Oriental food uses of Aspergillus
Author:
Wood BJB
Date: 20 March 2003
Abstract:
In the Western World, uses of fungi as food are few in number and bounded by a mixture of legend and taboos which often impinge only peripherally upon reality. Even in continental Europe, more macro—fungi are consumed than in the British Isles. It is automatically assumed that filamentous micro—fungi are necessarily harmful — with the sole exception of the blue and green moulds found in certain types of cheese. The modern discovery of aflatoxins offers some justification for this traditional distrust of the filamentous fungi, but the long—term nature of the effects of these toxins makes it unlikely that there is any causal connection. In the Orient, on the other hand, there has long been a clear understanding that processes closely allied to putrefaction and biodegradation can, by exercising proper control and the selection of appropriate conditions, convert rather unappetising and distinctly indigestible ingredients, into palatable and nutritious food whose rich and varied flavours contribute much to a largely vegetable diet with a tendency to blandness. The origin of these processes is lost in antiquity, presaging by three millenia our modern use of enzymes in food processing, for it is in their ability to produce substantial amounts of extra— cellular hydrolases when growing on comparatively dry substrates that we find the explanation for what must have seemed the near
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