Four people hospitalized in Finland after eating the Destroying angel (Amanita virosa)

[Petri]

Watched the latest news and what do my eyes see and ears hear?!.....
Four people lies in hospital after eating Destroying angel (Amanita virosa).
One person is in so bad condition,that only liver transplantation can save the ever lovin' life......How this is possible? Doesn't people today recognize mushrooms properly?Or do they really pick a white mushroom to the basket thinking,that it's surely a white agaric? (Agaricus sp.) I'm confused.... One thing to avoid such poisonings is to keep pocket size mushroom guide,when going to mushrooming and never pick a mushroom which you don't recognize in 100% accuracy.

 

[sleepy]

Do they know if these mushrooms were eaten whole or chopped up in a casserole, etc.?

I had to look it up because I sometimes eat mushrooms and I wanted to be sure.
What the consensus is saying is, (1) don't eat it if the gills underneath the mushroom cap are white, and (2) be 150% sure that it is a safe mushroom before you do.
Another poster says, "When in doubt, throw it out".

http://nemoo.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/the-destroying-angel-mushroom/

 

[Petri]

I think,they were fried or made to a mushroom sauce....But any kind of preparing does'nt remove those poisons (A number of amatoxines,phallotoxin and virotoxin). And the most harmful thing is the long latent time from 6 to even 14 days before symptoms.It destroys the liver faster,than heavy boozing.

 

[sleepy]

That's tough if it was a sauce. Nobody could tell and why it's so important for the businesses involved to be diligent, otherwise they give mushrooms a bad name.

I hope it wasn't an attempted murder.

 

[Petri]

That's tough if it was a sauce. Nobody could tell and why it's so important for the businesses involved to be diligent, otherwise they give mushrooms a bad name.

I hope it wasn't an attempted murder.

Nope,it wasn't.Those people simply didn't knew,which mushroom they were picking and eating.....

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

if you were stranded in the wilderness what would you eat? this seems to me an important question, first because it's an important life disaster skill and second, because it's a measure of one's resourcefulness and practicality. personally i'm underprepared in this area and need to learn more:

1) berries (but which ones? some are poisonous)
2) ants and grubs
3) bark from young shoots (but which plants?)
4) tubers
5) nuts and seeds, but which plants?
6) tree sap? (maples are safe, i think. evergreens, i would think not.)

mushrooms would probably be a desperation move for me... even if you're an expert it's possible to go wrong.

 

[sleepy]

I think the first rule of thumb is to eat what the animals eat.

 

[Kiaininja]

I think the first rule of thumb is to eat what the animals eat.

And after you watch what the animal eats then you eat the animal.

 

[sleepy]

Well...not if the other animal is a poison toad.
I do have my limits!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I think the first rule of thumb is to eat what the animals eat.

hmm...

if you eat raw acorns like squirrels, you'll get sick. if you eat evergreen fruit like the birds and squirrels, you'll get sick. if you eat the foliage (cellulose-rich diet) of most herbivores, you'll get very little nutrition and probably a stomach ache, to boot. if you eat any old insect like larger insects and small animals do, you'll run across some with toxins that the predators have built up a resistance to, which we haven't. same thing is probably true for various berries, as well.

so i can't say i like that rule of thumb.

OTOH, if you find a carcass with fly larvae in it, you can eat the larvae because they've 'detoxified' the rotting meat in their bodies. you'd probably want to wash them off first, however. another one i learned recently is that you can tie a plastic bag around a tree limb and collect moisture over time from transpiration.

 

[sleepy]

I think I would follow the larger animals like deer, bear, etc. not the grub animals, and I would then use discretion. Obviously following the birds picking off berries won't make a meal.

 

[ANDROID]

The underlying question is was this an ALICE IN WONDERLAND MAGIC mushroom adventure, or people looking to enhance their salad, soup, or hamburger? Cylicibin mushrooms are easy enough to spot with a long thin stem, a 50c peice size dome and a yellow and white coloring underneath.
In this internet age, printing some pictures before their hunt would have helped tremendously.
My prayers go out to those afflicted

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I think I would follow the larger animals like deer, bear, etc. not the grub animals, and I would then use discretion. Obviously following the birds picking off berries won't make a meal.

deer have a highly cellulose-rich diet, so that's a problem. following bears...? um, yea, good luck with that. birds, the berries would mostly be in bushes, so i would think that could work if you could figure out which were non-toxic for humans.

i would think one of the best bets would be to follow surface-digging animals, like raccoons. they might dig up a pretty good proportion of grubs, tubers, bulbs and corms.

another group would be greens, as in salad stuff. dandelions, for example, are bitter but highly digestible and very nutritious. another possibility would be the seeds from grasses, which are literally everywhere.

 

[sleepy]

What about alfalfa, wild oats and grasses? I think some of those like oats I would chew but spit out the chaff.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

yea, all of them in the grasses fambily. not sure which contain digestible cereals, however. i think you're right- some you'd want to dehull in your mouth. or maybe crush a bit on a flat stone. i'm just looking at this (wish it had pics, tho):
http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/ediblawn.php

that page reminds me, alliums (garlics and onions) are probably one of the easiest plants to identify, partly because of their smell. there's not a single one that's toxic AFAIK.

EDIT: remember the beach boys mix i was making for the trip? well, guess who played at chautauqua the week i was there? (i had no idea they were scheduled until the same day)

it was the official version of the band, the one that mike love sued to get the name to. bruce johnston also was there, plus the usual mix of a bunch of hired musicians. (but they were good, no question!)

 

[sleepy]

I'm out of the loop Nic.
Who is the official band? Brian Wilson, or?
I take it you paid to hear them?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

mike love is. big series of lawsuits, probably from 70's to 80's.

at several points there have been, i believe, three versions of the band touring- mike love's, al jardine's, and brian wilson's, for example after he released smile.

no paid- i caught their last couple songs after leaving a production of pirates of penzance. i took a chair and stood in on the porch of a church nearby and got a better view than many of the people there. a pair of binoculars would have made the situation complete, but oh well...

 

[bogartkick]

Oh man that's so terrible. I wish they will get well soon.

 

[Petri]

Latest news told,that three of them are still fighting for their lifes....
They were berrypickers,who have Asian background and they didn't have
properly knowledge of our mushrooms.

 

[mrschultz]

Latest news told,that three of them are still fighting for their lifes....
They were berrypickers,who have Asian background and they didn't have
properly knowledge of our mushrooms.

Must have been their first time, doesn't matter where they are from. There are poisonous mushrooms in every part of the world, so if they had picked them in Asia they should have known better (same rules apply everywhere). Or they picked some in the past and got lucky, been plenty of cases like that where people think the ones they just picked look the same as the ones they ate in the past.

 

[sleepy]

It could be that some folks assume the mushrooms with pure white gills are
cleaner or safer than the brown or discolored caps.
Maybe our modern sense of hygiene is confusing the victims.

 

[mrschultz]

It could be that some folks assume the mushrooms with pure white gills are
cleaner or safer than the brown or discolored caps.
Maybe our modern sense of hygiene is confusing the victims.

There's also an idea that "natural" or "organic" food can't be bad for you. I'm sure a majority of people that have spent their lives never going into any wild area would have no idea that one bite of something growing on the ground could kill you (especially if it looked very similar to what you could buy).

 

[mctown09]

just buy it on the market to be sure.. and they will have someone to blame if it poison them..

 

[sleepy]

Man, I saw something sick today. I was crossing the parking lot of a local supermarket and noticed a couple of guys smiling and nodding at each other. A female accomplice exited the SUV that the trio arrived in and began pulling the discarded crates of fruit from the store's only garbage dumpster and putting it in their SUV.

I told the store manager and he said, "Yeah, we get a lot of people doing that" and then he stepped out to deal with it.

We frequently have people who speak little or no English knocking at the door with dollies stacked with crates of fruit and I hate to think that they might be selling legitimate produce and are going to be hurt by the dumpster divers, or, they are selling garbage food which explains how in California and elsewhere we have seen outbreaks of hepatitis and e-coli from strawberries, lettuce, green onions, etc.

A Taco Bell store had a problem with e-coli in their lettuce several years ago and many of the stores are franchises, so I'm wondering if the lettuce/e-coli incident was caused by produce bought from a dumpster diver and was not the fault of the parent company?

 

[mrschultz]

A Taco Bell store had a problem with e-coli in their lettuce several years ago and many of the stores are franchises, so I'm wondering if the lettuce/e-coli incident was caused by produce bought from a dumpster diver and was not the fault of the parent company?

Pretty much all the cases that make it to the level where they are on the news have the e-coli traced back to the source using genetic testing. So it would have been big news if the source had been a dumpster. :D

Hard to belive any restaurant owner would buy produce from people off the street, would be opening themselves up to massive lawsuits, but I guess anything's possible.