some suspicion. For a mushroom to actually be wild, surely it can't have been farmed or cultivated, and somebody must have actually gone foraging for it. Having been on such expeditions with my Dad my experience has been that it is very time consuming and often not very fruitful - it's rare to come back with any more than a small handful.

OK so perhaps these things are more prevalent in France or Italy, but still it is hard to believe that edible fungi can be gathered on such a large scale so as to be able to put them in sauces that people like me can buy in ordinary supermarkets.

...furthermore, it's also quite a risky process collecting wild mushrooms - there are a few dangerous pitfalls of highly poisonous mushrooms which look deceptively similar to the common edible varieties. It is hard to believe with all the food regulations manufacturers have to adhere to that some bloke can turn up at the factory with a bag of mushrooms:

"Hey Bob, I found these in the woods, d'you want them?"

"Sure Geoff, bung 'em in!"

I suppose there does need to be some term to distinguish "interesting" mushrooms like ceps and chanterelles from the ordinary boring types like the common white mushroom. However you'd think the best approach to this would be to just name them explicitly. On inspection of the ingredients list on my jar of Loyd Grossman's pasta sauce I note the specific varieties of "wild" mushrooms are not listed - just entered as mushrooms.

Perhaps legally this is one of those things you can get away with as long as 0.001% of the mushrooms contained are actually wild. So perhaps they just get a single dried porcini, hand picked by some guy called Giuseppi from the wooded slopes of a Tuscan hill, and turn it into powder, and then distribute it between a thousand jars.

Anyway, I think I have made my point. Stop calling mushrooms wild unless you really mean it.

No,no. What they mean by "Wild" mushrooms is actually their emotional state.

After all, there they were slowly growing, producing spores they could perhaps one day see grow to adults; sitting on lovely poo alongside their friends in some big, dark barn... And then along comes a farmer and literally drags them out of the ground by their heads!!! "Wild" ??? They are absolutely "Livid"!!!!

Posted by Nigel at 2007/05/16 09:40:01.

Nice!

I imagine the Latin name for this type of fungi would be "boletus irratus".

Posted by John at 2007/05/16 09:42:32.

how about (in extremely small text) 0.001% of the mushrooms may be poisonous.

Also theres money to be made here.

"Johns Wild Vegetarian Mushrooms" every mushroom carefully collected and nurtured from pristine woodland, ( contains 0.001% wild mushroom obtained from a bit a land in the middle of a wooded field)

Posted by Kev at 2007/05/16 21:02:26.

I saw bright pink mushrooms on Derby Market today, in a mixed box. Didn't allege "wild". Of course, being me, I was more interested to see if they would produce a dye than actually eating them. Didn't buy them in the end as the rest of the box, at least three more types were rather white.

Posted by John's Mum at 2007/05/17 16:42:56.

What a great reosucre this text is.

Posted by Jaylynn at 2011/06/22 18:16:34.

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