"Mushrooms are also very nutritious as food because they contain all the essential amino acids and are an excellent source of vitamins. Evidence suggests that exotic mushrooms such as the shiitake, enoke and oyster varieties, which are used in many modern recipes have major dietary benefits. But while the large flat mushroom and the button variety found in most shops are highly nutritious, there is no documented evidence that they have the exotic mushroom's special medicinal properties."

Medicinal mushrooms taken as powdered concentrates or extracts in hot water are believed to enhance the immune responses of the body and help overcome disease. And Prof. Smith says that many show cholestrol lowering ability and may have importance in cardio-vascular diseases.

A survey conducted over 14 years among Japanese mushroom workers in the Nagano Prefecture implied that a regular diet of edible medicinal mushrooms was associated with a lower death rate from cancer than of other people in the Prefecture.

The average cancer death rate in the Prefecture was one in 600. But the rate dropped to one in 1000 among farmers who produced edible mushrooms.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine as treatments for a wide range of ailments document more than 100 species of mushroom. And Japanese, Korean and Chinese pharmaceutical companies already manufacture many mushroom-derived medicinal products.

Mushrooms have long been valued as tasty, nutritious food by different societies throughout the world. To the ancient Romans they were the "food of the Gods" resulting from bolts of lightning thrown to the earth by Jupiter during thunder storms; the Egyptians considered them as "a gift from the God Osiris" while the Chinese viewed them as "the elixir of life.."