Are Mushrooms Good for You? Nutrition, Portions and Safety

Yes, as a food. Mushrooms are low in energy: 100 g of raw white mushrooms gives 1.0 g of protein, 0.7 g of fibre, and copper, selenium, potassium and B vitamins, with no vitamin D unless exposed to UV light. Undercooked shiitake can cause a rash, wild mushrooms can poison, and supplements are a different question.¹

What is in a portion of mushrooms?

The UK food tables (CoFID 2021) have figures for white, oyster and shiitake mushrooms only (no chestnut, portobello, enoki or fresh shiitake entry), per 100 g:¹

N: present, no reliable value; Tr: trace; fibre is the AOAC figure.¹

Mushrooms are a low-energy food: 7 kcal per 100 g raw, 106 kcal fried in oil because they soak up the fat.¹ Raw white mushrooms supply, per 100 g, 40% of the UK reference value for pantothenic acid, 31% for selenium, 28% for copper and 19% for potassium, with biotin, folate, riboflavin and niacin also above the 15% at which a nutrient may carry its authorised wording.^1,2 Those wordings belong to the nutrient, not the mushroom: "Selenium contributes to normal thyroid function", "Copper contributes to normal function of the immune system". No mushroom has an authorised claim of its own, and vitamin B12 is 0.0 in every row, as what vitamin B12 is good for explains.¹

On five a day, the NHS rule is weight: "An adult portion of fruit or vegetables is 80g", and "80g of fresh, canned or frozen fruit and vegetables counts as 1 portion", potatoes and some other starchy foods excepted.^3,4 The NHS examples do not name mushrooms; the UK food tables file them with the vegetables and they are not starchy, so a handful of about 80 g is one portion on that basis.^1,3

Which organ or part of the body are mushrooms good for?

None in particular; look at what the studies measured. Pooling five cohort studies of 601,893 people, those who ate mushrooms had a 6% lower death rate over follow-up (risk ratio 0.94).⁵ In over two million person-years of the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, eating mushrooms five or more times a week was not linked to cardiovascular disease (hazard ratio 1.02), stroke, type 2 diabetes or blood markers of lipids, insulin and inflammation.⁶ In one Japanese cohort of 13,230 people aged 65 and over, those eating mushrooms three or more times a week were diagnosed with dementia 19% less often (hazard ratio 0.81).⁷ All three are observational and none can show the mushrooms were the reason. The feeding trials are small: in a one-year trial, 73 obese adults who swapped red meat for mushrooms within a weight-loss programme lost 3.6% more body weight and had blood pressure 7.9/2.5 mmHg lower than the meat group, a lower-energy-diet effect, not a property of mushrooms.⁸ "Superfood" is a marketing word, not a finding.

Are mushrooms healthier than broccoli or spinach, and are they a complete protein?

"Healthier" depends on what you are short of. Mushrooms are a vegetable-aisle source of selenium, copper and pantothenic acid, plus potassium, riboflavin and folate, but not of iron: 0.21 mg per 100 g against a reference value of 14 mg.^1,2 At 1.0 to 1.6 g per 100 g they are not a protein food, so "complete protein" is a question for protein foods. A mushroom is a fungus, neither plant nor animal: vegetarian and vegan, cooked and counted as a vegetable, never as meat. No trial has compared species, so choose by taste, price and the dish.

Do mushrooms give you vitamin D?

Not as sold: vitamin D is 0.0 µg per 100 g in every mushroom entry in the UK food tables.¹ UV-exposed mushrooms are the exception; the figures are on are mushrooms high in vitamin D, and the rest of the diet on foods highest in vitamin D.

Is it OK to eat mushrooms every day, and how many?

Yes. No upper limit exists for culinary mushrooms. In trials, 47 adults aged 60 and over ate 50 g of maitake baked into bread every day for 18 weeks (one strain improved a cognitive screening score against placebo, another did not; nobody stopped for side effects), and 52 adults ate 5 or 10 g of dried shiitake a day for four weeks.^9,10 "Can I eat ten a day?" is a question of weight, not count: 80 g is a portion. No trial has compared times of day, and no evidence supports any rule about food pairings.

Should you eat mushrooms raw or cooked?

Cooked. Shiitake must be cooked through: in 59 cases of shiitake dermatitis reported to French poison centres between 2014 and 2019, all after raw or undercooked shiitake, an itchy, streaky rash appeared a median of 48 hours after eating and lasted a median of ten days, longer in those who had eaten more; everyone recovered.¹¹ More on can I eat shiitake every day. Cook other mushrooms as you would any vegetable, for taste and digestion.

Can mushrooms be poisonous or cause an allergic reaction?

Wild mushrooms are not covered here: never eat a foraged mushroom you cannot identify with certainty, and this page gives no identification guidance. The NHS poisoning page (reviewed 12 June 2025) lists "certain plants and mushrooms" among common causes and says "Symptoms may take a few hours or days to start", so medical advice is needed quickly if poisoning is possible. It says to call 999 or go to A&E if someone "may have swallowed, touched or breathed in something harmful", and NHS 111 if you are not sure.¹²

Allergy to cultivated mushrooms is rare but documented: one published case describes facial and lip swelling, breathlessness, cough and difficulty swallowing within minutes of eating a mushroom pizza.¹³ Swelling of the face or throat or difficulty breathing after eating is a 999 call. The signs of a true allergy are in the mushroom allergy FAQ on the side-effects page. Mushrooms carry purines, but purine-rich vegetables are not linked to gout; see what foods cause gout. Chaga, sold beside food mushrooms, is not one. One analysed powder held 14.2 g of oxalate per 100 g; three published cases of kidney failure followed months to years of daily chaga powder at roughly 10 g a day or more, one with 500 mg of vitamin C a day; no figure exists for extract powders; people with kidney disease or a history of kidney stones should not take it without medical advice: see can chaga be harmful.

Are mushroom supplements the same as eating mushrooms?

No. A supplement is a dried powder or extract at a stated dose, usually of a species you would rarely cook. The trials, the absence of any authorised UK claim for a mushroom, and label reading are on do mushroom supplements work, a different question. Maitake's trials and cautions are on is maitake safe; snow fungus, the jelly fungus of Chinese dessert soups, has its two small trials on its own page. Children can eat cooked mushrooms like any vegetable; mushroom supplements have no controlled trial in anyone under 18 and are not recommended for children or teenagers.

Frequently asked questions

Is mushroom healthier than chicken or meat?

They do different jobs. By the UK food tables, mushrooms carry 1.0 to 1.6 g of protein per 100 g and 7 to 55 kcal; chicken and red meat are protein foods and bring iron and vitamin B12, which mushrooms lack.¹ Mushrooms bring selenium, copper and pantothenic acid for very few calories. The one-year meat-swap trial lowered weight because the diet held less energy, not because mushrooms outdo meat.⁸

Is there a downside to eating mushrooms?

Minor ones for most people: a lot of absorbed fat if fried, the shiitake rash if undercooked, and a rare true allergy.¹ If you were counting on mushrooms for protein, iron, vitamin B12 or vitamin D, they do not deliver those.

When should you not eat a mushroom?

When it is wild and you cannot identify it with certainty; when it is shiitake and not cooked through; when you have reacted before (ask your GP rather than retrying); and, if the "mushroom" is chaga powder, when you have kidney disease or a history of kidney stones.

Are mushrooms good for your immune system?

No mushroom has an authorised immune claim in the UK; the register refused the wordings put forward for shiitake, maitake and oyster mushrooms. The shiitake trial measured laboratory markers: in 52 young adults eating 5 or 10 g of dried shiitake a day for four weeks, some immune cells multiplied more in laboratory tests, but there was no placebo group and no infections were counted.¹⁰ The only lawful immune wording on this page is the copper sentence quoted above, and it belongs to the nutrient, not to mushrooms.

Sources

1. McCance and Widdowson's Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID), 2021. gov.uk.
2. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex XIII: nutrient reference values. legislation.gov.uk.
3. NHS. 5 A Day portion sizes. Page last reviewed 19 July 2022. nhs.uk.
4. NHS. 5 A Day: what counts? Page last reviewed 9 June 2026. nhs.uk.
5. Ba DM, et al. Prospective study of dietary mushroom intake and risk of mortality: results from continuous NHANES 2003-2014 and a meta-analysis. Nutrition Journal, 2021. PubMed 34548082.
6. Lee DH, et al. Mushroom consumption, biomarkers, and risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes: a prospective cohort study of US women and men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2019. PubMed 31172167.
7. Zhang S, et al. Mushroom consumption and incident dementia in elderly Japanese: the Ohsaki Cohort 2006 Study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2017. PubMed 28295137.
8. Poddar KH, et al. Positive effect of mushrooms substituted for meat on body weight, body composition, and health parameters: a 1-year randomized clinical trial. Appetite, 2013. PubMed 24056209.
9. Jogi EM, et al. Maitake mushroom (Grifola frondosa) enhances cognitive function in healthy older Japanese: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology, 2026. PubMed 42055721.
10. Dai X, et al. Consuming Lentinula edodes (shiitake) mushrooms daily improves human immunity: a randomized dietary intervention in healthy young adults. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 2015. PubMed 25866155.
11. Boels D, et al. Shiitake dermatitis: experience of the Poison Control Centre Network in France from 2014 to 2019. Clinical Toxicology, 2022. PubMed 35404185.
12. NHS. Poisoning. Page last reviewed 12 June 2025. nhs.uk.
13. Cunha IM, et al. Anaphylaxis to Agaricus bisporus ingestion. Einstein (São Paulo), 2020. PubMed 33263677.