If you’ve ever stood in front of a wall of mushroom supplements trying to figure out why one
bottle is $15 and another is $35, this is the post that explains it.
The answer comes down to two words on the label that most brands hope you don’t ask about:
fruiting body and mycelium.
Two parts of the same organism — but not the same thing.
Remember your mom telling you “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”?
Now think hard. Did your mom ever say “eat a root from an apple tree and you’ll never need a
doctor”?
No. Of course not.
That’s the difference between fruiting body and mycelium in one sentence.
A mushroom is the fruit of a much larger underground organism. The mycelium is the root
system — the network living down in the log or soil. The mushroom that pops up out of it is the
fruit. For Lion’s Mane, that fruit — the white, shaggy, pom-pom-looking thing — is called the
fruiting body. It’s the part traditional medicine has used for over two thousand years. It’s the part
the research is being done on. It’s the part that actually contains the compounds people are
buying Lion’s Mane for in the first place: hericenones and erinacines.
It’s also the only part anyone has ever cooked with. When a chef puts Lion’s Mane on a plate,
they’re cooking the fruiting body — the mushroom itself. We’ve been selling fresh mushrooms to
5-star restaurants, produce stores, and farmers markets for years. Not once has a chef, a buyer,
or a customer ever asked us to bring along the spent blocks so they could work them into a
recipe. Because nobody eats the substrate. Nobody ever has.
The mycelium has its own compounds and its own potential benefits, but it is not the same as
the fruiting body — and it is not what most of the published research on Lion’s Mane is studying.
Here’s where the supplement industry gets sneaky.
Growing a real mushroom takes time, space, controlled conditions, and a lot of hands-on work.
Growing mycelium is faster, cheaper, and easier — you can do it in a bag of grain in a few
weeks.So a lot of companies do exactly that. They grow mycelium on a bed of grain (usually oats, rice,
or sorghum), wait a few weeks, then grind the whole thing up — mycelium, leftover grain, and all.
From there, it gets dried into a powder for capsules, soaked in alcohol and sold as a tincture, or
blended into instant coffee — same shortcut, just packaged three different ways.
That product gets labeled “Lion’s Mane.” Sometimes it’ll say “full-spectrum” or “myceliated grain”
in the small print. What you’re actually getting is mostly starch from the grain the mycelium grew
on, a small amount of mycelium, and little to no actual mushroom.
A lab analysis of these products will often show high levels of starch and very low levels of the
compounds the mushroom is known for. You’re paying for filler dressed up as a supplement.
Let’s do the math.
This is the part nobody in the industry wants to show you.
Lion’s Mane is grown in bags of substrate — the soil-like growing medium the mushroom feeds
on. Commercial bags typically run 6 pounds or 10 pounds. A 6-pound bag will, on average,
produce a 2-pound mushroom. A 10-pound bag will average a 3-pound mushroom. Bigger or
smaller from there depending on the grower, but those are the numbers the industry runs on.
Here’s what happens next, depending on who’s growing it.
Company A doesn’t wait. They let the mycelium colonize a 6-pound bag for a few weeks, then
grind up the entire bag — substrate and all — and run it through their manufacturing process.
Starting material: 6 pounds.
Company B waits for a mushroom to actually grow on top of the bag, harvests it, and then grinds
up the mushroom and the spent 6-pound bag together. Starting material: about 8 pounds.
Us. We use 6-pound bags of substrate we make ourselves from Michigan hardwood and
Michigan-grown soy. We wait for the mushroom to grow. We harvest the mushroom — about 2
pounds on average — and then the spent 6-pound substrate bag leaves the farm. Some of it
goes home with friends and family who use it as compost in their gardens. The rest gets picked
up by a local landscaping company that uses it as a high-end compost for their clients. Starting
material: 2 pounds. Pure Michigan mushroom.
In all the years we’ve been growing mushrooms, I have never once looked at a spent block and
thought about grinding it up and eating it. It’s compost. It belongs in a garden, not in a bottle
headed for someone’s body.
Now look at what just happened. Company A starts manufacturing with three times the raw
weight we do. Company B starts with four times. Both of them are running that extra weight —
mostly grain and spent substrate — through the same extraction process and pouring it into the
same bottles you see on the shelf next to ours.That’s how a competitor’s bottle ends up costing half of what ours does. Not because they’re
more efficient. Not because we’re overpricing. Because they’re filling the bottle with the bag.
Three things you’ll see on labels — and what they actually mean.
“Mycelium” or “myceliated grain” — No mushroom. Mycelium grown on grain, harvested
together, ground into powder. Usually the cheapest option, and usually the weakest.
“Mycelium and fruiting body” — A blend. Sometimes honest, sometimes a way to put a small
amount of real mushroom on the label while the bulk of the product is still mycelium and
substrate. Read the fine print.
“Fruiting body only” or “100% fruiting body” — Just the mushroom. No grain, no leftover
substrate, no shortcuts. More expensive to produce, and the only version that matches what the
research is actually studying.
Why we only use the fruiting body — and why we use hot water to extract it.
When we started Arbor Spring Farms, we made a decision: if we’re going to grow mushrooms for
people who are paying attention to what they put in their bodies, we’re going to grow the actual
mushroom. Not the root system. Not the grain it grew on. The mushroom.
We also made a decision about how to extract it. We use hot water — the same method
traditional medicine has used for two thousand years, and the same method most of the modern
clinical research uses. Hot water pulls the beta-glucans and other water-soluble compounds out
of the cell walls of the mushroom, which is how your body actually gets access to them. No
alcohol. No solvents. No chemistry-set additives. Just the mushroom and water, done slowly and
done right.
Every product we make — tincture, powder, coffee — starts with Lion’s Mane fruiting bodies we
grew ourselves in Michigan, harvested at peak potency, and hot-water extracted without any filler
riding along. It’s slower. It’s more expensive. It’s the only way we’re willing to do it.
So when you compare our Lion’s Mane to something half the price on a big-box shelf, that’s the
gap you’re looking at. Not branding. Not markup. The actual mushroom, versus mostly grain.
The bottom line.
If a Lion’s Mane supplement doesn’t clearly say “fruiting body only” on the label, assume it isn’t.
Flip the bottle, read the small print, and look for the words. The supplement industry counts on
most people not knowing the difference.
Now you do.Curious what real fruiting-body Lion’s Mane feels like? Our tincture is hot-water extracted from 100%
Michigan-grown fruiting bodies — no mycelium, no grain, no fillers. Born-on dated so you know
exactly when it was made.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to
diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
