Take care of your skin! Shiitake mushrooms must be cooked through

Shiitake, oak lentin or edible lentin, the most consumed mushroom in the world after the button mushroom, is native to Asia but has developed widely on the European market in recent years, especially in France where it is cultivated in mushroom farms. on a substrate of straw and oak sawdust.

It is traditionally eaten cooked, but its raw consumption has developed for several years, explains the health agency Anses in a press release.

Now, consume these mushrooms “raw or undercooked, causes a very specific form of skin intoxication: toxic flagellum dermatitis“, which appears as red lines.

This “flagellar dermatitis“can cover the whole body, even the face, and”is very itchy for up to three weeks“, specifies ANSES, which warns that the symptoms appear in the hours or days following consumption and can reactivate in the event of further ingestion.

To limit the risk of intoxication, ANSES and the DGCCRF (repression of fraud) remind individuals and restaurateurs that it is necessary to cook these mushrooms “to heart” before consumption.

“Quick wok cooking may also be insufficient to destroy the toxic substance.“, notes ANSES.

Since 2015, poison control centers have recorded between 11 and 15 cases of these poisonings per year in France, but ANSES believes that this figure is probably underestimated, “the link between dermatitis (an unrecognized disease, sometimes confused with photodermatosis – skin reaction after exposure to the sun) and the consumption of shiitake mushrooms is not always done by the consumer or his doctor“.

In 2015, after an alert from ANSES, the authorities suspended the sale of these mushrooms if they were not accompanied by a warning on the need for “complete cooking“. But the one-year order had not been renewed.

The poisoning, which also seems to depend on the amount of mushrooms ingested, is linked to hypersensitivity to lentinan, a component of the fungus destroyed by cooking.