Power to the Mushroom Drinkers Back at Litt's house, he's just brewed a pot of reishi tea, which he warns me in advance might offend my palate: "It tastes ooky, but I believe ookiness is good." After such a lead-in, I'm pleasantly surprised to enjoy the earthiness of the reishi, which he had foraged himself, dried in a dehydrator, and crushed into powder for the brewing of this healing tea. From it comes the long list of polypore mushrooms' potential health benefits—but Litt steers clear of magical cure-all talk. "We have the option not to drink this," says Litt. "We can just go to the doctor and get pills. We don't know what the reaction to medication is going to be for a person's particular anatomy, but no one has died from reishi tea. You have to have faith, as with all medicines, scientific and otherwise. Why not try this, too, on top of Pilates?"
Yet science does support the mushrooms, particularly their biological compounds of beta glucans, polysaccharides, and glycoproteins. All of these have health benefits that seem to work in concert, making a good case for a whole-food approach to fungi. "I think people should eat mushrooms at least three times a week, and at least three different species," says Stamets, who likes to cook shiitake, maitake, and lion's mane. "Mushrooms are fabulously rich in nutrition: They can have up to 40 percent of protein, can be a great source of fiber and vitamin D, and have virtually no cholesterol and less than 5 percent fat." Portobello burger, anyone?
For Litt, mushrooms are about self-reliance. "We live in an era where corporations want us to rely on them, and I want to do the opposite. I want to rely on myself and the forest—myself and the knowledge I can get from history and traditional medicine. And what I've discovered is that, at 67 years old, I can live pretty well. I can be a pretty healthy geezer."
