Mushrooms have been consumed for thousands of years as food across the world, and in Asia, there is a long history of mushroom use in Traditional Chinese Medicine. We’re a few (hundred) years late, but medicinal and functional mushrooms are gaining popularity in the West — unfortunately, as the health and wellness industry jumps to roll out mushroom-based product lines, quality standards have been lacking.
And, today, we’re joined by one of the men responsible for bringing medicinal mushrooms to the West: Jeff Chilton!
Jeff is the co-author of a book that has been in my library for well over a decade, The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home, but that only scratches the surface of his resume:
Jeff Chilton studied Ethno-mycology at the University of Washington in the late sixties; worked on a mushroom farm where he cultivated more than two million pounds of mushrooms annually; was involved in the research and development of shiitake, oyster and enoki mushrooms, which resulted in the earliest US fresh shiitake sales in 1978; founded Nammex, a business that introduced medicinal mushrooms to the US nutritional supplement industry; and organized the first organic certification workshop for mushroom production in China.
I can’t thank Jeff enough for all the work he’s done because I absolutely love mushrooms — and on a whole different level than I liked them back in the 70s! I start my day with a cup of java mixed with a teaspoon of medicinal mushrooms, a blend extracts of Reishi, Shiitake, Maitake, Turkey Tail, and Chaga, which are also known as the five defenders.
Why do they get that name? Well, let’s look at the medical benefits of the most popular medicinal mushrooms:
