Purity - Maggots in Fresh Mushrooms

[TJW.88]

SWIM laid out a number of liberty caps he found out of some tin foil with a fan blowing to start to dry them out... and a few hours later noticed a small maggot/grub crawling on the foil. upon investigation, a number of the mushrooms are homes for these - pretty disgusting, but more importantly, are they lost, or can they still be used?

[Nature Boy]

Are the mushrooms rotten? Perhaps rinsing the mushrooms could rid them of the maggots.

[Evil GIR]

Even if you start to boil the freshly picked mushrooms in a pan of water you will still see maggots and stuff begin to float away, this is just natural and is unavoidable. Its what you get when picking mushrooms in the wild. This is not a sign of rotting musrooms.

[boze]

SWIM has never worried about maggots, he accepts there will be some in the caps. He usually puts his lib caps in a piece of folded paper and leave them on a warm radiator for a few hours. This completely dehydrates everything. He then grinds them into a fine powder using a mortar and pestle and adds them to a nice cup of coffee

His theory is that if there are maggots in the mushroom they are probably host to at least a little bit of psilocybin.

[Coconut]

Flies will attempt to reproduce using mushrooms as inside the caps the larvae will be protected.

It might be disgusting but one should suffer no ill effects as a result of consuming them.

It is doubtful that the maggots are host to any psychoactives. They simply use the mushrooms as shelter.

[Space Coyote]

SWIM was wondering if there are any risks involved in eating fresh, wild Psilocybe semilanceata (Liberty Caps). SWIM has heard of other SWIMMERS finding maggots in their liberty caps during the drying process and was wondering if these maggots are found only in rotten mushrooms and if not, would they pose any health risk to SWIM if he ate them. Another thing that SWIM has been wondering, is it true that if SWIM wants to estimate a fresh dosage that he can simply multiply the dried dosage by ten? For example, would ten grams of fresh liberty caps be equivalent to one dried gram?

[Phungushead]

Maggots are an extremely common occurance with wild shrooms... it doesn't necessarily mean the mushroom is rotten, but the maggoty ones do seem to rot a lot quicker if not dried, so dry them ASAP. Also, maggots tend to multiply more the longer they are kept fresh. It is pretty easy to distinguish rotten shrooms (slimy, stinky, etc) and those should not be eaten.

During the drying process, the mushroom will become impossible for the maggots to tunnel in and eat, so they will come out, starve, and die. Blowing in the gills can help to get them out too.

Ingesting them isn't going to do any harm (other than being kind of disgusting)... and hey, everyone needs extra protein, right?

Bet those maggots are having the time of their slimy little lives too!

Reputation Comments on this post:

damn you know your mushies!

[cra$h]

I'm pretty sure mushies are around 90% water. You can do the math, it's too late, and swim's got a buzz. Of course there's a risk with wild shrooms. Death caps for example. But if it's legit, then there should be no harm. But if there's maggots, there might be other harmful bacteria. (what's the plural for bacteria?) or fungi on the fungi. Just be careful I guess. It's really up to you since we aint got the best possible visual pic.


POST...............1,000!!!!!!!!!!!

[Phungushead]

Yeah, that's the thing - the maggots themselves aren't going to cause a problem; the problem is in all the little turds they leave behind which could potentially cause E-coli (aka food poisoning).

A otherwise healthy-looking shroom with a couple maggots will most likely be okay, but leave nasty, stinky ones...

It's really a call of good judgement, ya know? SWIM personally doesn't eat wormy ones just because of the gross factor, but knows several that have/do without any issues.

Heard somewhere that during the course of a year, the average person eats (unintentionally) 2lbs of bugs... an amount that would fit inside a typical cereal box... Yuck!

Happy 1000th post, cra$h!