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The importance of controlled production in Mycotherapy.
In the world of food supplements, quality is not a topic taken lightly; it is strictly regulated in order to ensure traceability and guarantee hygiene and food safety. A certain number of European directives supplemented by national transpositions govern the way in which companies ensure the quality of their products and raw materials.
In the field of Mycotherapy, certain characteristics specific to mushrooms and their presentation in food supplements require the utmost vigilance in order to protect the consumer from all risks. What are the reasons for this? This is what we will see in this article.
Mushrooms: the king of bio-accumulators
Mushrooms are what we call bio-accumulators, i.e. they have the ability to concentrate components present in their environment. They can absorb various minerals, including essential and non-essential minerals from substrates but also various pollutants.
This ability makes fungi particularly interesting for work on the decontamination of hydrocarbons, heavy metals or radioactive elements present in an environment. On the other hand, this formidable property, also known as mycoremediation, also makes it vulnerable to the pollution present in its direct environment.
Research has shown that fungi have the ability to accumulate heavy metals in high concentrations, such as mercury, lead, cadmium or arsenic. In fact, most elements can be bio-accumulated by fungi, especially from soil and substrates.
Substrate and heavy metals
Mirroring this property of accumulation is the way mushrooms are cultivated on an industrial scale . While in nature, mushrooms will take advantage of the weakness of a tree to thrive, on an industrial scale, they can be cultivated on a wide range of substrates such as sawdust, rice straw , wheat straw among other agricultural biomass.
The majority of mushrooms used in food supplements are so-called “white rot”. This term refers to the metabolism of fungi, which develop by breaking down lignin. In nature, these fungi will take advantage of the weakness of a tree whose bark is made up of this lignin to thrive. On an industrial scale, they can be grown on a wide range of substrates containing lignin, such as sawdust, rice straw, wheat straw and other agricultural biomass.
It is, therefore, easy to understand that human activities (industrial activity, pesticides, chemical fertilisers, etc.) will cause pollution of the environment on which the mushroom substrate depends: water pollution, absorption by trees, cereals, etc. These heavy metals accumulated in the background are found in our mushrooms for food use.
Potential risks in Mycotherapy
Mushrooms are then used fresh, dried for food purposes or concentrated for nutraceutical use. In the latter case, we are of course talking about mushrooms, but in the form of extracts. In other words, the extract provides a significant amount of bioactive molecules from the mushrooms.
Thus, to provide a significant amount of bioactive molecules, manufacturers must use a significant amount of mushrooms. At Hifas da Terra, an average of 150 kilos of fresh Reishi mushrooms are needed to make 1 kilo of a standardised concentrated extract. During the process, the bioactive molecules are concentrated by a factor of 10 during the dehydration of the mushrooms and by another factor of 10 during the extraction.
However, the concentration is not limited to the molecules of interest. For example, if heavy metal contamination was not detected, the contaminant would be 100 times more concentrated in the finished product! Does this mean that there is a risk to human health? Unfortunately, yes, research teams analysing mushrooms are unanimously calling on the authorities to take additional measures to monitor, control and ultimately reduce the concentrations of toxic heavy metals in a wide variety of mushrooms.
Hifas: your trusted partner
Because of the toxicity of the substances tested, their presence in food products such as mushrooms is undesirable. To avoid risks, it is necessary to buy from trusted players. The Hifas da Terra laboratory, an expert in Mycotherapy for over 20 years, has developed its own quality system to ensure the impeccable quality of its products.
In practice, we check the safety, purity, and concentration of active biomolecules and confirmation of the stability of the final product. This includes microbiological, pesticide, heavy metal and gluten analyses. Our analyses guarantee the total absence of 400 pesticides and heavy metals in each production batch and final product.
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