We all know the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” but now it seems this should be revised to include a mushroom a day! A study from Florida, USA has published new evidence that including shiitake mushrooms every day for four weeks significantly enhances a person’s immune system. The team recruited 52 healthy people aged 21-41 years to eat either five or 10g of mushrooms daily and monitored changes to specific immune markers in their saliva and blood. Results showed eating the mushrooms for four weeks led to numerous improvements to immune health and lowered important markers of inflammation. The team concluded that whilst numerous studies have demonstrated mushrooms to have many medicinal qualities in the lab, this is one of the few human trials to have been able to properly show their positive effects for daily use.