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You can\u2019t walk more than a few aisles in the grocery store these days without running into some kind of new mushroom product. Fresh white button mushrooms are increasingly joined by specialty varieties like lion\u2019s mane, maitake or oyster mushrooms. There\u2019s sparkling cordyceps tea and chaga coffee boasting a range of health benefits, mushroom chips and even chocolate bars infused with reishi.<\/p>\n
Mushrooms have been steadily growing in popularity in the US over the last decade, said Eric Davis, a representative of the Mushroom Council. Mushrooms frequently top food trends lists and were even named \u201cingredient of the year\u201d in 2022 by the New York Times. According to the consumer consultancy Circana, grocery store sales of fresh mushrooms have increased by 20% over the past decade, while sales of specialty mushrooms have doubled in the same timeframe. \u201cA few years ago, we were saying \u2018mushrooms are definitely having a moment right now, let\u2019s enjoy it.\u2019 Here we are three or four years later, and it\u2019s still happening,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s behind the craze that\u2019s allowed mushrooms to sustain such momentum?<\/p>\n
Meet the mushroompreneurs<\/strong> \u201cAverage consumption of mushrooms in the country at that point was something like 2lb per person per year,\u201d Carter said. \u201cBut our customers were buying 5lb once a week \u2026 it just showed how much room there is to inject more mushrooms into someone\u2019s diet.\u201d<\/p>\n Just a few years later, Smallhold products are carried in over 1,000 grocery stores across the nation. There, Smallhold has been joined by a variety of brands selling mushrooms to an increasingly mycologically curious American public.<\/p>\n Mushrooms aren\u2019t new to everyone\u2019s palates, of course. Growing up Chinese American, mushrooms were a standard part of Marilyn Yang\u2019s diet, and one that got her made fun of as a kid (China is the world\u2019s leading producer of mushrooms by a long shot). Seeing them take off as an adult has made the food entrepreneur feel like \u201coh, people are finally catching up,\u201d she said. Now, she\u2019s helping spread her lifelong love of mushrooms with Popadelics, the snack company she co-founded, which sells mushroom chips in flavors such as parmesan truffle and Thai chili.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reason that mushrooms can\u2019t be as good of a carrier of flavor as a potato chip or tortilla chip can be,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just about introducing people to different ways that mushrooms can be used.\u201d After launching in spring of 2022, the brand is now stocked in over 600 retail partners nationwide.<\/p>\n A (food) star is born<\/strong> It would be easy to suspect well-funded marketing campaigns from industry lobbying groups might play a role \u2013 think the ubiquitous Got Milk? ads of the 1990s and 2000s, sponsored by the dairy lobby. And the Mushroom Council has certainly tried its best to encourage more mushroom eating. But as Alicia Kennedy points out in her book No Meat Required, sometimes produce becomes popular in a much more organic \u2013 and mysterious \u2013 way.<\/p>\n Take kale, for example, which went from being a garnish caterers used to line food displays to being celebrated in a Beyonc\u00e9 music video and even embraced (if briefly) by the likes of McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n One version of the story of kale\u2019s ascendancy claims that it all came down to the work of one PR person who decided to push kale simply because she liked it. Another version, espoused by Elly Truesdell, a former trend-spotter for Whole Foods and VC who invests in new food brands, goes like this: kale became popular because trend-setting chefs such as Dan Barber, of Blue Hill at Stone Barns fame, started using it. Errol Schweizer, a former grocery merchandiser at Whole Foods, tells a different story: he thinks it all traces back to the 2006 E coli outbreak linked to prepackaged spinach. Kale became an alternate option to fill a sudden void in nutrient-dense leafy greens.<\/p>\n There are at least as many stories to explain why mushrooms seem to be popping up everywhere. From Carter\u2019s perspective, 2020\u2019s lockdowns played a key role in prompting people to experiment with new ingredients in their home cooking. And the way that time period coincided with the success of films such as Fantastic Fungi on Netflix and the growth in medical psilocybin research, increased the public\u2019s interest in mushrooms.<\/p>\n Truesdell also called attention to the growing role that social media platforms are playing in whether a food gains traction or not. \u201cColor, beauty and imagery is a huge part of whether things actually stick, because we now are engaging with foods so visually, and often on a screen,\u201d she said. Coming in an array of otherworldly, visually striking forms, fresh mushrooms are photogenic in a way that gives them an edge in the digital era.<\/p>\n If mushrooms started to take off a few years ago, a number of factors have kept them in the spotlight. The growing interest in foraging and wild foods, in which mushrooms feature prominently \u2013 especially with unusual weather creating \u201conce-in-a-generation shroom booms\u201d in recent years \u2013 may have helped. And pop culture phenomenons such as the TV show The Last of Us have continued to capture the public imagination with fungi-centric storylines.<\/p>\n From Davis\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s not so much that mushrooms are trending as that they fit into the wider food trends, or priorities, emerging for many Americans, including personal and planetary wellbeing They\u2019re a hearty, umami-rich meat substitute. They\u2019re a generous source of vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. And they can grow on waste materials.<\/p>\n No silver bullet<\/strong> \u201cWhen there\u2019s a huge spike in demand, there\u2019s often going to be a level of irresponsibility around how that food gets to the place it needs to go, given how the agriculture system works, and the labor that it relies on in huge volumes,\u201d said Truesdell.<\/p>\n For now, even in spite of mushrooms\u2019 spurt in popularity, Americans are nowhere near eating enough of them to put much real strain on existing systems, said Davis. (Truesdell, who describes food trends moving through four stages \u2013 inception, adoption, proliferation and finally ubiquity \u2013 argues that mushrooms are still only in the first or second stage in the US.) And the fact that the primary culinary varieties are grown indoors on discarded materials such as sawdust sets them apart from crops like quinoa or almonds, which need plenty of water and fertile land to grow.<\/p>\n But for all the good it might do to eat more mushrooms, no ingredient, however healthy or sustainable it may be, will fix the US\u2019s broken food system on its own, Schweizer noted.<\/p>\n \u201cThe trends are cool, and they\u2019ve made some things better,\u201d said Schweizer. \u201cBut in terms of reversing the systemic issues and inequalities that we see in the food system, that has to be done at the policy level, undergirded by public organizing and pressure on the political system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAs co-founder of Smallhold, the best-known provider of specialty mushrooms in the US, Andrew Carter has had a front-row seat to this mushroom moment. Though Smallhold has been growing varieties like blue oyster and lion\u2019s mane in indoor farms since 2017, the company\u2019s founders witnessed an inflection point during the lockdowns in 2020, when they went from selling their produce to restaurants in Brooklyn to selling direct to consumer.<\/p>\n
\nIf you ask five different people how a food becomes part of the zeitgeist, you might get five different answers.<\/p>\n
\nOther food trends offer something of a cautionary tale in treating any one food as a panacea, however. Quinoa, avocados and almond milk have all been hailed as sustainability and health wins, but their sudden rise to prominence has sometimes coincided with a growing number of human rights abuses and water crises in their supply chains.<\/p>\n