Review: Four Sigma Foods Mushroom Drinks
Review: Four Sigma Foods Mushroom Drinks
You’re reading that right: The newest superfood you’re about to start consuming is the good old mushroom — only this time powdered and served as a hot beverage.
This innovation is being brought to you by Four Sigma Foods, which has created no less than 12 different mushroom-infused drink packets, including flavored coffee, flavored cocoas, and more mushroom-forward concoctions. Different varieties of each are available, as are products made with different types of mushrooms.
Why mushrooms? Hell if I know. Health benefits (immunity, etc.), Four Sigma says. These beverage mixers are designed particularly for people who take mushroom supplements (who knew?) but want something more potent than off-the-rack pills.
I checked out a trio of products spanning the line. I can’t tell you if they’ll boost your immune system, but here’s a look at what you can expect from the taste department.
Four Sigma Instant Reishi Mushroom Drink is one of the company’s best-sellers, made with reishi mushrooms, star anise, mint leaf, licorice root, and stevia. Here it’s particularly hard to detect much mushroom at all, as the sweet stevia, licorice, and anise all make much more of an impact. It’s a pleasant enough beverage, though a bit sweet for my tastes — and not something I’d likely drink on a regular basis. B- / $35 for 20 packets
Mushroom is slightly more detectable in the Four Sigma XOCO Red Hot Cacao Drink Mix, which adds cordyceps mushrooms to a packet of cacao, coconut palm sugar, guarana, and cayenne pepper. The mushroom gives the hot chocolate an earthy underpinning and provides an herbal finish to the drink. If you like your hot cocoa with less sugar and more depth, it’s one to try. B / $20 for 10 packets
The Four Sigma Mushroom Coffee adds cordyceps and chaga mushrooms to coffee powder (remember this is instant, not something you brew). Bring your own sweetener. Here you’ll find the most mushroom flavor of them all, going head to head with the coffee character to create a pungent, earthy, and sultry spin on coffee. Sure, it isn’t cold pour-over, but as instant goes, it’s surprisingly palatable and intriguing. B / $15 for 10 packets
Four Sigma Mushroom Coffee
$15
Wow, I had no idea that cordyceps is more than a the horrifying parasite.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Cordyceps
Cordyceps are a group of parasitic fungi containing over 400 described species. Their hosts are ususally insects but they can also infect other fungi. One species parasitizes ants and can change its victim’s behaviour. The cordyceps impels the ant to climb up a stem where it dies. From this elevated vantage point the fungus’s fruiting body grows out of the victim’s body, allowing the spores to be more widely distributed by the wind. Some species, such as the caterpillar fungus, are considered to have medicinal properties in China and Tibet.