Poisoning with edible mushrooms

Everyone knows about the danger of poisoning with poisonous mushrooms. However, under certain conditions, even eating edible fungi can lead to poisoning. Causes of toxicity can be very different.

Simple poisoning with edible mushrooms

Even well-known edible mushrooms( white, podberezoviki, etc.), if they are old, wormy, overripe, began to decay or deteriorated during transportation and storage, can create serious health problems when used. In the fruiting bodies of old fungi, toxic products are formed, the decomposition of proteins, similar to those found in spoiled meat or fish products.

Worms and larvae of other insects produce poisonous metabolic products into the fruit pulp, so the use of worms can also lead to food poisoning. Many housewives put such mushrooms in salty water: affecting the skin of insects, it contributes to their death. However, the products of decay often remain in the fruiting bodies of the fungus, causing various intestinal diseases.

Therefore, one should adhere to the rule: to collect only young and healthy mushrooms. If, for some reason, the mushrooms collected in the so-called maloedoednoy phase, have to be used for food, then you must necessarily hedge, boiling them for 15-20 minutes. Then the water must be drained, the mushrooms must be rinsed once more, and only after that they should be used for preparing various dishes.

Poisoning by mushrooms that are incompatible with alcohol use

The toxicity of mushroom species such as clavicles, shimmering dung, gray and white, manifests when consumed simultaneously with alcoholic beverages. In boiled or fried species, these mushrooms are quite edible. However, in no case should they be consumed with alcoholic beverages. The fact is that these mushrooms contain a toxin that does not dissolve in water during their preparation, but which dissolves easily in alcohol. When you drink drinks, even with a relatively low alcohol content, it is quickly absorbed into the gastrointestinal tract, from there it enters the bloodstream. This leads to the fact that after 1 hour there may be signs of poisoning, which persist for several hours. Symptoms are manifested in increased heart rate, fever, severe thirst, difficulty speaking, darkening of the eyes, digestive disorders;face and other parts of the body become violet-red. After a while, the symptoms usually disappear, but arise again if the next day again take alcohol.

Poisoning leading to botulism

Homemade canned mushrooms are usually stored in glass jars, rolled up with lids. The formation of toxic substances in mushrooms, preserved at home, can be caused by improper or negligent cooking( undercooked or under-salted), low acidity of the solution, poor storage. Very often food poisoning causes leaky ukuporennye canned food. The cause of poisoning in this case is not the fungi themselves, but the so-called anaerobic bacteria developing in the ukuporenoy bank without access to oxygen and releasing deadly toxins.

The most dangerous toxins are secreted by bacteria clostridium and butulinus, leading to a severe disease - botulism. Dangerous poisoning by anaerobic bacteria is because often enough the disease leads to a lethal outcome. The presence of botulinum bacteria in canned food can be determined immediately. Expanding proteins, fats and carbohydrates, they form carbon dioxide, causing bloating cans - bombing. Sometimes this leads to the fact that the cans are torn off the cans. The conditions for the development of harmful bacteria, in addition to the lack of oxygen, are proteins contained in fungi, as well as a neutral or alkaline environment.

Mushrooms, the most dangerous for home preservation, are champignons, as they grow, as a rule, on manured soil. Poisoning improperly prepared and for future harvested mushrooms is also dangerous because spores of bacteria developing in tightly sealed jars are heat-resistant and do not die even with prolonged heat treatment. Botulinum botins are very stable: they persist, even if cans with canned products are kept in boiling water for a long time. Bacteria are bent only at a temperature of 120-130 ° C, which can be achieved only in autoclaves, that is, when canning mushrooms in industrial plants.

Do not use canned food from swollen cans because they contain botulinum toxin, the poison of anaerobic bacteria. According to medical statistics, botulism is one of the most serious diseases with a high mortality rate. Every fourth of the poisoned botulinum toxin is killed. Fortunately, modern medicine has an effective antibotulinum serum, which neutralizes the poison in the body of the victim. The main condition for recovery is to introduce an antidote on time.

The use of contaminated canned food, even with a small concentration of poisonous substances, can lead to quite severe poisoning, which is accompanied by pain in the stomach and intestines, vomiting, diarrhea, then speech and vision impairments( objects spread or "double").To avoid poisoning, preserving mushrooms at home should be carried out in strict accordance with technological recommendations and storage rules. . To prevent the development of Butulinus, it is possible by creating an acidic environment, therefore, when preparing canned food, add acetic or citric acid to the mushrooms.

Thus, domestic sterilization of fungi in cans is undesirable and is permissible only for pickled mushrooms with a filling acidity of not less than 1.6%.