Mushroom Supplements: Capsules, Tinctures, Gummies and Powders

First thing worth clearing up: not everything on this shelf is something you swallow. The fufufungu liquid culture syringes are a cultivation input, made for inoculating substrate, so treat them as grow gear and nothing else. The capsules, tinctures, powders, gummies and oral sprays from Zamnesia, Foodsporen, Mushinto and Mindscopic are food supplements, each with a label that names the species, the extract ratio and when to take it. The rest of the Zamnesia Healthshop is organised the same way.

Capsules, Drops, Gummies or a Spoon of Powder

Format comes down to how you want the amount measured and how you want to get it down.

Capsules and Tinctures, the Everyday Workhorses

Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules (Zamnesia) hold 400mg of an 8:1 Hericium erinaceus extract in a plant-based HPMC shell, and the pack says 1 to 2 capsules daily with water, preferably before a meal, and not with fizzy drinks. MycoFive Mushroom Capsules put five extracts, each standardised to 30% polysaccharides, into one vegan capsule with vitamin C and vitamin B12, 60 capsules to a pack. Watch out for the arithmetic on blends: MycoFive lists 85mg of lion's mane extract per capsule against the 400mg in the single-species version, so a blend isn't a bigger version of the same thing. Power 5 Mushroom Capsules (Foodsporen) come as 60 capsules in MIRON violet glass, which keeps UV off the contents, and the sister Power 5 Mushroom Tincture swaps capsules for drops and adds vitamin D3 and B6.

Gummies, Powders and Oral Sprays

Lion's Mane Gummies (Zamnesia) are chewy and raspberry-flavoured, sugar-free at under 0.015g sugars each, with 60 vegan gummies making 30 daily servings of 400mg extract; the label says two a day, before or during a meal. Mushroom Gummies Forest Berries carry lion's mane, chaga, reishi and Cordyceps sinensis across 60 gummies, set with pectin instead of gelatine. Gummies have one catch: once the pack is open you have three months to get through it, while capsules and drops only ask for a cool, dark cupboard. Prefer to stir it into your food? The 7 Mushrooms Organic Mix is the powder version. Foodsporen also does oral sprays, StressLess, Clarity and Focus and SleepDeep, and those are product names on a bottle, nothing more.

The Latin Names on the Bottle, Translated

Across the whole shelf, these are the species you will actually see printed on an ingredients panel:

• Hericium erinaceus, lion's mane, in capsules, gummies and blends
• Ganoderma lucidum, reishi
• Cordyceps sinensis
• Inonotus obliquus, chaga
• Agaricus blazei, Agaricus bisporus and Agaricus campestris
• Grifola frondosa, maitake, and Lentinula edodes, shiitake
• Fomes fomentarius and Auricularia judae

Lion's mane appears in more products here than anything else. The multi-species packs, MycoFive and Power 5, run the same line-up: lion's mane, Cordyceps sinensis, reishi, Agaricus blazei and chaga.

What to Read Before You Add to Basket

Four lines on the pack are worth your attention. The part of the mushroom used: the fruiting body is the mushroom you would recognise on a log, the mycelium is the thread-like network it grows from, and the label names which one the extract came from. The extract ratio, written as 8:1, 10:1 or 15:1, tells you how much raw material went into the concentrate. The composition line, where polysaccharides or triterpenes are given as a percentage. And the capsule shell, since HPMC is plant-based, which is why the Zamnesia capsules and the pectin gummies suit vegan diets. These are food supplements rather than a stand-in for a varied diet, and the packs state they are not for under-18s or for anyone pregnant or breastfeeding. Buying your first one? We would take the single-species Lion's Mane Mushroom Capsules over a multi-species blend, purely because you can see at a glance what you have got, then browse the wider healthshop once you know which format you get on with.