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Comment by kevinmchugh | Hacker News Reader

Foraging is a very cool hobby that I'd like to get into some day, but I'm aware of the potential for it to go wrong. My understanding is that in many places, you cannot determine safe mushrooms from dangerous ones using reference photos, they're just too similar and you need live expertise. What's safe and what's dangerous is also very localized.

I worry that social media will cause people to think they can forage safely and cause this kind of thing to happen.

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As a beginner, I found it helpful to

- get a regional guidebook

- attend a mycology society foray

You can start with mushrooms that have no poisonous look-alikes, and gradually build confidence in your identification skills.

I do see a lot of troubling Facebook posts asking if a big heap of different mushrooms are edible.

You do have to put in some work to be able to identify a lot of different species. As a bonus though, I've leave a lot about trees and natural systems in general.

Avoid foraging. That will remove a whole class of unnecessary hazard. There is near zero benefits in foraging. Any nutrients can easily be gained from modern processed food and supplements. The cost savings in foraging cannot be justify with death or hospitalization. In fact the time wasted foraging can easily earn hundreds of dollars to but more expensive organic food. If it is for apocalypse scenario, learning to be weapon expert have way higher retur s than be a greatest foragers. Unless it is purely for thrill x factor seekers? Then dying is necessary to induce the excitement of knowing one has probability of dying from foraging.

The benefit is that wild mushrooms taste much better than store bought.

You live in your world, but others live in their worlds. It _feels_ like you have a strong opinion about something that you don't have much experience from.

Foraging can be a fun and addictive hobby. Many people learn foraging from their parents and can very safely forage for mushrooms/berries/plants that they identify. It is not (just) about optimizing for nutrients, supplements, costs, apocalypses, whatever. People do stuff for other reasons as well; the joy of finding stuff can be addictive, walking in nature is likely good for you, walking overall is definitely good for you, eating food provided by yourself can give a warm and cozy feeling, and so on.

"Time wasted foraging can easily earn hundreds of dollars", dunno what consultant bubble you live in, but that is not the case for most of the world. People can not automatically just go convert time to money, not that many would even want to. Foraging can be a lot more rewarding than grinding away in some meaningless uber-for-whatever-gig-work.

Also, it seems for example going to earn extra money from Uber etc kills more people than mushrooms in the US (... where I am assuming you are from).

> In the United States, mushroom poisoning kills an average of about 3 people a year. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning

> at least 50 gig drivers for companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash had been killed while on the job in the United States [between 2017-2022] > https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/business/uber-lyft-driver...

Correct, photos are not adequate when trying to identify a mushroom yourself for the first time (when intending consumption). You need to do things such as spore-prints [1]. It is also strongly advised to go out into the field with those who are already experienced and have them teach you to identify, and not to be "self-taught".

Your local mycological society would be more than happy to educate you.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_print

Some mushrooms require microscopic examination of spite shape to distinguish between possibilities and edible varieties.

It's best to find safe species in your region and learn to distinguish them and their look alikes by forwarding with a very knowledgeable and experienced mycologist.

The other reality is that in most regions there's only a handful of truly dangerous fungus groups with look-alikes that, while edible, are not particularly choice. And the really delicious fungus often have look alikes that are not delicious and may cause GI issues, but wont kill you.

So while all of this should come with a warning to talk with others and do research, it's not impossible to learn what's edible and enjoy foraging. The internet is great at making us afraid of the outdoors. But you just need to take a few precautions if you do eat fungus such as picking one person in your group with a solid GI system to eat a tiny bit and wait 24-48 hours. If they're good, make a note in your journal, take some detailed photos and try eating it again.

Some of the best eating I've ever done was sauteed butter-footed boletes in an omelet.

Maybe this is regional but all these comments seem way overblown. Just learn to spot death caps and if you're not sure, avoid mushrooms with gills completely and pick only ones with the spongy undersides like summer caps. I've eaten foraged mushrooms hundreds of times throughout my life based on only my grandmother's description of what I should and shouldn't pick.

The ratio of edible:lookalike-and-very-poisonous is regional and varies widely. Would be a fun dataset to visualize.

Anecdotally, I've heard that northern Europe is a relatively "safe" place (i.e. a high score on that ratio) and that the U.S. is, in general, more "dangerous". No firsthand experience to make a claim on the subject, though.

You leaned what was safe from someone who'd been doing it for a long time. You had the kind of live expertise that's necessary to be safe.

Mushrooms are very forgiving of spores from other mushrooms and easily include them into their structures. So much so that they are considered promiscuous. No book will help you with this in the emergency room. Why take a chance? Go to the gricery store and have a comfortable dinner. And, please keep this in mind: the President of the Boston mycology club died of mushroom poisoning, and he was surounded by "mushroom experts".

> And, please keep this in mind: the President of the Boston mycology club died of mushroom poisoning, and he was surounded by "mushroom experts".

Do you have a link for that? My web searches brought up 0 hits for this.

If microscopic spores from poisonous mushrooms can render edible mushrooms deadly, then how can you trust even grocery store mushrooms? They aren't grown in sealed semiconductor fab cleanrooms.

I've only heard of look-alike mushroom deaths, never a death caused by an ostensibly safe species of mushroom that was being promiscuous with deadly spores. Can you substantiate this threat?

Social media can be really helpful or really dangerous. Some groups are strict and full of mycologists. Others are full of people with dangerous ideas and wrong identifications.

A safe way is to start out with a modern regional book which has a list of similar mushrooms and updated view on toxicity. A good book will also tell you which mushrooms are not considered safe to pick because they are impossible or very hard to tell apart from poisonous ones with the naked eye, or when they are too similar but both are fine to eat.

Then you go out to find both the edible mushroom and as many as possible of the similar ones. One or two mushrooms each time. Then when you are completely sure what you are picking you can start eating it and move on to a new delicious mushroom to eat.

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