The Totally Unscientific (Or Is It?) Reason I Think Birch Bracket and Artist's Conk Are Medicinal

I totally accidentally got into mushroom foraging this summer, after I happened upon some totally gorgeous yellow mushrooms growing in the middle of a bike trail in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and decided to find out what they were. 

​Golden oysters quickly became a staple of my diet, and my favorite mushroom of all time. Someone told me they say them for $8 a pint at the farmer's market... and I could get as many as I wanted for free, just by riding my bike. 

My first golden oysters. Image: @TheHappyTalent on Instagram.

As the summer progressed, my mountain biking took me to new places, where I discovered new kinds of edible and medicinal mushrooms. 

Among the weirder ones are birch bracket and artist's conk, both polypores that are reasonably easy to identify. Birch bracket grows almost exclusively on birch trees; it's white to brown-ish in color, with a short, fat stalk; its smooth upper surface folds over at the outside edges, leaving a rounded rim around the flattened lower surface; they have a white spore print; and they're polypores, meaning they have no gills, but instead have small white tubes that are packed together at a density of 3 or 4 per mm. And, importantly, my Google search revealed no poisonous look-alikes.

Artist's conk, meanwhile, is common on dead and dying hardwood trees. It's woody and shelf-like, with a definitive test for identification: if you scrape the white underside, it will turn dark brown. (Some artists use this mushroom as a canvas, hence the name.)

Image: The Happy Talent on Facebook

​Beyond easy to identify, these mushrooms both have lofty purported health benefits. I'm always extremely skeptical of such claims, because there is a lot of pseudoscience out there, and I prefer data and evidence to superstition. 

I actually did find peer review articles supporting some of the claims — in particular, that Piptoporus betulinus (birch bracket) is cytotoxic and anti-proliferative against cancer cells; anti-parasitic; and potentially anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting.

Artist's conk has been less well-studied. There is apparently some scientific research, but most of the reported benefits are based in folk medicine. Which, again — is something worth being very skeptical of, for the sake of your health, your wallet, and even the environment. (For example, people are spending tons of money on wild sage; there is literally no scientific evidence that burning sage does anything, but the demand for this bullshit pseudoscientific "medicine" is driving major environmental problems throughout California and the US — so don't be a selfish moron. Stop buying wild sage products.) The main reported benefits are anti-tumor properties and reduced blood glucose, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels. 

Whether or not these claims are true, I thought it would be interesting to try these mushrooms. I mean, I'd found them growing in the wild — I may as well, right?

The thing about both of these mushrooms is that, while "edible" and "medicinal," they're not exactly "palatable." Artist's conk is super woody, and birch bracket is super bitter. You can eat them — I fried up some thinly-sliced, very young ones, and it tasted like a slightly bitter version of any fried thing. 

But for the most part, if you want to consume these polypores, you need to do it as a tea or powder. 

I looked up a few "tea recipes" online, and basically they all said the same thing: 

1. For extra vitamin D, put mushrooms in the sun for a few hours. (They make their own vitamin D when exposed to UV light, just like we do!)
2. Boil about 5 units of water per 1 unit of mushroom
3. Slice or dice the mushrooms
4. Low boil for at least an hour.

Both types of tea were super bitter the first time I drank them... yet every time I drink birch bracket or artist's conk tea, I find it more enjoyable.

This is the totally unscientific — yet also very scientific — reason I believe these mushrooms have some positive health benefit. 

A few summers ago, I read  The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor, by Mark Schatzker. It is an excellent and informative read that I highly recommend to this day.

In it, I learned about some interesting research on acquired taste — some of which I shared in ​Why Connoisseurs Love Itchy, Burning Throats - The Science of Flavor:

Research in both animals and humans proves that we are very good at learning flavor preferences based on health needs. For example, in 1976, a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah named Frederick Provenza intentionally fed sheep a diet that was low in phosphorus, a vital nutrient. Once they developed a deficiency, he began giving them feed that was flavored like maple (a flavor they had not encountered before) -- and, immediately afterwards, he would pump phosphorus directly into their stomach. In other words, the sheep never "tasted" the phosphorus. Just maple.

From that point on, the sheep would show a major preference for maple-flavored food over their regular food -- but only when they were phosphorus deficient. But when the deficiency went away, so did the flavor preference. Read more > 

(The Dorito Effect also explained how and why food today is less flavorful and less nutritious than it used to be — and what you can do about it.)

If I'm liking the tea more each time I drink it, maybe it's because I'm learning a flavor preference based on the nutritional properties of the tea. 

Or maybe it's just the mere exposure effect.

Either way, I've gone from kind of forcing myself to finish the tea, to actually liking it, and that means something.

Probably. 

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Want to know more? Check out: 

• 4 Teas That Can Help Improve Your Singing
• Saying "Ban GMOs" is Like Saying "Kill the Diabetics"
• 5 Fun, Delicious and Spectacular Ways to Prevent Weight Gain 
• The NYT Wants Us To Smash the Wellness Industry. I Mostly Agree.