Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world | Video on TED.com

Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world | Video on TED.com
I love this! Could mushrooms save the world? Help japanese Tea's with radiation clean up? Hmmmmm.....


Here is the Transcript:
I love a challenge, and saving the Earth is probably a good one. We all know the Earth is in trouble. We have now entered in the 6X -- the sixth major extinction on this planet. I often wondered if there was a United Organization of Organisms -- otherwise known as "Uh-Oh" -- (Laughter) -- and every organism had a right to vote, would we be voted on the planet or off the planet? I think that vote is occurring right now.

I want to present to you a suite of six mycological solutions, using fungi, and these solutions are based on mycelium. The mycelium infuses all landscapes, it holds soils together, it's extremely tenacious. This holds up to 30,000 times its mass. They're the grand molecular disassemblers of nature -- the soil magicians. They generate the humus soils across the land masses of Earth. We have now discovered that there is a multi-directional transfer of nutrients between plants, mitigated by the mcyelium -- so the mycelium is the mother that is giving nutrients from alder and birch trees to hemlocks, cedars and Douglas firs.

Dusty and I, we like to say, on Sunday this is where we go to church. I'm in love with the old-growth forest, and I'm a patriotic American because we have those. Most of you are familiar with portobello mushrooms. And frankly, I face a big obstacle. when I mention mushrooms to somebody, they immediately think portobellos or magic mushrooms, their eyes glaze over, and they think I'm a little crazy. So I hope to pierce that prejudice forever with this group. We call it mycophobia, the irrational fear of the unknown when it comes to fungi.

Mushrooms are very fast in their growth. Day 21, day 23, day 25. Mushrooms produce strong antibiotics. In fact, we're more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom. A group of 20 eukaryotic microbiologists published a paper two years ago erecting opisthokonta -- a super-kingdom that joins animalia and fungi together. We share in common the same pathogens. Fungi don't like to rot from bacteria, and so our best antibiotics come from fungi. But here is a mushroom that's past its prime. After they sporulate, they do rot. But I propose to you that the sequence of microbes that occur on rotting mushrooms are essential for the health of the forest. They give rise to the trees, they create the debris fields that feed the mycelium.

And so we see a mushroom here sporulating. And the spores are germinating, and the mycelium forms and goes underground. In a single cubic inch of soil, there can be more than eight miles of these cells. My foot is covering approximately 300 miles of mycelium.

This is photo-micrographs from Nick Read and Patrick Hickey. And notice that as the mycelium grows, it conquers territory and then it begins the net. I've been a scanning electron microscopist for many years, I have thousands of electron micrographs, and when I'm staring at the mycelium I realize that they are microfiltration membranes. We exhale carbon dioxide, so does mycelium. It inhales oxygen, just like we do. But these are essentially externalized stomachs and lungs. And I present to you a concept that these are extended neurological membranes. And in these cavities, these microcavities form, and as they fuse soils, they absorb water. These are little wells. And inside these wells, then microbal communities begin to form. And so the spongy soil not only resists erosion, but sets up a microbial universe that gives rise to a plurality of other organisms.

I first proposed, in the early 1990s, that mycelium is Earth's natural Internet. When you look at the mycelium, they're highly branched. And if there's one branch that is broken, then very quickly, because of the nodes of crossing -- Internet engineers maybe call them hot points -- there's alternative pathways for channeling nutrients and information. The mycelium is sentient. It knows that you are there. When you walk across landscapes, it leaps up in the aftermath of your footsteps trying to grab debris. So I believe the invention of the computer Internet is an inevitable consequence of a previously proven biologically successful model. The Earth invented the computer Internet for its own benefit, and we now, being the top organism on this planet, are trying to allocate resources in order to protect the biosphere.

Going way out, dark matter conforms to the same mycelial archetype. I believe matter begets life, life becomes single cells, single cells become strings, strings become chains, chains network. And this is the paradigm that we see throughout the universe.

Most of you may not know that fungi were the first organisms to come to land. They came to land 1.3 billion years ago, and plants followed several hundred million years later. How is that possible? It's possible because the mycelium produces oxalic acids and many other acids and enzymes, pockmarking rock and grabbing calcium and other minerals and forming calcium oxalates. Makes the rocks crumble, and the first step in the generation of soil. Oxalic acid is two carbon dioxide molecules joined together. So fungi and mycelium sequester carbon dioxide in the form of calcium oxalates. And all sorts of other oxalates are also sequestering carbon dioxide through the minerals that are being formed and taken out of the rock matrix.

This was first discovered in 1859. This is a photograph by Franz Hueber. This photograph's taken 1950s in Saudi Arabia. 420 million years ago, this organism existed. It was called Prototaxites. Prototaxites, laying down, was about three feet tall. The tallest plants on Earth at that time were less than two feet. Dr. Boyce, at the University of Chicago, published an article in the Journal of Geology this past year determining that Prototaxites was a giant fungus, a giant mushroom. Across the landscapes of Earth were dotted these giant mushrooms. All across most land masses. And these existed for tens of millions of years.

Now we've had several extinction events, and as we march forward -- 65 million years ago -- most of you know about it -- we had an asteroid impact. The earth was struck by an asteroid, a huge amount of debris was jettisoned into the atmosphere. Sunlight was cut off, and fungi inherited the Earth. Those organisms that paired with fungi were rewarded, because fungi do not need light. More recently, at Einstein University, they just determined that fungi use radiation as a source of energy, much like plants use light. So the prospect of fungi existing on other planets elsewhere, I think, is a foregone conclusion, at least in my own mind.

The largest organism in the world is in Eastern Oregon. I couldn't miss it. It was 2,200 acres in size. 2,200 acres in size, 2,000 years old. The largest organism on the planet is a mycelial mat, one cell wall thick. How is it that this organism can be so large, and yet be one cell wall thick, whereas we have five or six skin layers that protect us? The mycelium, in the right conditions, produces a mushroom -- it bursts through with such ferocity that it can break asphalt. We were involved with several experiments. I'm going to show you six, if I can, solutions for helping to save the world. Battelle Laboratories and I joined up in Bellingham, Washington, there were four piles saturated with diesel and other petroleum waste. One was a control pile, one pile was treated with enzymes, one pile was treated with bacteria and our pile we inoculated with mushroom mycelium. The mycelium absorbs the oil. The mycelium is producing enzymes -- peroxydases -- that break carbon-hydrogen bonds. These are the same bonds that hold hydrocarbons together. So the mycelium becomes saturated with the oil, and then, when we returned six weeks later, all the tarps were removed, all the other piles were dead, dark, and stinky. We came back to our pile, it was covered with hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms -- and the color changed to a light form. The enzymes re-manufactured the hydrocarbons into carbohydrates -- fungal sugars.

Some of these mushrooms are very happy mushrooms. They're very large. They're showing how much nutrition that they could've obtained. But something else happened, which was an epiphany in my life. They sporulated, the spores attract insects, the insects laid eggs, eggs became larvae. Birds then came, bringing in seeds, and our pile became an oasis of life. Whereas the other three piles were dead, dark and stinky, and the PAH's -- the aromatic hydrocarbons -- went from 10,000 parts per million to less than 200 in eight weeks. The last image we don't have -- the entire pile was a green berm of life. These are gateway species. Vanguard species that open the door for other biological communities.

So I invented burlap sacks -- bunker spawn -- and putting the mycelium -- using storm blown debris you can take these burlap sacks and put them downstream from a farm that's producing E. coli, or other wastes, or a factory with chemical toxins, and it leads to habitat restoration. So we set up a site in Mason County, Washington, and we've seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of coliforms. And I'll show you a graph here. This is a logarithmic scale, 10 to the eighth power. There's more than a 100 million colonies per gram, and 10 to the third power is around 1,000. In 48 hours to 72 hours, these three mushroom species reduced the amount of coliform bacteria 10,000 times. Think of the implications. This is a space-conservative method that uses storm debris -- and we can be guaranteed that we will have storms every year.

So this one mushroom, in particular, has drawn our interest over time. This is my wife Dusty with a mushroom called Fomitopsis officinalis -- Agaricon. It's a mushroom exclusive to the old-growth forest, that Dioscorides first described in 65 A.D. as a treatment against consumption. This mushroom grows in Washington state, Oregon, Northern California, British Columbia, now thought to be extinct in Europe. May not seem that large -- let's get closer. This is extremely rare fungus. Our team -- and we have a team of experts that go out -- we went out 20 times in the old-growth forest last year. We found one sample to be able to get into culture.

Preserving the genome of these fungi in the old growth forest I think is absolutely critical for human health. I've been involved with the U.S. Defense Department BioShield program. We submitted over 300 samples of mushrooms that were boiled in hot water, and mycelium harvesting these extracellular metabolites. And a few years ago, we received these results. We have three different strains of Agaricon mushrooms that were highly active against pox viruses. Dr. Earl Kern, who's a smallpox expert of the U.S. Defense Department, states that any compounds that have a selectivity index of two or more are active. 10 or greater are considered to be very active. Our mushroom strains were in the highly active range. There's a vetted press release that you can read -- it's vetted by DOD, if you Google "Stamets" and "smallpox." Or you can go to NPR.org and listen to a live interview.

So, encouraged by this, naturally we went to flu viruses. And so for the first time I am showing this. We have three different strains of Agaricon mushrooms highly active against flu viruses. Here's the selectivity index numbers -- against pox, you saw 10s and 20s -- now against flu viruses, compared to the ribavirin controls, we have an extraordinarily high activity. And we're using a natural extract within the same dosage window as a pure pharmaceutical. We tried it against flu A viruses -- H1N1, H3N2 -- as well as flu B viruses. So then we tried a blend, and in a blend combination we tried it against H5N1, and we got greater than 1,000 selectivity index. (Applause) I then think that we can make the argument that we should save the old-growth forest as a matter of national defense. (Applause)

I became interested in entomopathogenic fungi -- fungi that kill insects. Our house was being destroyed by carpenter ants. So I went to the EPA homepage, and they were recommending studies with metarhizium species of a group of fungi that kill carpenter ants, as well as termites. I did something that nobody else had done. I actually chased the mycelium when it stopped producing spores. These are spores -- this is in their spores. I was able to morph the culture into a non-sporulating form. And so the industry has spent over 100 million dollars specifically on bait stations to prevent termites from eating your house. But the insects aren't stupid, and they would avoid the spores when they came close, and so I morphed the cultures into a non-sporulating form. And I got my daughter's Barbie doll dish, I put it right where a bunch of carpenter ants were making debris fields, every day, in my house, and the ants were attracted to the mycelium, because there's no spores. They gave it to the queen. One week later, I had no sawdust piles whatsoever.

And then -- a delicate dance between dinner and death -- the mycelium is consumed by the ants, they become mummified and, boing, a mushroom pops out of their head. (Laughter) Now after sporulation, the spores repel. So the house is no longer suitable for invasion. So you have a near-permanent solution for re-invasion of termites. And so my house came down, I received my first patent against carpenter ants, termites and fire ants. Then we tried extracts, and lo and behold, we can steer insects to different directions. This has huge implications. I then received my second patent -- and this is a big one. It's been called an Alexander Graham Bell patent -- It covers over 200,000 species. This is the most disruptive technology, I've been told by executives of the pesticide industry, that they have ever witnessed. This could totally revamp the pesticide industries throughout the world. You could fly 100 Ph.D. students under the umbrella of this concept, because my supposition is that entomopathogenic fungi, prior to sporulation, attract the very insects that are otherwise repelled by those spores.

And so I came up with a Life Box because I needed a delivery system. The Life Box -- you're gonna be getting a DVD of the TED conference -- you add soil, you add water, you have mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi as well as spores, like of the Agaricon mushroom. The seeds then are mothered by this mycelium. And then you put tree seeds in here, and then you end up growing -- potentially -- an old growth forest from a cardboard box.

I want to re-invent the delivery system, and the use of cardboard around the world, so they become ecological footprints. If there's a YouTube like site that you could put up, you could make it interactive, zip code-specific -- where people could join together, and through satellite imaging systems, through Virtual Earth or Google Earth, you could confirm carbon credits are being sequestered by the trees that are coming through Life Boxes.

You could take a cardboard box delivering shoes, you could add water -- I developed this for the refugee community -- corns, beans, and squash, and onions. I took several containers -- my wife said if I could do this, anybody could -- and I ended up growing a seed garden. Then you harvest the seeds -- and thank you, Eric Rasmussen, for your help on this -- and then you're harvesting the seed garden. Then you can harvest the kernels, and then you just need a few kernels -- I add mycelium to it, and then I inoculate the corn cobs. Now, three corn cobs, no other grain -- lots of mushrooms begin to form. Too many withdrawals from the carbon bank, and so this population will be shut down. But watch what happens here. The mushrooms then are harvested, but very importantly, the mycelium has converted the cellulose into fungal sugars. And so I thought, how could we address the energy crisis in this country? And we came up with Econol.

Generating ethanol from cellulose using mycelium as an intermediary -- and you gain all the benefits that I've described to you already. But to go from cellulose to ethanol is ecologically unintelligent, and I think that we need to be econologically intelligent about the generation of fuels. So we build the carbon banks on the planet, renew the soils -- these are a species that we need to join with. I think engaging mycelium can help save the world. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Flavorings in Tea, by Flavoring Manufacturer Definition

As I prepare to set off to the Sustainable Food Convention in San Francisco next week, I thought to post something revelvant to this. But instead, or somewhat off this path but not too much, I have decided to post a very hot topic in what you need to know when you venture in to creating your own private label tea or custom tea blend with flavors, especially if you are going in to the area of organic or natural OR 100% organic.


Below is a list of definitions of flavoring categories provided by the manufacturers of flavors to the coffee and tea industry:

Artificial Flavor: A flavor derived from 100% synthetic (man-made) ingredients.

Natural & Artificial Flavor: A flavor derived from both natural ingredients and synthetic ingredients.

Natural Flavor: An example of this natural flavor would be entitled "Natural Apple Flavor". This indicates the product consists of ingredients only derived from apples.

Natural WONF: An example of this natural flavor would be entitled "Natural Apple WONF". This indicates the flavor contains at least one ingredient derived from apples and also contains other natural ingredients which replicate and apple taste. The WONF term is short for "with other natural flavors".

Natural Type Flavor: An example of this natural flavor would be entitled " Natural Apple Type Flavor". This indicates the flavor contains 100% natural ingredients. However, none are derived from an apple but the taste and aroma replicate an apple.

Organic compliant flavors can be any of the last three natural flavors. The difference is the ingredients cannot be derived from sewerage sludge or irradiated. Also. no synthetic solvent can be used in the manufacture of any ingredient. No synthetic solvent can be used as a carrier in the flavor system.

If some one is really concerned about the presence of chemicals then they should use organic blends where all the ingredients meet the requirement. One reason that the natural flavor category distinction has less relevance for non-organic products is that people mistakenly assume the rest of the “natural” ingredients in a non-organic blend such as tea, hibiscus etc are pesticide and chemical residue free which is not true. Therefore to fixate on only the flavor portion of it which is usually about two to three percent of a total blend, is not as useful as people think.

-Desiree Nelson
QTrade Teas and Herbs
Business Development
949 766 0070 x525
desiree@qtradeteas.com

natural flavors and essential oils in tea

11.08.10
natural flavors and essential oils in tea
Posted in T Ching - blog
by Zhena Muzyka


At Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, we get an enormous number of calls from tea drinkers asking what “natural” as in “natural flavors” means. Tea drinkers are increasingly aware that “natural” is a loose term that can mean almost anything - and they are right.

The FDA loopholes on flavorings are vast, rendering the term “natural” meaningless if there is no organic certification attached that ensures auditing of ingredients and labeling laws. Organic certification ensures auditing, a level of checks and balances that would not otherwise be implemented regarding tea production.

Standards committees at retailers have created lists of chemicals that are not allowed in the products they sell, but there is not a standards committee verifying that manufacturers’ ingredients are free of these chemicals. The only way to ensure you are not ingesting chemicals when sipping flavored teas is to buy flavored teas that are certified organic.

The history of flavored teas began in China with the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906), during which teas were flavored with plum juice, cloves, ginger, peppermint, onions, and salts.

The Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) began the use of essential oils in tea - lightly blending their leaves with essences of lotus, jasmine petals, and chrysanthemum. According to The Book of Tea, the higher classes preferred scented and flavored teas, showing themselves to be more adventurous in taking tea.

According to The Sage Report’s US Tea is Hot Report:

“For every ten pounds sold of the higher end specialty teas - those selling over thirty dollars per pound - one hundred pounds of specialty flavored tea reaches US consumers’ cups. The middle tea market…flavored, delicious, aromatic and nicely packaged, will outpace the growing but supply-restricted (annual output for the next 5-10 years) stocks of unflavored, long leaf, orthodox teas. Purists may cringe, but the mega-marketers are gearing up for a specialty tea future that is flavored, flowered and spiced.”

Flavor Terminology

To clarify flavor terminology for our tea drinkers, I use the following descriptions:

Artificial Flavor: A flavor derived from 100% synthetic materials (not found in nature), such as Ethyl Vanillin, which is listed on the ingredients statement of some milk chocolate bars.

Nature-Identical Flavor: A term used mostly in Europe. All ingredients are man-made, but are also found naturally occurring in nature. An example is vanillin, which occurs naturally as white crystals on a vanilla bean after curing. Vanillin also has a nature-identical version (artificial) derived through the processing of lignin, which is a by-product of paper manufacturing and is an economical source of man-made vanillin. Man-made vanillin has the same chemical structure as natural vanilla. However, due to the fact it does not come from a natural source, it is termed NATURE-IDENTICAL. Both categories - ARTIFICIAL and NATURE-IDENTICAL - are coded in the United States as ARTIFICIAL.

Natural & Artificial Flavor: A flavor derived from natural and artificial ingredients.

Natural Flavor: A flavor derived 100% from the title material. An example would be a Natural Cherry Flavor, which is derived entirely from cherries. (Many companies use this term for any and all types of flavors.)

Natural WONF Flavor: This flavor must contain at least one ingredient from the title source, such as cherry. All other ingredients must come from other natural sources.

Natural Flavor Blend Flavor: All ingredients in this flavor must be natural, but none are derived from the title material. A Cherry Type Flavor, NFB is derived from 100% natural chemicals, essential oils, oleoresins, floral absolutes, solid extracts, fluid extracts, distillates, juices, and essences, but none of these ingredients are derived from cherries.

How Flavors are Created

Natural flavors are usually distilled, while artificial flavors are a blend of chemical compounds, even plastics! An example of an artificial flavor carrying agent is Propylene Glycol, which is a colorless, viscous, hygroscopic liquid. It serves as a humectant - a substance that retains moisture content. It makes the skin feel moist and soft and keeps products from drying out.

Propylene Glycol is used in anti-freeze, brake and hydraulic fluid, de-icers, paints and coatings, floor wax, laundry detergents, and tobacco, as well as in cosmetics, toothpastes, shampoos, deodorants, lotions, processed food, dog food, and many more personal care products.

The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Propylene Glycol states:

“Implicated in contact dermatitis, kidney damage and liver abnormalities; can inhibit skin cell growth in human tests and can damage cell membranes causing rashes, dry skin and surface damage.

Acute Effects: May be harmful by inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption. May cause eye irritation, skin irritation, gastro-intestinal disturbances, nausea, headache and vomiting, and central nervous system depression.”

Natural Carrying Agent - Alcohol

Alcohol has been made for thousands of years - it’s a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, produced when glucose is fermented by yeast. During the making of alcoholic drinks, the alcohol content is controlled by the amount of yeast and the duration of fermentation.

Fruits are used to make wines and ciders, and cereals, such as barley and rye, form the basis of beers and spirits. These substances provide the flavor associated with each individual drink. Alcohol bases evaporate during the blending process, leaving the flavor behind to work its magic on our taste buds.

Shelf Life: Natural flavors last up to one year under favorable storage methods, while artificial flavors last two solid years. Essential oils like Earl Grey’s oil of Bergamot will only last 4-8 months, while natural raspberry is reported to last only 2 weeks.

Volatility: Natural flavors tend to be more volatile than artificial. This means that they evaporate more quickly and are changeable and inconsistent - in one word, fickle.

Scent Effects

Natural scents and flavors can enhance and change moods, like clinical aromatherapy, while artificial flavors do not have the same olfactory effects. Basically, natural flavors contain the sunshine, while artificial flavors made in a lab lack it. I call my blends, “Sunshine in a cup,” due to their pure flavors. Here are some great aromatherapy benefits when using real essential oils. You can view my aromatherapy chart for tea blending at gypsytea.com.

1. Bergamot oil reduces appetite.
2. Jasmine, Cardamom, Cinnamon, and Orange Blossom are all aphrodisiacs.
3. Bergamot, Lemon, and Rose are antiviral.
4. Bergamot, Grapefruit, Jasmine, Lavender, Orange, and Lemon Verbena are antidepressants.
5. Cardamom, Juniper, Lemongrass, and Rosemary alleviate boredom and stimulate mental clarity and attentiveness.
6. Fennel, Lime, and Lemon are great detoxifiers.
7. Anise, Bergamot, Cardamom, Fennel, and Rosemary aid digestion.
8. Rose, Jasmine, and Grapefruit induce euphoric emotions.
9. Emotional coldness can be warmed by using Black Pepper, Ginger, and Grapefruit.
10. Jasmine, Lavender, and Lemon relieve headaches.
11. Chamomile and Lavender are for sleep.
12. Menopausal hot flashes can be lessened with Fennel and Roman Chamomile.
13. Poor memory is helped with Cardamom, Peppermint, and Lemongrass.
14. Bad breath is lessened with Bergamot, Cardamom, and Peppermint.
15. Bergamot, Chamomile, Grapefruit, Jasmine, Lavender, Lemon and Lemongrass, Orange Rose, Pine, and Tangerine are all used to east tension and stress.
16. PMS is helped by Bergamot, Rose, and Tangerine!

Here’s to your health, dear tea drinker! I hope this helped you gain the knowledge to be empowered to make the best choices for you and your health when it comes to flavored and scented tea options.

Original Article and more from T Ching found here: http://www.tching.com/2010/11/natural-flavors-and-essential-oils-in-tea/