A campaign to promote button mushrooms is being launched by growers in Poland under slogan: “Time for a white mushroom”. The project is financed in 80 percent by the Fund for the Promotion of Fruit and Vegetables and in 20 percent by producers of cultivated mushrooms.
The misson of campaign to increase culinary awareness of the consumers – to show how important component of a healthy diet and good food is the white mushroom. According to farmers, Poles eat far less cultivated mushrooms than the average European: just under two kilograms in a year, while in Germany this is closer to four.
Krystian Szudyga, head of the Association of Mushroom Cultivators, based in Skierniewice, some 50 kilometres from Warsaw, claims that Poles are not fully aware of the assets of the fungus. “It has anti-oxidants, mineral salts, microelements such as selenium which is very important; it can be easily prepared and doesn’t need to be peeled, so it takes even less time than it once did,” Szudyga explains.
The campaign will feature tasting events, accompanied with the distribution of leaflets and advertising. A special cookbook devoted to button mushrooms is to be published, in which chefs advise that button mushrooms are best accompanied by butter, fresh-milled black pepper and white wine. Poland takes first place in Europe in production of button mushrooms, and is the biggest exporter of the mushroom, mostly to Russia. In 1965, production reached less than 1.5 metric tons of these mushrooms, Puls Biznesu reports. Today, production stands at around 250,000 tons every year. Poland has surpassed Holland’s production and has become Europe’s biggest producer and exporter of white mushrooms.
