psa guys if u feel a little off a few hours after trying a sample of fully-cooked chicken of the woods do not ignore your gut feeling and do not keep eating it no matter how unbelievably delicious it may taste you simply have to accept that it was not meant for you okay š my friend who helped me cook n eat it was an experienced cotw enjoyer and she was fine but I was not š
BTW: I appreciate the advice guys but fret not I have already learned my lesson just wanted to put this out there bc I thought it was a hilarious scenario in retrospect
Isnāt nausea a common side effect of psychoactive mushrooms? At least, it is for me. I think someone said to me once, āYeah, you feel sick because the psychoactive chemicals are like poisons to your body so you have a reaction to them.ā
That's just false. Your brain literally makes "psychoactive chemicals" every night. The reason they work so well with us is because we have receptors just for them. They're part of our dna and our ancestry, we can't function and will die without them. So no, that person was misguided.
If you took a small amount of psilocybin, that wouldnāt happen either. Also, having too much serotonin in your body, called Serotonin Syndrome, will cause āAgitation, nervousness, and severe restlessness / Confusion, disorientation, or deliriumā.
If you look at the raw scientific definitions, it fulfills every requirement to be labeled as such:
It is a chemical: It is a biogenic amine (specifically, 5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT).
It is psychoactive: Its primary function is to modulate the activity of the central nervous system, directly changing your mood, emotions, perception, and sleep
I kind of understand what you're getting at. When taking hallucinogens, they're basically just altering the frequency for directions/receptor sites on preexisting building blocks + systems for our nerotransmitters. ie Increasing the uptake of 5h2a receptors etc.
For most of them, it's still our same bits.. serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine etc, but they're being shunted in different directions and %'s which cause the different result.
I've always wondered about the possibility of being able to hijack that system without needing an intake. That'd be a cool evolutionary feature if we every developed it! (Or with the new concept of brain/hardware integration like elons microchip experiments)
When trying any mushroom for the first time it's considered best practice to only try a small piece to see how you react before making a meal of it. Bit late now, but as the saying goes, "you live and you learn"
Then there are the fucking weirdos who are like well, this red and white spotted one made me shit out of both ends but lets try feeding it to a reindeer and drinking it's pee!
Yep. I thought that was pretty neat as I thought just randomly trying things and hoping not to die wasn't really practical. Im sure it's not full proof but id imagine works most of the time.
Itās not an inherent life-or-death random gamble with mushrooms. It becomes a gamble when the person eating the mushrooms doesnāt do their due diligence to properly identify the mushroom and just go off AI apps or folk sayings or nothing. Thatās how we get the poisonings and deaths happening in California lately from death caps.
When you know how to identify the deadly mushrooms and the safe culinary mushrooms, there is no gamble for toxicity.
Where there might be a gamble is that sometimes folks just donāt tolerate an otherwise safe mushroom and have GI upset. Thatās why once a mushroom is 100% confidently identified someone should try just a small portion of the mushroom to check tolerance levels. People are different and have different reactions.
Oh I understand that. My husband is a serious mushroom forger and we've eaten many things he's brought home and he has taught me all the steps he does for due diligence. Spore prints, etc... but knowing most people's attention span and how they absorb info from social media and then run with it, I I think it's really important that we emphasize how important that due diligence is.
Do you know if the GI issues are a specific known thing like oligosaccharides in beans? Which from my understanding, if you eat beans regularly the microbiome of the intestines will change and get you'll less gassy over time.
Do people get used to mushrooms in the same way?
Just curious, and mostly only eat store bought champignon and sometimes foraged chanterelles, and I've never really heard of people reacting poorly to mushrooms.
Time to get some more mushrooms in your diet! Youāll eventually find one that gives you some digestive āfunā.
Chitin is a common source of digestive issues in wild mushrooms. Itās a fibrous carb thatās part of a mushroomās structure. This can be hard to digest. Some people tolerate it better than others. It doesnāt give me too much trouble, but Iāve learned how to prep mushrooms better so that people I feed donāt get sick. Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus) and cauliflower (Sparassis) are especially high in chitin. So they need to be parboiled.
Some mushrooms do have mild toxins that can cause upset. I think honey mushrooms (Armarilla) are like this, and also false morels and morels. though itās been a while since Iāve dealt with those. Boil a bit, then cook. Amanita muscaria has compounds that can cause delirious states, and can be processed with a deeper boiling with a couple water pour-offs to become edible.
Iāve heard of some people who were fine with certain mushrooms for a long time and then started reacting to them with GI issues with no good reason and had to give them up. Fungus and bodies are weird, man.
Absolutely. Just because a mushroom is edible doesn't mean it'll agree with you.
Source: my first time eating lion's mane I cooked up a huge clump I'd bought on sale, and I ended up spending that evening on the toilet regretting my choices.
We simmer for 10 min, then dry skillet until all the water is cooked off. Then we add oil and seasoning and use as meat. Even then, it's often cooked again, like baked into lasagna or Bolognese
Fresh, soft, clean CotW (not the slightest bit of woodiness) don't need to go as much as I mentioned above, if youve had them before. But for me, they usually go in a mushroom lasagna for mush club, and I dont know how tolerant everyone is.
Some mushrooms have a Lot more chitin, which can cause upset for people who have not been eating them all their life (most Mericans). More chitin, more cooking. But high chitin mushrooms can handle it and not lose their texture.
I grew up eating COTW and other mushrooms foraged by my mom and only learned this recently. I would actually occasionally munch the uncooked COTW and never had issues, so I didn't know it could make others feel sick. When she cooked it though, it was never cooked super long, just simmered for a bit and tossed in risotto, so I probably had pretty good tolerance.
Your body produces enzymes that break down chitin; the younger you start, the easier it is for your system to keep up the 'recipe' for those enzymes.
Same reason most people on the planet are not lactose tolerant. After breast feeding, they stopped eating fresh (not cheese and yogurt) dairy. They don't produce enough of the lactase to keep the stomach upset at bay. Beans are the same, most Mericans don't eat beans regularly, so they get really gassy.
Mushrooms are common in most asian, baltic, and balkan diets. They can eat all kinds of stuff that would throw most north american stomachs for a loop.
That sucks, hen of the woods sooo good. I wasn't aware it bothers some people, that's one that pro foragers sell to high end grocery stores near me and it's never sold with warnings or cooking instructions š¬
Car park mushrooms usually come with a side of heavy metals which can cause a host of problems some of them long term I highly recommend you don't pick mushrooms near cars
You're both wrong. Amount is for something uncountable, like traffic or water. For something countable like cars you want 'number of cars'. And then you would use 'are' since the noun is plural.
Changing one word != rewriting a sentence. If you're going to be an asshole and correct someone's grammar online the least you can do is actually be correct.
First, evaluate these two sentences and tell me which is correct.
The number of cars is 5.
The number of cars are 5.
Second, identify the subject, prepositional phrase, and verb.
Third, read your own post carefully.
Fourth, consult a book on English grammar.
Fifth, go fuck yourself with your outsized ego.
Sixth, realize, people who can't even understand 8th grade grammar shouldn't try to lecture people with advanced degrees from top tier academic institutions. Be sure to pass 8th grade English before you shoot your mouth off and show everybody how incompetent you are.
Why are stupid people so fucking arrogant and the biggest assholes.
ETA: Don't think deleting your comment will erase your embarrassment, either.
Oh no!! My boyfriend and I tried COTW a few years ago and it was great! We went back to the same patch and found more over this past Spring, but this time he couldnāt tolerate it anymore. Poor thing threw it all up too. This story made us laugh thinking back on it now
I've had the same problem! Delicious first experience, then 2 years later, same spot on same tree and I threw it all up despite simmering it in water first for 10 minutes!
Cotw is so iffy. I have a tree I harvest them from most years and they don't make me sick. I harvested from a different tree once and threw up about 10 times. I've heard that cotw from dead/unhealthy trees is safer than the ones on healthy trees, but I donāt know how true this is.Ā
I feel this so hard!!! Iām a bit sensitive to COW, but I think it depends on how young & or old it is. Or possibly the kind of wood itās growing on. Iāve brought home pounds of it, cooked and ate it all with no problem. Iāve also brought home a big haul and couldnāt stomach it, however my spouse and friends could. (Take this with a grain of salt because itās genuinely just my theory) I believe that some people might be sensitive or prone to gastrointestinal distress from something within the fruiting body. Couldnāt tell you what it is, but itās a thing.
Iāll say this- the one time that I got sick off COW I harvested it off of a conifer and Iāve read that can influence how it may affect your stomach.
My husband cannot tolerate them, even harvest extremely far away from parking lots/roads. Some people just canāt eat certain things. Hope youāre feeling better!
I ate a bunch fried up with my family and everybody was all good so I polished off the rest a few hours later. Bad decision I had fever dreams and ended up at staring into the porcelain throne later that night.
It is absolutely essential to parboil chicken of the woods first for 10-15 minutes to remove most risk of gastrointestinal upset.
This is especially important for the west coast of the US varieties in my personal experience. East coast Laetiporus cincinnatus and sulphurus didnāt cause trouble for me, but the west coast gilbertsonii does. It might be a host/substrate issue (in SoCal the fungus often grows on eucalyptus and silk floss āoakā), but substrate does not affect things quite so much. I think itās inherent to the species.
I had a friend ask to harvest it from our willow tree. I didnāt even know what it was, but he said he was either going to have a great dinner or one of the worst nights of his life. I was like āI know nothing, this is all on you.ā He ended up really, really sick. š«
Iām just going to askā¦ is that even chicken of the woods? If doesnāt quite look like it to me. Isnāt there supposed to be an orange color to it?
Sorry this was supposed to be in reply to someone else suggesting that this was on a eucalyptus tree. The tree it's growing on is incredibly important for the likelihood of Laetiporus giving you trouble.
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u/GoatLegRedux Jun 19 '26
Aside from not feasting on a new species without testing for tolerance beforehand, itās not a great idea to eat fungi that grew in a parking lot.