Mushrooms Give Needed Nutrients

Fresh mushrooms provide more than color, texture and flavor when added to a dish.

A 3.5-ounce portion (about 1-1/2 cups) of raw Agaricus bisporus, the common cultivated mushroom sold in supermarkets, supplies 25 percent of an adult’s daily niacin needs, more than 10 percent of the iron needs, more potassium than an orange, and some fiber and protein, yet only 25 calories and no fat or sodium, reports the University of California at Berkeley Wellness Letter.

But the newsletter notes a couple of caveats. Canned mushrooms are less nutritious and are loaded with sodium, and sometimes butter.

And if you eat mushrooms often, eat them cooked, not raw. Raw mushrooms contain potentially toxic substances called hydrazines, some of which have been shown, in large doses, to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

Heat destroys many hydrazines, including the most harmful types. Given the small amounts of raw mushrooms that most people eat, however, they need not fret about hydrazines, indicates the newsletter.