Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel, and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast. Welcome.

Nutrition Diva listener Holly wants to know whether mushrooms are a vegetable.

And the short answer is no, but I think we should grant them honorary vegetable status.

Mushrooms are not vegetables because mushrooms are not plants. They are a type of fungi,

a biological kingdom that also includes molds and yeasts. And you know, in some ways, fungi are

actually more similar to animals than to plants, while plants are able to produce their own food

through the process of photosynthesis, which as you should remember from sixth grade science,

involves converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates or energy.

It's really quite miraculous when you think about it.

Fungi and animals, on the other hand, are both dependent on other organisms to provide their nutrition.

So what we call mushrooms are actually only part of the organism, the so-called fruiting bodies

that appear above the ground. Underneath the ground is the misalium, a vast network of fine

thread-like filaments that secrete enzymes, which help break down organic matter in the soil,

and then absorb the nutrients. There is a lot more to say about the ways that fungi interact with

and influence our entire biosphere. It gets pretty freaky, but in the interest of time,

let me pivot back to the part of this story that deals with human nutrition.

So taxonomically speaking, mushrooms are not vegetables. But when we're talking about diet and

nutrition, we play pretty loose with those botanical classifications. Zucchini, tomatoes,

acorn squash, and bell peppers are all technically fruits because they grow from the flower of a plant,

but all of these are commonly referred to as vegetables. Corn is technically a seed,

like wheat, but we consider it to be a vegetable, not a grain. Peanuts are technically legumes,

but nutritionists generally group them with nuts. And that's because when it comes to nutrition,

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