Mushrooms have Amazing Healing Benefits

Mushrooms are often overlooked in today's daily diet but they are loaded with nutrition and amazing health benefits.

One of the most nutritious mushrooms is the shiitake. (They are on the top left in the photo above). These mushrooms make great meat substitutes. You can eat them on their own sauteed with butter and garlic as a side dish or put them in stir fries and soups.

Shiitake mushrooms have been used medicinally by the Chinese for over 6,000 years. An eight ounce serving (at only 87 calories) will provide you with twenty percent of your daily recommended iron intake, and about ten percent each of Vitamin C, protein and fiber.

Shiitake mushrooms contain lentinan. Lentinan has amazing healing benefits. It boosts the immune system to fight infection or disease. It has been shown to be more effective than prescription drugs in fighting influenza and other viruses. It's also been shown to be effective at destroying cancer cells. And it lowers cholesterol levels in lab animals no matter what kinds of fats they are fed.

Nutrition is still a very young science and it was only just over a year ago that L-ergothioneine, an extremely powerful antioxidant, was discovered in mushrooms:

In research presented at the 2005 American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., an American research team revealed that mushrooms contain higher concentrations L-ergothioneine than either of the two dietary sources previously believed to contain the most: chicken liver and wheat germ.

Testing mushrooms consumed in the U.S., the team found that shiitake, oyster, king oyster and maitake mushrooms contain the highest amounts of ergothioneine, with up to 13 mg in a 3-ounce serving. This equals forty times as much as is found in wheat germ.

Of the most commonly consumed mushrooms, portabellas and criminis have the most L-ergothioneine, followed by white buttons. White buttons, the most popular of all mushrooms consumed in the U.S., contain up to 5 mg per three ounce serving-12 times as much as wheat germ and 4 times more than chicken liver. And more good news, L-ergothioneine is not destroyed when mushrooms are cooked.

So where to get them and how to cook them? You can find dried shiitake in most supermarkets these days. Before cooking, soak them for about half an hour. Then chop them and discard the stem as well as the tough middle part above the stem. I like to sautee them in butter and garlic and then add them to a steamed vegetable such as kale or swiss chard. They are also really good in miso soup.

Check out the just hungry blog for more info about dried mushrooms. The above photo is by Chika.

What is the Healthiest Vegetable?

The healthiest prize for all vegetables goes to swiss chard. Chard is the 'king' of all vegetables. It is also widely available, cheap and very easy to cook.

One cup of cooked chard is only 35 calories. But the wealth of nutrition you can get from this one cup is quite incredible.

Vitamin A
Typically we think of carrots when we think of foods high in Vitamin A. But one cup of cooked chard will give you 109 percent of the daily recommended intake of Vitamin A.

Vitamin C
Normally we think of citrus fruits to get our vitamin C quota. But one cup of chard will supply us with 52% of our daily needs for Vitamin C.

Dietary Fiber
Bran comes to mind when we think of meeting our daily dietary needs for fiber. But one cup of chard provides us with 15 percent of our daily needs for dietary fiber. That's about the same amount as in one heavy-duty bran muffin.

Potassium
Potassium is very important for the nerves. You'd have to eat two bananas (the highest concentrated fruit for potassium) to equal one cup of cooked chard and get 27 percent of your daily requirement for potassium.

Vitamin E
Vitamin E is very important for a healthy sex drive and anti-aging benefits. Chard is one of the few vegetables with significant Vitamin E. It provides 16 percent of our daily requirement.

Calcium
We usually think of milk when we're concerned about getting adequate calcium. But swiss chard makes a good substitute. One cup of chard has about 35% of the calcium (and only one quarter of the calories) as one cup of 2% milk.

To see more about the outstanding health benefits of chard, check out the best source of non-profit nutritional information online; the WHFoods site. They provide an impressive wealth of information about the world's healthiest foods.

The photos shown here are by rappy and Mom the Barbarian at Flickr.

Chard is part of a group of vegetables known as 'greens'. Greens include chard, kale and collard greens and these three vegetables are almost equal in their tremendous health benefits.

Forget about counting calories and see more about how eating vegetables is a great way to lose weight by actually eating more food instead of less.

Chard is also really easy to cook. See a quick recipe here.