Food fads seem to come and go faster than we can keep track of.

One of these, which has been growing for about 10 years, is functional mushrooms.

These are mushrooms that are claimed to have non-psychedelic medicinal benefits beyond their

mere nutritional value.

Is this really a thing?

And are those benefits real enough that you should consider climbing aboard the functional

mushroom train?

Well, we're going to find out right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. Do functional mushrooms

function. Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience,

real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real

and what's not.

Today, we're going to have a look at a very profitable food fed, functional mushrooms.

The global functional mushroom market currently stands at about $36 billion and is projected

to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% until it

more than doubles its current size by 2033.

Functional mushrooms, whether they're sold in coffee, energy bars, supplement pills,

or processed into packaged food products, are very big business.

So the rest of us want to know, what are the people buying them hoping to achieve?

The basic definition of a functional mushroom is that it is, A, not psychedelic,

and B, provides some health benefit beyond the nutritional value.

Mushrooms are probably better nutritionally than most people think.

...