Functional Mushrooms

Abstract

Higher fungi or mushrooms have been harvested and consumed by humans for thousands of years due to their nutritional and medicinal qualities. Currently, mushrooms are consumed all over the world for their excellent flavour and texture, although there is little known about their great potential as a functional food. For this reason, the main objective of this work was to identify the functional properties of wild and cultivated mushrooms and their bioactive or pharmacological characteristics that justify their use as functional foods. The information was obtained from various databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scielo, among others, as well as external books. It was found that there are plenty of edible mushrooms containing compounds such as β-glucans or polysaccharide-protein complexes which are responsible for functional activities such as antitumour, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, etc. Eighty two scientific articles were reviewed and it was concluded that only 4 fungi have most of the functional properties described above. Two of them belong to the genus Agaricus, Agaricus bisporus and Agaricus blazei (mushrooms) and the other two are Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi) and Lentinula edodes (Shiitake).