Cheung Peter C.K.(editor) Mushrooms as Functional Foods

Monography. — Hoboken: A John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2008. — 259 с. — ISBN 978-0-470-05406-2Mushrooms have been known for their nutritional and culinary values as well as viewed as tonics and used as medicines by humans for ages. In modern terms, they can be considered as functional foods which can provide health benefits beyond the traditional nutrients they contain. There are monographs that cover the medicinal and healing properties of some individual traditional mushrooms and fungi such as the Ganoderma, Shiitake mushroom, and Cordyceps for the general public. However, there are very few in-depth and up-to-date comprehensive reference books in the scientific literature of both the basic and applied aspects of mushrooms as functional foods. This book is an integration of the recent research conducted on the biological and chemical aspects of mushrooms when being utilized as a functional food. Topics that are covered in this book range from the agricultural production of mushrooms to the use of molecular biological techniques like functional genomics, from nutritional values of newly cultivated mushroom species to the multifunctional effects of the unconventional form of the mushroom (sclerotium), and from the mechanistic actions of the physiological benefits and pharmacological properties of bioactive components in mushrooms to the regulations of their uses as functional foods and dietary supplements in different parts of the world. This comprehensive book should serve as a reference for scientists; chemists; biologists; food manufacturers; students majoring in food science, nutrition, biology, and biochemistry, to name a few; and all those who are interested in obtaining a stronger background in the development of mushrooms and edible fungi into functional foods.