A life cycle assessment of Agaricus bisporus mushroom production in the USA

Abstract

Purpose Stakeholders across the food product supply chain are increasingly interested in understanding the environmental effects of food production. Mushrooms are a unique food crop, grown in the absence of sunlight and in climate controlled environments. Few life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have been conducted previously on mushrooms and none in the USA. This study assesses the cradle-to-gate life cycle environmental impacts of mushroom production in the USA from cultivation to harvest and preparation for bulk packaging. Methods This process-based LCA uses primary data from mushroom producers to define the foreground system. Primary data for operations were collected from compost and mushroom producers in the USA, representing approximately one third of US mushroom production. Secondary data were collected from life cycle inventory databases and other published resources to define background systems and process emissions from the foreground system. The study uses a functional unit of 1 kg mushrooms and applies the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) impact analysis method, supplemented with additional impact categories for energy use, freshwater use, and 20 and 100-year global warming potentials (GWPs) with and without carbon-climate feedback. Results and discussion Results show that GWP 100 impacts range from 2.13 to 2.95 kg CO 2 e/kg of mushroom product, slightly lower than previous mushroom LCAs conducted for Australian and Spanish production systems. Electricity and fossil fuels were the most impactful inputs, not just for GWP, but most other impact categories as well, followed by compost materials, compost emissions, and transportation. Transport of peat, a key input to the mushroom production substrate, and compost materials contributed to 60 and 36% of the total transportation impacts, respectively. The co-product generated by the system, spent mushroom substrate (SMS), was handled using the displacement method. SMS generated very small credits to the system, less than 1% in every impact category. Conclusions Recommendations to improve the commercial mushroom production process include reducing electricity and fossil fuel use through on-site renewable energy generation. This recommendation is primarily relevant to mushroom producers in the Eastern region of the USA, where the electricity grid is the most coal and fossil fuel-intensive. Future work should contextualize the results of this study in the context of nutrition, meal, or diet-level assessments to enable informed food choices.

Consumer acceptance of egg white partially substituted with mushrooms and mushroom–egg white flavor pairing

“…Mushrooms are low in calories, fat, sodium, and cholesterol, but high in protein, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and micronutrients (Kalač, 2016a). Nevertheless, the global mushroom consumption is approximately 4.5 kg annually per capita (Robinson et al., 2019). There is ample room to increase incorporating mushrooms in dishes to promote consumption.…”

“…This study aimed to develop prototypes of mushroom–egg white patties, investigate their consumer acceptance, and identify mushroom–egg white flavor pairing qualities. Two Agaricus bisporus mushrooms (white and crimini) were used in this study, since they are the most commonly consumed mushroom species (Robinson et al., 2019). The most common consumption scenario is the culinary use including roasted mushrooms in salads, entrees, burgers, and sandwiches (Du et al., 2021).…”

Impacts of home cooking methods and appliances on the GHG emissions of food

“…Data on pre-cooking GHG emissions for the different foods were taken from existing literature and aggregated with the cooking impacts estimated from the survey 2,5,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] . The share of total impact represented by each cooking method was also based on the survey.…”

Growing Progress in the Evolving Science, Business, and Policy of Sustainable Nutrition

“…As with almonds, the mushroom LCA presentation has also been published in the scientific literature (23), with the highlights given in the ASN presentation briefly described here. Mushrooms present a unique case for the LCA, as they are grown without sunlight and usually under tightly controlled conditions.…”