Mushroom Mania? Mushrooms Are Turning Up In Coffee, Bacon And Almost Everything Else Imaginable.

The mushroom industry is mushrooming.

Mushrooms are small enough that it can be easy to not notice how big the mushroom industry has become. Mushroom farmers have doubled their growth rates in the last year, from January 2016 to January 2015, according to market research provided by the Mushroom Council. And according to FreshPlaza.com, there were 29 billion in mushroom sales in 2013; by 2019, it’s estimated that it’ll be at $50 billion.

Hard to say what’s driving this, whether it’s happenstance, people’s tastes changing or perhaps mushroom growers and executives no longer being content to offer to the public a vegetable that’s known as being a fungus and is mostly seen as a topping on a pizza or burger. Whatever the reasons, the food industry has been finally putting the fun back in fungi, and mushrooms are appearing with foods that they’re normally not associated with, and they’re even showing up in non-foods. Here’s what I mean.

Mushrooms and burgers. Sure, plenty of restaurants have served mushrooms on burgers for years. There would be no news here, but I’m talking about mushrooms inside the burgers. That’s become a thing.

In the last year, over 200 restaurants, from upscale to diners, have been offering blended burgers, according to the Mushroom Council. That is, the mushrooms are blended into the meat, making a healthier burger since a lot of the fat is gone but still retaining the flavor. That’s the idea. I haven’t tried the burgers yet, but I love mushrooms, so it sounds logical to me.

In any case, the Mushroom Council is currently partnering with Sodexo, a food services company headquartered in Paris, to bring these blended mushroom burgers into 250 school districts from kindergarten to high school.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffwilliams/2016/03/31/mushroom-mania-mushrooms-are-turning-up-in-coffee-bacon-and-almost-everything-else-imaginable/#248866c6b5ef