Hi Samuel,
Thank you so much for your question! There is a lot of fungi that are very good for us. First of all, there are fungi that are used in food processing: yeast used for baking or brewing beer is actually a fungus. It is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae, commonly known as bakers yeast. The name itself does give you a bit of an idea what it is used for: “cerevisiae” means “of beer”. Penicillin, which is one of the most used antibiotics and one you might have been prescribed from your GP before, is produced by a fungus called Penicillium chrysogenum. Some other fungi that belong to the group Penicillium also are used in cheese making for instance on Camembert or Brie cheeses. There is many more fungi that are used for the production and chemicals. They even produce anti-cancer agents and fungi are used to produce echinocandins, which are actually anti fungal compounds. So you can use fungi to treat fungi! That is mind boggling, isn’t it?
I hope that gives you a bit of an idea of fungi that are good for us.
All the best,
Theresa
Theresa’s answer is a good one… if you are vegetarian you might even eat Quorn (made from the fungus Fusarium venenatum). And of course, some of the most delicious mushrooms are also fungi
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Donna commented on :
Theresa’s answer is a good one… if you are vegetarian you might even eat Quorn (made from the fungus Fusarium venenatum). And of course, some of the most delicious mushrooms are also fungi
anon-228245 commented on :
That’s really interesting I’ve learnt a lot from your reply Thankyou