I started this site because I could not find honest answers about mushrooms.

Every question I asked online landed me on pages trying to sell me something. Lion’s mane for brain fog. Reishi for immunity. Cordyceps for energy. Turkey tail for cancer. Every claim was dressed up as science, every source was an affiliate link wearing a lab coat, and every “evidence-based” review was written by someone who had never grown a mushroom in their life.

So I built the site I wished I could read.

Who I am

My name is Jesse. I grow mushrooms. Lion’s mane, oyster, and increasingly whatever else I can source quality spawn for. I have a small home setup where I run fruiting chambers, monitor humidity and CO2, troubleshoot contamination, and watch mycelium do its quiet work on substrate.

My day job is in healthcare, working in a lab environment. The specific role is not the point, and I will not pretend it makes me a mycologist or a clinician. What it does give me is daily exposure to clinical and research literature, a working comfort level with how medical studies are structured, and a learned skepticism for claims that sound cleaner than the underlying evidence. That skepticism is what the site runs on.

Outside of work and outside of growing, I read. A lot. The mycology literature is dense, fascinating, and full of surprises that rarely make it into consumer content. Most of what I write on this site is my attempt to bridge the gap between what researchers have actually demonstrated and what the supplement industry claims they have demonstrated. Those are two very different things.

Why I cover mushrooms specifically

Three things converged.

First, I am genuinely fascinated by fungi as a kingdom of life. The more I learned, the stranger they became. They are closer to animals than to plants. They communicate through their mycelial networks. They decompose matter that nothing else will touch. They partner with tree roots in ways that keep entire forests alive. I started growing mushrooms because I wanted to see what a fungus looked like up close for longer than the twenty seconds a bite of dinner provides.

Second, I took mushroom supplements for a while before I really understood what I was buying. When I started paying attention to the labels, the certificates of analysis, the beta-glucan content, the difference between fruiting body and mycelium-on-grain, I realized how thoroughly consumers are being misled. Most of what is sold as “mushroom extract” in the US supplement market contains little actual mushroom. Most of what claims beta-glucan content is measuring something else entirely. The industry runs on the fact that customers do not know enough to verify claims.

Third, my home growing hobby gave me a ground-truth perspective. When a supplement brand claims their product is “grown on wood like in nature,” I know what that actually takes because I have done it, and I know what their production scale does not allow. When a brand says their mycelium is “as potent as the fruiting body,” I know from watching my own cultures that the two are biologically distinct and the claim is a marketing invention.

The combination of these three factors made mushrooms the thing I most wanted to write about honestly. So this is the site where I do that.

How the site is structured

The content falls into three sections, each organized around a hub page:

The Consumer Guide is the core. It covers how to read a mushroom supplement label, what certificates of analysis actually tell you, how beta-glucans are measured, what the difference is between fruiting body and mycelium on grain, and what questions to ask before you buy anything. This section is explicitly consumer-protective, not commercial. Education posts in the Consumer Guide are kept free of affiliate links so the analysis stays independent.

Cultivation covers home mushroom growing. Substrate preparation, sterile technique, fruiting chambers, troubleshooting contamination, and species-specific guides for the mushrooms I have personally grown. The advice here is based on my own setup and my own failures, not copied from forums.

Mushroom Coffee is a smaller section that evaluates the growing category of mushroom-containing coffee and adaptogenic drinks. It tends to be less optimistic than the marketing would have you believe, because most of these products contain trace amounts of mushroom extract at subclinical doses.

Around these three hubs is a growing science cluster that covers the biology underneath everything else: what fungi actually are, what mold is, where slime molds fit (they do not), and the basic facts about mycelium that supplement marketing tends to blur.

My editorial standards

I write in my own voice and sign as Jesse on every post. The site uses first-name-only authorship because I prefer it that way, not because I am hiding. My employer has nothing to do with this site, this site has nothing to do with my employer, and the choice to keep my full name off the internet is a privacy decision, not a disclosure one.

Every substantive claim on this site is cited. If a post says beta-glucan content varies between 8% and 40% in commercial lion’s mane supplements, there is a study or a batch of certificates of analysis behind that number, and the link is in the references section. If a post says a particular health claim is supported by clinical evidence, the citation will be to a peer-reviewed paper, not to a press release. If a post says a claim is unsupported, I will say why and cite the best counter-evidence available.

I update posts when I learn something new or when I got something wrong. Any substantive correction gets a changelog note at the bottom of the post.

About affiliate links, reviews, and sponsorships

I want to be honest about how this site makes money, because the supplement industry’s relationship with affiliate revenue is a big part of why consumer-facing mushroom content is so untrustworthy.

Affiliate links exist on this site. They are minimal and specifically bounded. Here is what that means in practice:

• Educational posts in the Consumer Guide (label reading, certificate of analysis explainers, beta-glucan chemistry, fruiting body versus mycelium, dual extraction, and similar topics) are kept free of affiliate links. The analysis has to be independent of any incentive for you to click.
• Where I do include an affiliate link, it is to a product I either use personally in my own routines, or that has cleared my five-step evaluation framework, which is published on the site so you can see the criteria and apply them yourself.
• I plan to publish product reviews and comparisons as the site grows. Those posts may include affiliate links to the products reviewed. The reviews will be conducted the same way regardless of affiliate relationships: full framework, disclosed criteria, stated conclusions, including negative ones when warranted.
• I will consider sponsorships in the future if the brand and the context make sense. Any sponsored content will be labeled as sponsored, at the top of the post, in plain language. No ambiguity.

What I will not do: take free products in exchange for guaranteed positive coverage, write a review where the conclusion is prearranged, include affiliate links in a post whose purpose is to educate rather than recommend, or pretend a sponsored post is organic. Those are the hard lines.

The business model is straightforward: this site has to eventually pay for itself, because otherwise it cannot exist. I am trying to do that honestly. If I ever cross a line, it is fair to call me on it.

What this site does not do

This site is not medical advice. Nothing I write is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I will cite the clinical research I know of and I will explain what it does and does not show, but the decision to take any supplement, change any diet, or try any hobby that involves live cultures is yours and your doctor’s.

This site is not a substitute for a mycologist or a clinical pharmacologist. If you are foraging wild mushrooms, consult a local expert with taxonomic training. If you are taking a mushroom supplement alongside prescription medications, consult a pharmacist. I can tell you what the research literature says about lion’s mane and memory, but I cannot tell you whether lion’s mane is safe alongside your specific medication at your specific dose.

This site does not cover psilocybin or other controlled substances. That is a different conversation with different legal and clinical dimensions, and it is not my lane.

This site does not promise cures or breakthroughs. If something I am writing about sounds too good to be true, I am going to tell you so, and I am going to show you the evidence behind my skepticism.

The honest version

I am one person writing a website because I care about the topic. I do this in the evenings and on weekends around my day job. The site will grow slowly because I am writing every word myself and refusing to cut corners on accuracy. This is probably not the fastest path to a profitable mushroom site. It is the only path I am willing to walk.

If that is the kind of mushroom content you have been looking for, welcome. I am glad you are here.

Jesse Founder and sole author, Mycology at Home