I can't stand mushrooms. When did people start eating them, and how did they tell which ones were poisonous?

Question

Why are they so popular?

Answer 1

You poor thing -- you don't know what you're missing!

Actually, there may be some species which you would like -- many taste very different from the common cultivated mushroom (Agaricus). Try for example chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius), which tastes a little of apricots, and in my view is one of the most delicious things there is.

Wild fungi are eaten by many hunter-gatherer cultures, so I think it's safe to say that they have been eaten by us for hundreds of thousands of years -- and very likely by our predecessor species too, which takes it back to several million years. Most need cooking to make them tasty, so perhaps they weren't eaten so much before the discovery of fire (at least 40,000 years, and perhaps as much as 2.5 million).

If someone becomes ill after eating a particular one, that becomes part of the heritage of the culture, and every generation is taught it forever. So the knowledge that a particular plant or fungus is poisonous could be immensely old, if there is sufficient cultural continuity. Knowledge is of course added to much more easily nowadays, when we can write things down and distribute them.

Cultural knowledge can be wrong. I believe that in many African cultures chamaeleons are regarded as highly poisonous, although they are not at all. Presumably no-one was brave enough to prove the cultural knowledge wrong.

There are actually very few deadly fungi. However there are quite a few which are indigestible, or which make you feel ill. Some are poisonous only to some people. I know by personal experiment that I can eat the cloud cap (Clitocybe nebularis) safely, but it makes many people very unwell. It's delicious! The largest group of species is those which are not worth eating, because they are too small, or don't taste nice.

It goes without saying that you should never eat wild fungi unless you are absolutely certain you know what they are. Do NOT use folk-rules such as "it's edible if the cap peels". The only rule is: none of these rules work (one which does have a peeling cap is the death-cap, Amanita phalloides, which is tasty, but deadly). Get a good book, learn the poisonous ones, and get help from someone who knows what they're doing.

Answer 2

If someone died after eating them, then that one was poisonous.