Mushrooms are a Functional Food That Assist Diets, Improve Health and Influence Diseases
Scientific evidence supports the view that diet controls and modulates many functions of the human body and accordingly, participates in the maintenance of the state of good health or homeostasis.
Arising from this awareness of the relationship between diet and disease has evolved the concept of functional foods and the development of functional food science. Foods as medicine underpin the paradigm of functional foods. The primary objectives of functional food science are to maintain good health, improve homeostasis and to create the conditions for disease reduction. It is seen to be quite distinct from the medical and pharmaceutical sciences where the objectives are mainly to cure or control diseases.
Certain species of mushrooms have long been valued as highly flavorful and nutritional foods by many societies. In the Orient, there has long been the recognition that certain edible and non-edible mushrooms can have profound health benefits. When used as tonics the medicinal mushrooms are consumed whole or preferably as concentrated extracts and act as dietary supplements. A limited number of highly purified compounds derived from certain medicinal mushrooms are now being used in the Orient and the US as pharmaceutical grade products in medicine - especially, but not exclusively, for cancer treatment.
