Want to get slim? Eat mushroom-rich diet

London, UK, December 30: Mushrooms have long been known for their medicinal properties. Now a new research has found that besides being a rich source of Vitamin D, mushrooms could help people shed extra pounds.

The novel study has found that mushrooms are not only a good source of vitamins and minerals but a diet rich in the popular fungus could become a new way to tackle Britain’s obesity problem.

In a diet trial, conducted by leading UK dietician Sarah Schenker, mushrooms showed promise, helping people shed pounds.

Schenker says: “Mushrooms make a fantastic low-density meat substitute and can assist dieters without them having to radically change their eating patterns. Mushrooms are great value for money.”

In the study, a group of volunteers, who instead of meat ate mushrooms in four otherwise identical meals a week as part of a balanced diet, shed almost 6 kg over five weeks, with one losing 9.5 kg. In fact, 10 people, including one man and nine women, aged between 25 and 61, shed a total of 57.6 kg over the course of the trial.

The latest findings follow a research earlier this year, in which 54 volunteers ate up to four different lean ground beef recipes over four days. Led by Dr. Lawrence Cheskin and published in journal Appetite, the study suggested that a mushroom-diet could help in cutting the flab.

Margaret Hill, the 25-year-old mother-of-two from Dagenham, Essex, who took part in the latest diet trial, which was commissioned by the Mushroom Bureau, the marketing body for mushroom growers in the UK, went from 13.6 to 11.13 stone in five weeks.

She said: “I was amazed by my weight loss – it’s the most I have ever managed to lose. I never thought I’d get my body back after I had my kids so I am over the moon. I look and feel fantastic.”

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap, just as store-bought white mushrooms do.

Currently, many species of mushrooms and fungi used in folk medicine for thousands of years are under intense study by ethnobotanists and medical researchers. Maitake, shiitake, chaga, and reishi are prominent among those being researched for their potential anti-cancerdefine, anti-viral, or immunity-enhancing properties.