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Comment by allisdust | Hacker News Reader

I never understood why people don't just eat store bought mushrooms. Why risk liver failure and other serious health complications not to mention countless hours of hospital time over something as trivial as eating wild mushrooms. Why not teach in school explicitly to not eat wild mushrooms and may be teach how to farm safe varieties if someone desperately needs to eat their own picked ones.

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It's trivially easy to avoid toxic species, though. If you put in a tiny amount of effort into learning and limit yourself to thinks without toxic lookalikes (or put in more effort into learning), you are not risking liver failure and hospital time.

The rash of poisonings makes it sound like avoiding toxic species isn’t that trivial.

It is trivial though. Nearly every mushroom death in the US has come from one of two species, and they can be accurately described in minutes.

Nearly all of the deaths come from people who don't know this tiny baseline of information.

I would caution anyone who doesn't know what a death cap or a destroying angel is to avoid wild foraging.

It is trivial, but people who don't even have a trivial level of knowledge of things get themselves in trouble in many domains all the time.

Why do people cook food and not buy it only from restaurants with rigorous health and safety checks in place? Could avoid lot of food poisonings that way.

I'm not sure its comparable ? Cooking food at home would be more hygienic than however rigorously maintained restaurant.

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