Consumption of mushrooms can help fight ageing, reveals study

Worried about ageing? Well, consuming mushroom can help you fight it and bolster health, reveals a new study.

The study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University suggests that mushrooms contain unusually high amounts of ergothioneine and glutathione, two antioxidants that are rich with anti-ageing properties.

Researchers who tested 13 species of mushroom also found that the amounts the two compounds varied greatly between these species. They found that the porcini contains the highest level of antioxidants, by far, amongst the ones they tested.

Robert Beelman, professor emeritus of food science and director of the Penn State Center for Plant and Mushroom Products for Health, explained the free radical theory of aging — that's been around for a long time that says when we oxidize our food to produce energy there's a number of free radicals that are produced that are side products of that action and many of these are quite toxic.

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Accoring to Bleeman the study is preliminary, but one can see that countries that have more ergothioneine in their diets, countries like France and Italy, also have lower incidences of neurodegenerative diseases, while people in countries like the United States, which has low amounts of ergothioneine in the diet, have a higher probability of diseases like Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's.