Five mushrooms turn up on almost every functional label sold in India. This page describes what each one is, what compound it is known for, and exactly what our laboratory found in the batch you would receive.
It makes no claims about what any of them do in a person. Not one.
What "Functional" Means
Nothing, legally. "Functional mushroom" is a marketing category, like "superfood" and like "adaptogen", a word we took apart separately.
What the five have in common is real and checkable. They are fungi, not plants. Their cell walls contain beta-glucans. They have long documented histories in East Asian and Himalayan food and wellness practice. And they are not eaten for calories.
Everything past that is chemistry, tradition, or a claim. We deal in the first two.
1. Lion's Mane
Lion's Mane
Hericium erinaceus · Yamabushitake · Hou tou gu
A solid white cushion hung with soft spines one to four centimetres long, growing on hardwood. It looks like a frozen waterfall. It is eaten as food across Japan and China, seared, where it takes on the texture of crab.
Erinacines are not in it. They occur in the mycelium, not the mushroom. Any fruiting-body extract advertising erinacines is wrong about one of those two things.
2. Cordyceps Militaris
Cordyceps Militaris
Cordyceps militaris
A bright orange, club-shaped fungus. In the wild it colonises moth pupae. It is cultivated on a controlled substrate, which is what makes it the only cordyceps most people will ever afford. Its wild Himalayan cousin, Keeda Jadi, cannot be farmed at all.
Beta-glucans were not measured on this batch, so we print no figure for them. It is the only honest thing to do with a number that does not exist.
3. Reishi
Reishi
Ganoderma lucidum · Lingzhi · Yeongji
A glossy, red-brown, kidney-shaped shelf fungus that grows on hardwood. It looks varnished even when bone dry, and it is far too woody and bitter to eat. In India, more people search ganoderma than search reishi, by roughly fifteen to one.
Ganoderic acids are alcohol-soluble. Hot water alone does not pull them out, which is why a water-only Reishi cannot carry a meaningful triterpene figure, whatever the pack says.
4. Chaga
Chaga
Inonotus obliquus
A black, charcoal-crusted mass on birch, amber inside. It is not a mushroom. It is a sterile sclerotium, made largely of digested birch, and it makes no spores at all.
We disclose glucans ≥ 12.50% and polysaccharides ≥ 17.38% for Chaga, per batch. The figure is low because Chaga is a sclerotium of fungal tissue and digested birch, not a fruiting body. That is biology, not quality. Several competitors publish large numbers. A number without a certificate behind it is a decoration.
5. Turkey Tail
Turkey Tail
Trametes versicolor · Yun zhi
Thin, layered fans on dead hardwood, banded in browns, creams, greys and improbable blues. It is a white-rot fungus, one of the organisms that learned to digest lignin, and it is found on every continent except Antarctica.
Hot water only, and deliberately. The compounds that define Turkey Tail are water-soluble. Dual-extracting it would add cost and remove nothing worth having. A brand that dual-extracts every species identically has not thought about the chemistry.
All Five, Side by Side
| Species | Marquee compound | Our figure, per batch | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lion's Mane | Hericenones | Beta-D-glucans ≥ 26.20% | Dual |
| Cordyceps militaris | Cordycepin | Cordycepin ≥ 0.35% | Dual |
| Reishi | Triterpenes | Triterpenes ≥ 6.13% | 15:1 dual |
| Chaga | Betulin | Glucans ≥ 12.50% | 8:1 dual |
| Turkey Tail | Beta-glucans | Glucans ≥ 47.53% | 12:1 hot water |
Four rows carry a number. One does not. That row is the most useful thing on this page, because it tells you what we do when we cannot measure something.
Fruiting Body or Mycelium
A fungus has two parts. The mycelium is the thread network in the substrate. The fruiting body is the mushroom.
Growing mycelium is fast and cheap: sterilise a bag of rice or oats, inoculate, harvest in weeks. Growing a fruiting body takes months.
The trouble is that mycelium cannot be separated from the grain it grew on. Both go into the mill. A large fraction of that powder, frequently most of it, is starch.
Watch for: myceliated grain, full-spectrum, mycelial biomass, or rice on the ingredient list. And for the absence of a beta-glucan figure.
The Number That Matters
Every one of the five is sold on a percentage. Most of those percentages are the wrong one.
"Polysaccharide" means any long-chain sugar. Starch is a polysaccharide. A powder that is mostly ground rice can honestly report a high polysaccharide figure and never mention the rice.
The number that describes the fungus is beta-glucans, measured enzymatically, with the alpha-glucans measured separately and subtracted. A certificate that reports polysaccharides and omits beta-glucans is telling you something by omission.
1. Fruiting body or mycelium? If the answer is vague, it is mycelium.
2. What is the beta-glucan percentage, and is it per batch or a stated minimum?
3. Will you show me the certificate?
Which One
We are not going to tell you, and we would be suspicious of anyone who did.
What we can say is what separates them chemically. Lion's Mane and Reishi need ethanol, because hericenones and triterpenes are not water-soluble. Turkey Tail does not. Chaga takes betulin from a birch tree it grew inside for twenty years, which is why a grain-grown Chaga has none.
If you want all five, our mushroom coffee carries them together. If you want one at a real dose, buy the single extract.
How to Use Them
All five are powders. None of them need anything clever done to them.
- In a hot drink. Half a teaspoon into coffee, tea, or warm milk. Reishi and Chaga suit coffee, because bitterness and bitterness get along.
- In a smoothie. They disappear entirely into anything with banana or cacao in it.
- In food. Stirred into soup, dal, oatmeal or broth after cooking, not during. Prolonged heat is unnecessary once a mushroom has already been extracted.
- Whole, cooked. Lion's Mane is the only one of the five that is genuinely good to eat as a mushroom. Sear it hard.
An extract is a concentrate. It has already been through hot water and, for most of these, through ethanol as well. Simmering it for an hour achieves nothing except a colder kitchen.
Cautions
- Chaga is high in oxalates. Anyone with kidney disease or a history of kidney stones should avoid it.
- Reishi and blood-thinning medication. Speak to a doctor first.
- Anyone with a known mould or fungal allergy should avoid all five.
- Anyone pregnant, nursing, scheduled for surgery, or taking prescribed medication should consult a qualified practitioner.
- Long-term data does not exist for any of them. Nobody has studied daily use across a decade.
A brand that tells you there are no considerations at all has not read the literature either.
A Word About Pets
An earlier version of this page printed suggested daily amounts for dogs and for cats. We are not veterinarians, and we should not have published it.
Do not give any supplement to an animal without your veterinarian's guidance. Their guidance, not ours.
Five Single-Species Extracts
Whole fruiting body, never mycelium grown on grain. Each one carries its compound figure disclosed per batch, and every one of them is measured.
See the extracts →
