YOU CAN’T ESCAPE THEM.
Whether they’re flame-grilled and turned into an old-school burger or ground down and transformed into a trendy elixir, mushrooms are absolutely everywhere these days. And for good reason: the versatility and utility of these fleshy, fruiting fungi span across industries, from packaged goods and restaurant dishes to fashion and life-saving therapies. So even now, hundreds of millions of years after first evolving on our planet, mushrooms are having a major moment. Here’s all you need to know.
Cut Above the Rest
Grilled chicken breast? Steak fillets? Crispy cutlets? Each revolutionary, whole cut of meat from food tech company Meati starts not from animal DNA or mountains of gluten, but with just one spore of a mushroom root. And the company is taking food grown from the earth seriously: at Meati’s “ranch” in Colorado, those very mycelium spores are cultivated along with purified Rocky Mountain water, nutrients found in the soil, and a touch of sugar to develop its super-dense mushroom protein. The result is pressed and seasoned into whole cuts of vegan meat that can bring a new plant-based twist to chicken scallopini, tri-tip steak sandwiches, and crispy chicken parmesan.
Sip Your Shrooms
In March 2021, during the peak of oat milk mania, Califia Farms sought to capitalize on multiple crazes writer raved that the earthy milk tasted “more like dairy than any alt-milk I’ve tried.” Califia would go on to discontinue their lion’s mane- and cordyceps-boosted concoction the next year, but wherever you may have landed on the to-sip-or-not-to-sip spectrum, the company may have just been too ahead of its time, because today, a slew of mushroom-spiked beverages have exploded onto the scene. Yes, you should indeed be drinking your shrooms—and here’s where to start.
