[alecst]

Arora's remarks can be applied to any new food, not just mushrooms. You could have an allergic reaction to anything.

I'm sort of in the middle on the article. The chicken of the woods pictured is clearly old and woody -- you wouldn't want to pick it. Small amanitas can look like puffballs, so you cut them in half if you're unsure. And the article is not a complete guide -- you'd need a little bit of supplementary info (in my opinion) to correctly nail the oysters and the king bolete, but:

Even if someone just used these pictures and description as a guide, they're not going to die -- barring some kind of freak reaction, the worst that'll happen is they'll get it a (rare) tummyache. It has happened to me maybe twice in my 10 years of foraging and it was hardly the riskiest thing I've done with my body.

That's what the article means by "safest". They're not saying "perfectly safe" but "if you're going to start, start with these, the risk is the lowest." I think you're kind of overreacting.

Then again, I could be underestimating the incompetence of the average person.

About me: I pick and eat mushrooms all the time all over the world, and sometimes sell them to restaurants.

[accumulator]

Arora's remarks can be applied to any new food, not just mushrooms. You could have an allergic reaction to anything.

Of course, but unfortunately many articles like this one fail to add a note like this to their disclaimers. It's easy to forget during and after the excitement of a mushroom hunt.

I think you're kind of overreacting.

I probably wouldn't have posted a reply if I didn't make the same mistake myself years ago. In my first five years of foraging I was less careful than I was after the incident I mentioned. I have never misidentified any mushroom I've ever consumed and have eaten many dozens of species. However, after getting very ill that one time (violent vomiting and diarrhea) I have become a lot more cautious when consuming new wild mushrooms (heeding to Arora's advice to try small amounts first). In light of my personal experience I found the article to be a bit light on words of caution, especially for novices.

[alecst]

Fair, it's good to have other perspectives.

[loki49152]

"I think you're kind of overreacting"

There is no such thing as "overreacting" with foraged mushrooms. The bar for "competent" identification is far too high, and the downside of being not-quite-competent-enough includes spending 72 hours knowing that you and your friends are going to die with no hope of a cure.

[alecst]

I know strong opinions tend to be popular online, but I hope comments like this don't discourage people from learning and going out there. The books and internet are more than enough to stay safe.

[throwaway984393]

This is one of the times people need to be discouraged. They should know they're risking their lives if they get into foraging, specifically because they can be easily fooled into thinking it's safe.

As a random aside, a crap-ton of flowers are toxic. Flowers. If somebody hadn't told me that, I'd be eating random ones I find on hikes, because I heard of edible flowers and for some dumb reason I thought they all were.

[alecst]

It's true. It wasn't mushrooms that almost killed me, but what I thought was a carrot. It was poison hemlock. You really can die out there.

It depends on the intentions of the site. If the author is advertising it as a complete guide, then I agree with you: it's incomplete as a guide. If he's advertising it as a starting point -- start with these mushrooms which have a very low risk of harm -- then it's fine in my view.

[accumulator]

fwiw the intention of my criticism of the article wasn't to discourage people from learning about and appreciating fungi. My issue with this article is that it simplifies things too much to the point of harm.

[cortesoft]

> Arora's remarks can be applied to any new food, not just mushrooms

Sure, but if I buy food from a store or a farmers market, I can at least assume the food was sourced properly, and they aren’t mushrooms that grew on something bad.

[hinkley]

One of the advantages of growing instead of hunting is that you can harvest the first flush, stuff it in a bag in the fridge and then come back a couple days later to check that the full sized mushrooms look right. King stropharia is pretty distinct when it’s old, but you eat before the gills fully open.

[vidarh]

I think the problem is not stupidity so much that it says too little about which factors matters for identification.

If you pay attention to everything in the article you're probably fine. But if your eyes glaze over and you latch on to a couple of the things mentioned for a given mushroom, less so.