In this review we take a closer look at Whole Earth & Sea Super Mushroom. This supplement combines six organic mushrooms with the addition of beta-glucans and their trademarked “Farm Fresh Factors”, a proprietary blend of natural vegetables, fruits and herbs to provide extra nutrients. The manufacturer claims that this natural supplement supports immune and cognitive health as well as energy and stress management. We examined labels and perused customer reviews in order to compile a comprehensive report on this product.
Super Mushroom is not available to buy from Whole Earth & Sea, but their website gives clear details of all the locations where it’s sold, and it can also be bought from various online retailers. With a suggested retail price of close to $60 for a month’s supply, this pricing is a few dollars above what we found to be average pricing for a mushroom complex supplement.
While we were unable to find any reviews on the company’s own website, we found a majority of very positive ones on other sites claiming that it does what it says it will do, as we’d hope and expect from a well-established company. However, we always feel more comfortable buying from companies who offer a money-back guarantee, which regrettably, the manufacturer of this product did not choose to do.
Continue reading this review to see if this is the mushroom complex supplement choice for you.
Is Whole Earth & Sea Super Mushroom Effective?
In order to discern whether or not a supplement is effective, we must look at the list of ingredients and the quantities of each ingredient.
The first ingredient and the one that has the highest quantity is actually not a mushroom at all. Whole Earth & Sea have chosen to add 250mg Wellmune®, a functional brewer’s yeast ingredient with concentrated beta-glucans. Although this does not typically appear in many pure mushroom products, we see the inclusion of this clinically-proven ingredient as a plus point for this product. Beta glucans are the main active beneficial compound in medicinal mushrooms, and although they can be found naturally in the mushrooms themselves, this company has chosen to boost the amount and therefore increase the product’s immune-supporting properties.
Next on the list are the mushrooms themselves. There are 50mg of each mushroom included – Maitake, Shiitake, Reishi, Cordyceps, Chaga and Lion’s Mane mushrooms. We were very happy to see that Whole Earth & Sea have used extractions from fruiting bodies only, meaning that your money is spent on the real thing rather than a product that contains high levels of grains, mycelium or fillers. However, this is less than half of the dose that is offered in our Editor’s Choice product. To be a more effective mushroom complex, we would have liked at least 8 mushroom varieties included, if not 10 like the amount in our #1 choice.
The final main ingredient in this supplement is called “Farm Fresh Factors”, an intense concentrate unique to this company and included in most of their formulations. The inclusion of this ingredient is the reason why Super Mushroom is classified as a “whole food” supplement – one that is derived from blends of concentrated whole foods. It includes a blend of over 40 different fruits, vegetables, roots, shoots and herbs. Whole Earth & Sea claims that this format can provide people not only with the micronutrients we are familiar with – vitamins and minerals – but also those that we may not be, such as phytonutrients. Although this all sounds positive, it should be noted that this still constitutes a proprietary blend which we do not advocate. The ingredients are clearly displayed, but not the exact amounts, so it’s hard for a consumer to know how much value they’re getting. Unscrupulous manufacturers can use this blend to hide the fact that their product only contains tiny amounts of the active ingredients listed. Thankfully, Super Mushroom is made without any fillers, artificial additives or GMO ingredients, but we still would have preferred to see a better ratio of mushrooms to the 200mg of proprietary blend.
Additionally, we were disappointed to see that this product does not include a bioavailability enhancer such as BioPerine® with standardized minimum 95% Piperine. Piperine is an alkaloid found in black pepper which has been shown to increase the absorption and bioavailability of nutrients. Including this in their mushroom complex would have served to impress us more, but unfortunately we didn’t find any such addition.
Is Whole Earth & Sea Super Mushroom Safe?
We did not find anything to indicate that this product is unsafe. As with any new supplement or diet introduced into your daily life, we always advise talking to your healthcare professional before taking any new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, have any health conditions or are taking other medications.
We were more than satisfied with this company’s diligence with certification and safety concerns. They are manufactured in accordance with GMP of the FDA and Health Canada, and certified by PACS, a leader in organic certification. As well as mass spectrometry testing in their own laboratories, they also have third-party certification by ISURA which offers a broad range of analytical methods to ensure purity, potency and integrity of natural products. This testifies to this supplement’s status as being non-GMO, organic, pesticide-free and solvent-free.
Summary
Whole Earth & Sea Super Mushroom seems to be a quality mushroom complex product. We like that they have put a focus on the measurement of the beta-glucan content and the assurance that extracts were only taken from the fruiting bodies of the fungus. It is free of gluten, corn, soy and nuts, it’s certified organic from non-GMO sources, and is suitable for vegans and vegetarians. However, it only contains 300mg of mushrooms, less than half the dose of our Editor’s Choice product! And the selection of mushroom types was limited to only six. As a result, this product is not as pure or as much of a potent blend needed in order to achieve optimal health benefits. In addition, the company has chosen to put a big emphasis on their “Farm Fresh Factors” blend of added raw plants, and although this is clearly beneficial to some degree, we feel that it has come at the expense of other ingredients such as the actual mushrooms and a bioavailability enhancer. By taking the suggested serving of only 1 capsule per day, we find ourselves questioning the true benefits of this product, which is why it only made #3 in our list.
