Tonight we had the mushroom soft tacos with succotash for dinner (and let me just add that they were awesome! and Jeff ate six!) As I chopped the pound of mushrooms it called for, it occurred to me that tonight’s post would be a good excuse to look into something that I’ve been wondering about recently.
One thing I have always felt a little silly buying at the grocery store are organic mushrooms. In fact, if they had conventionally grown ones at my natural foods store I probably would have chosen those instead, but they don’t. I assumed that organic mushrooms simply meant they were grown in organic matter. I mean, mushrooms don’t get pests, do they?
Turns out they must. Mushrooms are right in the middle of the list of produce tested to have pesticide residues published by the Environmental Working Group, the folks that brought us the “dirty dozen (.pdf).” Interestingly, in California one of the most common pesticides used on mushrooms is Thiabendazole, a fungicide.
I’m not sharing this to convince anyone else they should be buying organic mushrooms, but because I was feeling a little gullible for buying them myself. I’m happy to know there is an actual difference in the growing conditions of the organic mushrooms compared to the conventional ones. What difference does it make? Sounds like the topic of another post!
