Fruiting Body or Myceliated Rice

Written By Clayton Berger

When researching your options of mushroom tinctures and products you might come across the terms “myceliated rice/oat/grain” and “whole fruiting bodies” in the ingredients list. Let’s start with what these mean.

In Fungal Terms

When you see a mushroom in your yard or on a Nature trail what you’re seeing is the “fruit” of the fungus. Like picking an apple, you don’t kill the tree when you eat the apple. In the same way, when you pick the mushroom you don’t kill the fungus; instead, you eat the fruit or the fruiting body. The whole point of the mushroom, like the apple, is to spread spores (fungus seeds) so more of the fungus can grow elsewhere. The fungus intelligently and intentionally grew an attractive fruit with scent and colors intending for insects, turtles, squirrels, humans, and even spiders to eat the fruit and carry its spores to “greener pastures”. This fruiting body is what our ancestors would have consumed and carried with them like Fomitopsis betulina on Otzi the Iceman who lived 5300 years ago.


Now let’s talk about the “tree” of the fungus. Mycelium is the word we use to describe the “tree” part of the fungus. Depending on the species, the mycelium grows through dead wood or around & inside the roots of living plants, grasses, and trees. In this way, you can say dead wood is “myceliated-wood”. Mycelium IS the fungus. It’s eating dead plant matter (decomposing), transferring water and oxygen, and communicating with plants. (There’s a whole other blog on just mycelium.) 


Growing Options

On a mushroom farm, we replicate the natural growing environment of fungi to take advantage of their life cycle: starting with spores in a petri dish, transferring them to grain(oats, rice, etc.), transferring them to their preferred wood (pine, oak, etc.), and encouraging mushroom formation. Each of these steps requires an exponential expansion of space, time, and energy.


In order to create a tincture or other concentrate from the whole fruiting body we must grow the fungus through each of these steps: spore, grain expansion, wood expansion, and mushroom formation which takes a considerable amount of time and varies from 6-weeks to 12 months depending on the species; with the polypores like Turkey Tail, Reishi, and Maitake all on the 6-12 month cycle. 

However, if we wanted to make a tincture from myceliated rice we would only have to go through Steps 1 and 2: spores in a petri dish and grown through rice in a jar. From here we could take the myceliated rice out of the jar, dehydrate it, shred it, and continue the same process we use to make tinctures from whole fruiting bodies. This would significantly cut down the time, space, and energy requirements saving us lots of money and time. However, the tincture would then only be made from the fungus’s mycelium and the bits of rice that are not fully consumed by the fungus. This is the process used by many mushroom farms to generate huge volumes of product for large-scale repackaging vendors simply because it’s faster and easier. 

But can the myceliated version offer the same benefits as the whole fruit our ancestors knew and used?


Beneficial Complex

The benefits of mushrooms are many and vary from species to species but include blood pressure & cholesterol reduction, cancer & tumor-fighting, organ cleansing, mood-boosting, neuron growth, pain & inflammation reduction, and fatigue & stress mitigation - to name a few. These benefits come from the composition and nutritional makeup of the mushrooms which include: 


All of these properties have been tested and proven on the mushroom (the fruiting bodies), not the mycelium. For this reason, products made from mushroom fruiting bodies are considered "full spectrum" because they provide a wider array of the mushroom's nutritional components. In addition, they have minerals like phosphorous, copper, zinc, potassium and other bioactive compounds​​. In contrast, mycelium grown on grain can contain up to 60% starch (from the rice), which not only dilutes the medicinal constituents but also can cause bloating and indigestion, and reduce the effectiveness of the product​​.

Medicinal mushrooms are sought for their active ingredients like beta-glucans and terpenoids, which are found in the highest levels within the fruiting bodies​​. This higher concentration of active compounds potentially makes fruiting bodies more potent and effective for medicinal use. In contrast, myceliated-(fill in the blank) is inseparable from the substrate it's grown on, which can lead to a high content of filler ingredients with no medicinal benefit. Mushroom products made from mycelium grown in simple starches or composted grasses(biomass) have a lower concentration of these active compounds.

In the End

You get what you pay for. Many large companies are buying powdered fungal products and repackaging or blending them with something else to make money on the “mushroom craze”. But the “mushroom craze” has real value and is based on real science and real traditional knowledge. Fungi are our friends and our allies. They want to help us. 


The fungi pharmacy is open and we are lining up to fill our prescriptions. But is the generic version as good as the real version? To say it more clearly, is the cheaper, faster way of creating a medicinal mushroom product as good as the longer and slower process?

Clayton Berger