Many mushroom identification and foraging books being sold on Amazon are likely generated by AI with no human authorship. These books could provide dangerous misinformation and potentially lead to deaths if people eat poisonous mushrooms based on the AI’s inaccurate descriptions. Two New York mushroom societies have warned about the risks of AI-generated foraging guides. Experts note that safely identifying wild mushrooms requires careful research and experience that an AI system does not have. Amazon has since removed some books flagged as AI-generated, but more may exist. Detecting AI-generated books and authors can be difficult as the systems can fabricate author bios and images. Relying on multiple credible sources, as well as guidance from local foraging groups, is advised for safely pursuing mushroom foraging.
This is my experience so don’t rely on it: Most mushrooms won’t kill you but some will make you so sick that you wished you died. Even a small bite of the deadly Destroying Angle will most likely not kill you. Only eat a very small amount of a new-to-you mushroom because even safe ones may trigger a fatal allergic reaction, also “safe” Morel mushrooms have killed people who really, really over consumed them.
Get a real “National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms”, book and download the “Seek” app for your phone. Find a person who experienced and go slow. NEVER get careless or over confident.
Then there’s the permanent kidney failure…
It’s worth pointing out that this is because the author is a foreign national. Americans with permanent kidney failure are guaranteed Medicare even if they’re under 65, and Medicare part B covers outpatient dialysis in full. Signing that into law is one of the few good things Richard Nixon ever did.
Thanks, interesting. I’m glad America gives everyone dialysis too. I live in a country with universal healthcare, so I sort of skimmed over the cost aspect because that wouldn’t be an issue here.
It is more the physical, quality-of-life-ruining aspects that give me the horror. I read an article once where a family of 4 all had severe permanent kidney damage from eating the wrong mushrooms.
You made your point well. Hell, even if they paid me for the sessions, I feel like it would be such a miserable way to experience life.
I have a friend who needs dialysis, and it’s really limited her ability to socialize and travel freely.
Until I started to see stories like that I thought about fungi in terms of death/not death, and didn’t realize the life-changing injury part in between.
Your poor friend. To be fair I can’t travel anyway for health reasons, but multiple organ failure still seems worse.
It’s also worth pointing out that $1,000 per session cost is probably the least bad thing about dialysis.
That’s not very reassuring
I don’t think it was meant to be reassuring. @rayyyy@kbin.social is right, don’t mess around with fungi. You can get irreversible kidney damage.
Filtering by doing your research before ingesting one that should keep you from dying almost guaranteed.
In the US about 420 people die every year from salmonella poisoning usually incurred from food, often bought at the grocery store.
Meanwhile 3 people die from mushroom poisoning. And with a good book i’d say it is quite straightforward. My mushroom book provides an info for every specimen whether it has a poisonous look-alike and what specifics to look out for. If i am still uncertain, i just dont eat it.
As always, the dose makes the poison.
A common scenario is people picking the wrong species and then not just eating a small bite, but cooking an entire meal and eating that.
A small bite may not kill you, but just one mushroom (50g) can be enough to do it.
There are some toxic mfs out there and they can be mistaken for edible lookalikes by inexperienced foragers.
People need to stop using zeroGPT it does not accurately detect ai generated text.