White mushrooms fight cancer better than crimini?

My wife was grocery shopping last weekend and grabbed a package of our usual mushrooms, the brown crimini ones. A passerby said she should really get the white button mushrooms because they’ve got better cancer prevention properties. My first reaction to this story was “Horse Hockey!”.  Not really my exact words, but my Mom reads this blog 🙂

Of course, I had to check out. Numerous internet searches showed evidence that mushrooms (especially white buttons) inhibit the enzyme aromatase that’s necessary for the production of estrogen. Excessive estrogen has been liked to an increased risk of breast cancer. See one article here.

Another article said the chemoprotective can be seen by eating 3.5 oz. of mushrooms daily. Not a huge amount, but certainly more than we eat on a regular basis. I guess we’ll have to work a few more mushroom omelets and pizzas into the weekly rotation.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting, hope you thought so, too.