Updated: Feb 08, 2021, 04:20 PM IST

Here's how just a serving of mushrooms could make your meals more nutritious

While there are specific nutrients in all the vegetables, new research suggested that adding a mushroom serving to the diet could work wonders for the human body. According to the research, published in 'Food Science and Nutrition', adding a mushroom serving to the diet increased the intake of several micronutrients, including shortfall nutrients such as vitamin D, without any increase in calories, sodium, or fat. Adding an 84g serving of mushrooms increased several shortfall nutrients including potassium and fiber. This was true for the white, crimini, and portabella 1:1:1 mix and the oyster mushrooms. The addition of a serving (84 g) of mushrooms to the diet resulted in an increase in dietary fiber (5 per cent-6 per cent), copper (24 per cent -32 per cent), phosphorus (6 per cent), potassium (12 per cent-14 per cent), selenium (13 per cent-14 per cent), zinc (5 per cent-6 per cent), riboflavin (13 per cent-15 per cent), niacin (13 per cent-14 per cent), and choline (5 per cent-6 per cent) in both adolescents and adults; but had no impact on calories, carbohydrate, fat or sodium. When commonly consumed mushrooms are exposed to UV-light to provide 5 mcg vitamin D per serving, vitamin D intake could meet and slightly exceed the recommended daily value (98 per cent- 104 per cent) for both the 9 -18 year and 19+ year groups as well as decrease inadequacy of this shortfall nutrient in the population. A serving of UV-light exposed commonly consumed mushrooms decreased population inadequacy for vitamin D from 95.3 per cent to 52.8 per cent for age group 9-18 years and from 94.9 per cent to 63.3 per cent for the age group 19+ years.