Four people have died and three others have required liver transplants after eating the aptly named death cap mushroom that is proliferating in California following a rainy winter.
The California Department of Public Health is urging people to avoid mushroom foraging altogether this year because death cap mushrooms are easily confused with safe, edible varieties.
Since Nov. 18 there have been more than three dozen cases of death cap poisonings reported, including the four deaths and three liver transplants, according to the health department. Many who sought medical attention suffered from rapidly evolving acute liver injury and liver failure. Several patients required admission to an intensive care unit. They have ranged in age from 19 months to 67 years old.
The death cap is one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the world and is part of a small group of mushrooms containing amatoxins, which are highly potent compounds causing 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings globally. They are in city parks and in forests, often under oak trees.
The person I replied to was saying you can taste them to tell if they’re poisonous safely before cooking.
I don’t know if you’re reading someone else’s comment but that kind of misinformation is very, very dangerous so if you take issue with the actual words being used to try to keep people from following bad, dangerous advice. I don’t care.
You are just making statements out of ignorance–or that’s how the writing comes out. You are right in that taste provides no indication if something is going to hurt you or not. I hear lead tastes sweet, as is automobile coolant.
I was picking at your characterization that safe mushrooms exist. If you mean safe to eat, there are relevant specifics to consider, such as what it grew on and how it was preparted.
You offer advice without clarifying things–perhaps you could use the term “known to be safe to eat when cooked wild mushroom”.
Safest advice would be: contact your local mycologist for a 100% accurate guarantee that it is what you think it is.
I get your intentions and am sorry to have caused offence!
I think you’re earnest about getting the terminology right, but that’s very distracting to the broader message, which is avoiding situations where you are harmed by not knowing enough about what you’re eating. It’s counter-productive because it sounds like you’re saying my information is wrong rather than just broad.
For example:
This kind of pedantry is insufferable, I know you don’t mean it to be, but it turns people away from the whole topic. See: Reddit and The Fall of Unidan. You can have the best intentions and miss the train completely because you’re trying to force a conversation to use a specific language when the point of the conversation is very simple and aimed at non-experts in the field.
I know more about guns than I do mushrooms (But I do know quite a bit about both) but if I saw someone say “Don’t point the gun at something you don’t intend to shoot” I wouldn’t attack that and say “YoU MeAn ThE bARReL of tHe Gun…” it would make me sound like a clown, when everyone knows what’s trying to be communicated.
I’m really not trying to attack you here, I’m sure you know more about mushrooms than me, but I know I’m not broadly wrong for giving people advice for staying safe if they know less than either of us.