Mushrooms emerge from dark as potential source of vitamin D

Exposing growing or just-picked mushrooms to UV light would be cheap and easy to do if it could mean turning the agricultural product into a unique plant source of vitamin D, scientists and growers said. That would be a boon especially for people who do not eat fish or milk, which is today the major fortified source of the important vitamin.

One grower predicted the pilot project, if supported by further research, could give consumers a radically different reason to buy mushrooms, now sought out for being low in fat and calories. ‘‘They eat them for what they don’t have, versus what they do have,’’ said Joe Caldwell, Vice-President of Monterey Mushrooms. The company is the nation’s largest producer of fresh mushrooms.

The ongoing work so far has found that a single serving of white button mushrooms—the most commonly sold mushroom will contain 869 per cent the daily value of vitamin D once exposed to just five minutes of UV light after being harvested. If confirmed, that would be more than what is in two tablespoons of cod liver oil, one of the richest—and most detested—natural sources of the vitamin, according to the National Institutes of Health.