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Writer's picturePurps

The Story- The why and how I started this business, the scams/corruption that plagues our society, and the magical medicinal benefits of mushrooms.

Updated: Nov 26




Greetings! Greetings, this is Dan The Mushroom Man! Purps Produce is an urban farming business in Winnipeg that specializes in gourmet/medicinal mushrooms, herbs, vegetables. I love sharing knowledge about natural medicines, and the scams going on in big pharma, and the industrial food system that wreak havoc on our health/environment. I have been featured on CJOB, CTV and Global news and I want to inform you about some serious information and scams that are going on. My business is more of a mission than a business. It is about making and inspiring change away from the evil corrupted systems that have plagued us for so long. Scams and misinformation are all around us. It can be overwhelming, which can create anxiety, depression and disease, all the while making these scammers filthy rich where they gain more capital and power to invest into and perpetuate their scam via fancy yet deceitful marketing campaigns.  I believe the solution to be at our fingertips, and the best way to solve it is to first become informed. If we are informed about the scams we not only can protect ourselves and others from them but we can hold them accountable. We need to stop making them filthy rich and powerful, where they will continue to use their greed and wealth to perpetuate more scams on us. Hopefully we can stop them, but for now let's just get informed. So Let’s Get Into It! First off, did you know that Japan has one of the highest life expectancy in the world? Did you know that for decades, Japan has been using medicinal mushrooms in their hospitals to help cure cancer and other diseases? In fact, in 1987 Japan spent 25% of their cancer research money on medicinal mushrooms such as Turkey Tail and still use it in their hospitals today. So why isn’t Canada doing what Japan and other countries with the highest life expectancies are doing? Why aren't we using these natural medicines if they are proven to work? The reason is simple, greed, and corruption. It has been long known that many corporations only care about profit and will do almost anything to make more money. Do you think Big Pharma is any different? Instead of using medicines that naturally exist in nature to cure diseases, pharmaceutical companies synthesize their own “medicines” in a lab. That way they can get a patent for it, meaning they own it, and can charge whatever they want for it, and since you can't patent nature or mushrooms that naturally exist, then you can’t make as much money off of it. One of the most obvious examples of fungi being used as medicine is Penicillin. It’s the most widely used antibiotic in the world, and it comes from the mold Penicillium. It cures infections that can cause the loss of limbs or death.  Before penicillin was made commercially available, people that knew how to use the mold would take that mold from bread or cheese and rub it on themself to cure infections. Fast forward to today and we have mushrooms like Turkey Tail, which are used extensively in other countries like Japan to help cure diseases like cancer. You can validate some of this for yourself by searching online, but keep in mind, google searches are very well groomed and skewed so to find valid information is difficult, especially when trying to look up Japan's data while you are in North America.  Medicinal mushrooms have many properties such as; anti cancer, anti inflammatory,  antioxidant, anti viral, anti bacterial and they also restrict blood vessels that feed tumors. Now what drug does that? No drugs do that, because mushrooms are not drugs, they are functional natural medicines. Medicinal mushrooms not only can help cure a variety of health problems, but they can improve your overall health, daily functioning and prevent you from ever getting sick. Again, you can't live an ignorant and/or wreck less lifestyle, exposing yourself to a constant mass of toxins and expect that taking some of these mushrooms will magically cure you and feel on top of the world, but here are some examples of what benefits some of the mushrooms I offer have been reported to do.  Cordyceps mushroom helps increase blood flow to essential organs and muscles, so athletes can experience less fatigue and more fuel during their workouts. Lions Mane mushroom has been growing in popularity as a nootropic because it has a unique compound in it that stimulates nerve growth in the brain and aids in neurogenesis. There have also been placebo controlled studies showing those taking Lions Mane scored higher on aptitude tests compared to the placebo. I often get asked what they have done for me, and I don’t feel comfortable telling people that so instead I tell people what customers have reported to me and there has been a surprising range of benefits I didn’t even think were possible, such as chronic foot swelling going away when they were taking my “Super Mushroom Blend” sample size (2 week supply)  and when they ran out the swelling returned so they came back to buy the larger size. Or people reported sleeping better, in a better mood and even their blood pressure disorder never feeling so good. I often tell my customers that it could just be a placebo, but even if it is, it is still a win for them and it shows that we have the power to heal ourselves. So I can’t sit here and claim it will do anything for you, but there absolutely is some science proven benefits that these mushrooms can have as well as I have been given excellent feedback from many people who use it. But realistically a lot of us need a lot of lifestyle/diet/spirituality and personal growth changes to better heal ourselves or prevent future health problems. I believe I do have some answers and cures to anxiety, depression, feeling lost and hopeless in this world that often seems like is hell, I also wrote a blog on my website further explaining the benefits of rare nutrients/compounds in mushrooms if you want to learn more, and I hope to write more blogs on health in general. Some stuff you can look up on your own is “the dirty dozen” which are the fruits/vegetables that have the most harmful chemicals on them that you want to stay away from. Also, DO NOT drink tap water. Order spring water from Jackson Springs or drive out and fill your own jugs up at Matlocks Artisan well (near Gimli MB) We should NOT be ingesting fluoride, chlorinated etc. water. Check out Dr. Andrew Huberman’s videos on it. He is a tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Standford University School of Medicine and has a terrific podcast.(link at bottom) So not only do medicinal mushrooms work but best of all they are extremely safe and affordable, with ultimately no side effects, unlike most modern medicine that has inserts in the packaging  listing hundreds of side effects. Also, Big Pharma does not want us getting healthy because healing yourself and becoming healthy is an extremely bad business model for them. If everyone is healthy then they won't have customers anymore. It is the same reason that they stopped making light bulbs that could last a lifetime or why appliances would last generations. They realized a better business model is to have it burn out after a while. It’s one thing to do that with appliances but with our health? Industrial Farming It wreaks havoc on the environment and our health. We monocrop vegetables that are full of toxic chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, fungicides that kill everything. The only way certain crops survive the dousing of toxic chemicals is because they genetically modified them to survive these poisons. These crops are also very nutrient deficient, they are grown in dead soil and only can survive because they add the few fertilizers that are mandatory for the crops to survive, which are; nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. So It is no wonder we suffer from so many physical/mental health problems. You are what you eat. I learned a lot about the awful truth and consequences of industrial farming systems which is the reason I created my Urban Farming business Purps Produce. I wanted to do something that was meaningful, and I couldn’t think of a better way, at least achievable for me, other than urban farming, which is where I could not only inspire change in our industrial farming/ big pharma scams but also I could learn how to be self reliant and not helpless where I have to rely on our corrupt governments and systems to take care of myself. To start I converted my entire front lawn into a flourishing garden and focused mainly on plant foods/medicines, because I didn’t know anything about mushrooms at the time. As I was learning to grow food I also started learning how to forage. (foraging is  going out in nature and looking for wild edibles) But when I started learning about mushrooms, I was in awe. Most of us only know of a few mushrooms, mainly the white button mushroom, I didn’t know there roll in the environment and how the mycelium spreads far and wise underground, and connect to plant roots where the exchange nutrients with each other, or that there were so many valuable gourmet mushrooms that offer completely different culinary experiences with flavors and textures. I also learned about the unbelievable potent medicinal uses that literally can cure diseases, infections, help blood pressure and even stimulate nerve growth in our brain etc. Nobody was really growing them here, and the vegetable farming market is a saturated market, so I dove in head first to learn and start growing mushrooms. Acquiring the unique skills and equipment needed to cultivate mushrooms has been a huge undertaking, but it has been paying off as I am a vendor at many markets such as the St Norbert farmers market and able to make a living doing what I love. I get to expose some of the corruption in our society that plagues us while being able to offer a truly wonderful line of products. One last important message I want to get out is the scams in the mushroom supplement industry. Most brands that claim to have mushroom powder in their products are FAKE. As someone who actually grows mushrooms for a living, I know how to tell the difference and wrote a blog on my website detailing it. It is critically important to be informed about this so you can share the information to anyone you know who is buying mushroom powder and expecting to benefit from the medicinal uses of it, but instead were tricked into buying fake filler filled mushroom powder. The scam in short is, There are companies that grow mushroom mycelium on oats or rice, they then take the entire oat mycelium substrate and dehydrate it, then powder it and market/sell it as mushroom powder. They hide the fact that it is 90% filler. They don’t even include oats on the ingredient list, There are many brands wanting to take advantage of the mushroom medicine hype but because the fake mushroom powder is cheaper, they buy this fake mushroom powder wholesale and put in their own packaging and branding on it and claim it is pure mushroom powder.  But it’s just a giant scam. Even our local health food stores carry and sell these fake mushroom powder products and the staff has no idea, and often promote the scam powders because they are just ignorant. The staff will blindly promote it because they “heard” good things about it, but they never actually properly looked into it themselves. But even if they do try and look into it themselves, these scam powders marketing tactics is very hard to decipher. They are well funded and have very deceiving packaging, websites, and have thousands of 5 star reviews. These companies spend so much money to convince us that they have the real stuff that has the real benefits. If you read my blog it explains in detail some clues to see past the deception including quotes from my email discussion with North America's largest oat mycelium farm/supplier, where I inquired about their product and how much mushroom/mycelium is in their product and they admitted, While there is no direct method of measuring the amount of pure mycelium and the amount of myceliated substrate (no longer oats, but not quite pure fungal material either), we estimate that the myceliated substrate content to be approximately 10%” So there you have it, they estimate it to be 10% mycelium, and their claim that the 90% rest is "no longer oats" is redundant. regardless of what you wanna call it, it is still 90% filler. AND THEY DON'T EVEN TELL YOU THAT OATS ARE EVEN IN THE INGRIDIENTS! If you want the REAL STUFF, which is 100% pure mushroom fruiting body, My most popular item is “The Super Mushroom Blend”It is a dehydrated mushroom powder blend that contains some of the world's most medicinal mushrooms. To use you just take 1tsp (2g) worth in a drink of your choice. You don't want to be taking mushroom powder in capsules or tinctures, it is a rip off. I used to make tinctures and I could capsule them too, but there is way too little medicinal mushroom compounds in the capsules or tinctures to be of much benefit. A capsule only has around 0.2g worth in it, and you want at least 1tsp, or 2-3g worth. So you would have to take 10 capsules to get a proper dose, and since you pay more for it to be capsuled there is no point to doing it that way. You can find me at local farmers markets around the city. (the schedule/locations is on website) or you can order right off my website, just SEND ME A MESSAGE. I can ship dehydrated products but since I also offer fresh mushrooms, mushroom grow kits and other stuff that I can’t ship you need to send me a message to order.

Thanks for reading and please spread the word! The only way to stop the scammers and fix society is to get informed of the truth and to share it with others!



MUSH LOVE


-Dan The Mushroom Man



Links


My site




Dirty Dozen




Andrew Huberman- Fluoride/Tap water


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