Mycologists have named the three most common causes of mushroom poisoning
The first cases of mushroom poisoning this year have started to be recorded in the Moscow region. So far not fatal, but the active mushroom season is still ahead. Mycologists - specialists who study mushrooms, say that poisoning every year is becoming more and more. Why this happens, tried to understand the correspondent of the "RG".Recently in the hospital near Moscow Bronnitsy got a local resident, who friends persuaded to go for mushrooms. For the first time in his life. "They said they would check my basket. They told me to take only mushrooms with brown caps. At first they really checked, then they said that I was good and collected the right mushrooms," he later told the doctors. The right mushrooms were brought home, fried and eaten for dinner. At night the man was taken away by ambulance with signs of severe toxicological poisoning.
According to the chairman of the Union of Mushroom Growers of Russia, Mikhail Vishnevsky, every year in the country there are up to two thousand fatal poisonings with mushrooms and up to 10 thousand - not fatal. Most often poisoned, of course, inexperienced mushroom hunters who can not distinguish between a green whelk and a pale grebe. But even on the old woman can be bad luck: in second place on the frequency of poisoning amateurs quiet hunting with experience, who decided to try new mushrooms. Closing the top three leaders of this sad rating are mass gatherers - people who take mushrooms for harvesting. They do not enjoy picking, but work, it is important for them to collect as much as possible. And in a hurry, you can and make a mistake.
Mycologist Vladislav Baulin believes that one of the main reasons for the increased frequency of poisoning is the expansion of the time of mushroom picking and their assortment. "It used to be quiet hunting had specific terms - a little in April-May, when the strochki and morels begin, a little in July, when the spikelets appear and, the main period, from August to mid-October", - says Baulin "RG".
And now only for opiates go all year round, experienced forest connoisseurs even in December manage to get them from the snow-covered forest - winter opiates. Umbrella mushrooms used to be mostly kicked on the cap, now they are carefully put in a basket - they have tasted that when properly cooked, the mushroom resembles chicken meat. Orange shivering mushroom used to be not even considered as a mushroom, a piece of bright slime growing on a tree.... Now they take it too, and even, they say, for haute cuisine. Langermania, aka tadpole, aka giant rainmaker, our grandmothers went around the forest in a wide arc, and modern housewives have learned to make steaks from it. "Half of what is brought today from the forest, in the guidebook "Edible mushrooms" and close to no," - states mycologist. Hence the first and main rule of a mushroom hunter: if you are not sure about a particular mushroom, don't take it.
Another cause of poisoning is human intolerance to lectins. "These are proteins that are found in some species of sea otters, mushrooms and rowanberries," explains Mikhail Vishnevsky. It's almost like gluten - one person will eat it and not notice, while another will end up in the hospital. Many people today suffer from some form of food allergy, but lectin intolerance is most often diagnosed in the hospital, where he gets after tasting mushrooms.
To the mushrooms that are better not to eat, now include and pigweed - in them, too, found allergen that can lead a person to a hospital bed. However, Vishnevsky emphasizes - pork is not dangerous for everyone, but only for people predisposed to blood diseases. The problem is that this predisposition in advance no one reveals, and many people like to collect and eat mushrooms. And we somehow considered it normal to take in the forest mushroom, which the neighbor tried at the cum the year before last year and was delighted. By the way, my great-grandmother, to whom all the neighbors brought controversial mushrooms for identification, neither svinushekas, nor ryadovokas, nor govorushki did not collect, and opiata recognized only autumn mushrooms, those that grow on birch trees. Because only this type of opiata even at a quick glance distinguishable from Galerina fringed - deadly poisonous twin of the summer opiata. Galerina among the summer and winter opiate at first glance will not recognize even an experienced mushroom hunter.
And the last cause of poisoning is the craze for microdosing and other newfangled practices of using mushrooms for medicinal purposes. People collect poisonous mushrooms, make tinctures and powders from them and take them for medicinal purposes. A slight shake of the hand when pouring the tincture and the medicine turns into poison. "Self-cooking something from poisonous mushrooms is better not to do. Want to treat mushrooms - buy a ready-made additive in a specialized store, good thing they are now a lot. It may not help you, but it certainly will not harm you," advises Vladislav Baulin.