Acceptability of Edible Mushroom as a Dietary Supplement in Oyo and Osun State of Nigeria

Poverty and malnutrition are becoming intractable. Therefore, there is a need for improvement in the nutritional quality of available food sources and/or fortification/supplementation of available food material and/or feeding behaviour to improve the nutrition especially of the low-income earners. This study focused on the acceptability of edible mushroom as a dietary supplement. Virtually all the respondents (96.6 %) know what mushrooms are, but only half (55.2 %) consumes it. Less than half of the respondents (34.5 %) know the dietary components/benefits of mushroom. A greater majority of the respondents (79.3 %) will readily buy/consume mushroom if it has both high nutritional and medicinal value, while 69.0 percent are afraid because mushrooms could be poisonous. Chi square test indicated that there is no significant relationship between the level of education of the respondents' and consumption (Chi 2 = .945; P = 002), awareness (Chi 2 = 31.302; P = .259), the nutritive value (Chi 2 = 8.937; P = .177) of mushrooms. Gender and regular consumption of mushroom was found to be significant, i.e. acceptability of mushroom were higher in men than women (Chi 2 = 9.814; P = .002). Keywords : Mushroom, awareness, nutrition and income generation. Nigerian Journal of Horticultural Science Vol. 10 2005: pp. 2-6