Mycelium on grain

In my experience, the vast majority of companies use mycelium based mushrooms. To explain what this means exactly it’s important to understand how mushrooms grow! In a nutshell, mycelium is like the roots of the mushroom, constantly spreading throughout the ground until it decides to grow an actual mushroom. With that being said, grain is what is typically used to grow mycelium in a commercial setting, sometimes substituted for brown rice. This mycelium covered grain is then ground up and put into these mushroom products. As you can see, in capsules such as this, you aren't actually getting the advertised mushroom, you are simply getting the mycelium of that mushroom. To go even further, they don’t even filter out the grain, so more likely you are getting about 75% grain and 25% mushroom mycelium. To paint a bit of a picture for you, if you could buy apples in capsules, this would be equivalent to getting ground up apple tree (just the tree no actual apple) and it being advertised as apples. As you can see by now, mycelium mushrooms aren’t actually mushrooms at all, and if you are taking mushrooms in these forms you are getting little, if any benefits. Pretty crazy, I know.

Fruiting body mushrooms

Fruiting body mushrooms are rarely seen in the realm of mushroom products but it is in fact what we use in all our formulations. To go even further, we use 8:1 fruiting body mushrooms (more on this later). When you see mushroom products that advertise fruiting bodies only, it simply means the only thing that is in your capsule or powder is the mushroom itself. No mycelium, no grain, just pure mushrooms. As mentioned before, we will only use fruiting body mushrooms in our formulations as mycelium based mushrooms are a downright lie to consumers and provide almost no medicinal or any form of benefits whatsoever. To go further, we use 8:1 fruiting body mushrooms. Using lion’s mane as an example, a 1:1 fruiting body lion's mane mushroom would mean for every pound of product you buy, you are simply receiving a pound of lion's mane mushroom. With an 8:1 lion’s mane fruiting body mushroom, the manufacturer used eight pounds of lion’s mane and filtered it down to a single pound. In theory, this would make your mushroom about eight times as medicinally potent compared to simply eating the mushroom itself.

Why do companies use mycelium on grain mushrooms if there is no benefit?

At the end of the day, there is absolutely no excuse to be using mycelium on grain mushrooms. They provide almost no benefits, are mostly just grain, and are essentially false advertising as to what the consumer is actually getting. So if this is the case, why do most companies use them? Well the answer is rather simple, it’s because they are so much cheaper than fruiting body mushrooms. Who would've thought, actual mushrooms cost more than the grains they are grown on… My sarcasm aside, this is actually a huge sham in the mushroom realm and these companies are simply lying to their customers and providing them with no benefits. Even Paul Stamets, one of the main thought leaders in the mushroom industry uses mycelium on grain mushrooms in his own products. Learning this truly made me sad as he obviously knows he is selling garbage to his customers.

So what do we do?

At the end of the day, the choice between fruiting body mushrooms and mycelium on grain mushrooms is simply the choice between consuming an actual mushroom vs what it’s grown in, with a little bit of roots mixed in. With that being said, if you are looking to try medicinal mushrooms make absolutely sure the product is made from fruiting bodies only before buying it or else you are just wasting your money. If you don’t wanna worry about this, we here at Oasis will ONLY use fruiting body mushrooms. Also, if you're looking for single ingredient high quality mushrooms, stay tuned…