Mushrooms are a versatile ingredient used in a broad range of dishes. They’re a common component of stir fries and Asian cooking, pasta dishes, soups, and stews, as well as a popular pizza topping and omelet ingredient. You might have enjoyed stuffed mushrooms or munched on a mushroom burger.
Today, mushroom coffee is all the rage, fueled by anecdotal reports that infusing coffee with medicinal mushrooms can reduce stress, improve sleep, and provide an array of other health benefits.
What Is Mushroom Coffee?
Mushrooms have been used in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine for centuries. Unlike the mushrooms you’d purchase at the supermarket to add to your cooking, the mushrooms used in mushroom coffee are medicinal, or functional, mushrooms that you would not ordinarily eat. They have names like chaga, cordyceps, turkey tail, lion’s mane, and reishi.
The mushrooms are dried and then ground into a powder. They are then added to regular ground coffee at about a one-to-one mixture. You can get mushroom coffee as an instant coffee, or a brewing coffee. You can even get it in a brewing pod.
How Does Mushroom Coffee Taste?
Mushroom coffee preparations typically look like regular coffee grounds. And, since the mushrooms are ground and blended with regular ground coffee, the taste of mushroom coffee is similar to that of regular coffee—it has been described it as having a “nutty” or “earthy” flavor.
Potential Health Benefits of Mushroom Coffee
Many medicinal mushrooms contain adaptogens, ingredients that are believed to help your body manage stress and anxiety and fight fatigue. Proponents of mushroom coffee say it decreases stress, boosts memory, increases energy, reduces inflammation, and strengthens the immune system.
Unfortunately, there are very few studies on mushroom coffee to support those claims. Plus, it remains unclear if the processing involved in making mushroom coffee preserves all the benefits of medicinal mushrooms.
Mushrooms, however, have lots of nutrients for health. If you check the nutrition label for mushrooms, you will find lots of antioxidants, vitamins, calcium, and potassium.
Mushroom Coffee vs. Regular Coffee
Mushroom coffee will provide similar benefits to fully caffeinated coffee without the jitters that you might sometimes experience. Because fewer ground coffee beans are used in each coffee blend, mushroom coffee drinks contain about half the caffeine as a cup of regular caffeinated coffee, but they still have more caffeine than decaffeinated coffee products.
Another benefit of mushroom coffee is that its mushroom flavor can substitute for sweeteners and higher-calories creamers, so you’ll typically consume fewer calories (if you don’t typically take your coffee black).
But unlike mushroom coffee, the benefits of regular coffee have been studied extensively. Some data suggest that consuming regular coffee may improve heart health and lower the risk of death from heart disease. Drinking regular coffee also has been associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, and cancer, some evidence suggests.
Adding mushrooms to coffee probably will not negate these documented benefits and will also provide additional antioxidants and health-promoting compounds. If you flavor your coffee with milk (dairy or non-dairy), you can further affect the nutritional profile by adding protein and various vitamins and minerals.
Is Mushroom Coffee Right for You?
There’s generally little downside to trying mushroom coffee aside from the price, which can range from two to three times the cost of regular coffee.
However, some people have reported gastrointestinal (GI) issues (e.g., nausea, diarrhea) related to consuming mushroom coffee. Plus, certain types of medicinal mushrooms used in mushroom coffee—particularly chaga—are rich in oxalates, which can present problems for people with a history of kidney stones or kidney disease.
Still, the next time you reach for a cuppa joe, consider mushroom coffee—it might be the new start to your day that you’re looking for.
