Seems like I post this every year.
Michael Kuo
False morels grow almost everywhere that morels grow. This makes hunting for morels in the spring a risky enterprise, despite the fact that so many people feel confident. The risk involved with eating morels can be reduced, however, by becoming familiar with the mushrooms.
What's the risk? Death, to begin with. Though it is rare, it is well documented that false morels can be fatally poisonous. The poison in false morels is MMH, or monmethylhydrazine (a chemical also found in rocket fuel). Though MMH is not understood completely by scientists, there is no question about whether it is poisonous or not. It appears that MMH may occur in different quantities in different false morels (even members of the same species), that its presence may vary according to geography, that its effect on people may vary between individuals, and that its toxicity may be cumulative (raising the possibility of eating false morels safely for years and then, one day, croaking after one bite). Clearly, MMH is not to be messed with.
Despite scientific evidence that false morels are poisonous, they are eaten by many people. I concede this point. Many mushroomers in our area scoff at warnings about the "beefsteak morel," since they have been picking and eating them for years. These people are lucky. It is quite possible that Old Bob could eat beefsteak morels for 20 years, and one day keel over in the kitchen just from breathing the fumes of the cooking mushrooms. It's probably possible to press your lips to your car's exhaust pipe and breathe deeply once a week for 20 years without ever feeling the effects . . . does that mean you'd do it?
The "Scandinavia excuse" is worthless. Yes, false morels are picked, eaten, even sold commercially in Scandinavia. I lived in Finland for a year, and found plenty of false morels--"ear mushrooms" (korvasieni), as they call them. But I didn't eat one bite. It may be that, for some reason, the far northern latitude is related to reduced levels of poison. But even in Finland, reports of poisonings exist; the year I was there newspapers were beginning to warn their readers about possible dangers.
Even when it's not fatal, MMH is not a pleasant poison. You could be hospitalized, sick for days, or just throw up all night, depending on many factors. Mushroom author David Arora writes that false morels "have puzzled scientists for years because of the very narrow threshold between complete absence of discomfort and severe poisoning or even death" (893).
Do you want to approach that threshold? The only intelligent decision to make about false morels is to admire their beauty and move on; no person in his or her right mind should knowingly eat a false morel.
Cite this page as:
Kuo, M. (2001). False morel toxicity. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site:
http://www.bluewillowpages.com/mushroomexpert/false_morel_toxicity.html
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