Mushrooms are an interesting food -- their nutritional content resembles vegetables, but they cook like meat. Mushroom taste and texture is like neither. When it comes to mushrooms and your circulatory health, it's most important to pay attention to how they affect your levels of blood serum cholesterol.
Mushroom Basics
There are thousands of species of mushrooms. Some are deadly poisonous, but dozens are safe for human consumption. They grow in damp, dark areas -- one of the few plants that can grow with little or no photosynthesis. Some species common in the human diet include portabello, shitaki and white.
Cholesterol Basics
Mushrooms themselves contain no cholesterol, but for blood serum cholesterol that's not important. What is important is the fat content of a food. Foods containing saturated fats will stimulate your body to produce harmful LDL cholesterol. Your body makes HDL cholesterol -- beneficial cholesterol that cleans your blood of LDL -- when you eat foods that contain unsaturated fats. Foods may also contain other nutrients or compounds that affect your cholesterol levels in other ways.
Mushrooms and Fat
Mushrooms contain very little saturated or unsaturated fat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Fat content is well under 1/4 g per cup for portobellos, white and shiitaki. This means that mushrooms have no significant effect on your body's production of either HDL or LDL cholesterol.
Mushrooms and Dietary Fiber
Mushrooms contain little fat, but are rich in dietary fiber. A 1 cup serving of white mushrooms contains 0.7 g of dietary fiber. Portobellos contain 2.7 g, shiitakis 3 g. Dietary fiber helps your body's natural cleansing processes , incuding those that clean LDL cholesterol out of your blood. Although it's not as helpful as a bowl of high-fiber breakfast cereal, mushrooms can potentially help reduce the levels of LDL in your blood.
Preparation
Raw mushrooms, or mushrooms cooked by steaming are the most healthy of ways to prepare them. Many recipes that include mushrooms add cooking fats, sauces or sugars. Any of these will bring their own fat levels and other compounds to the dish -- thus changing the nutrition profile for the food.
References
- USDA: Nutrition Database for Standard Reference
- CDC: Dietary Cholesterol
- "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy;" Walter Willett; 2004
- "The Fungal Gourmet"; Good Eats; Season 2, Episode 5
