What’s the best thing to drink during flu season?

Many people seem to recommend “detox” drinks and supplementing with extra vitamins.

This all has its place, but what if the real hidden gem of flu prevention came from something closer to earth?

In my recent post about mushroom supplements, we dove into a little bit of the research-backed benefits of supplementing with these little fungi.

But just to recap, what are they?

The 5 best reasons to include more mushrooms in your diet

1. They can stop & even reverse tumor growth

2. They’re powerhouse antioxidants

3. Certain strands can improve athletic performance

4. Mushrooms contain compounds that prevent diabetes

5. Certain strands of mushroom are some of the best immunity-boosting compounds in the world

Yeah… you can see why I’m a little bit obsessed with them.

And an even cooler thing to note is that apparently, their benefits are truly unlocked when you heat them up.

So, no need to force-feed yourself raw mushrooms in order to “preserve” the nutrients!

How do you make mushrooms taste better?

What a great question. Let me answer that right quick.

When cooking with mushroom powders, you’ve already got the benefit of having them heated up to extract the nutrient benefits once. So you don’t need to worry about hitting a “magic number” temperature to unlock them again.

Since powders are a waaaaay easier way to get ahold of some of the rarer superfood mushrooms, I’ve been playing with better ways to incorporate them into delicious recipes.

Depending on the mushroom strain, each powder will taste different.

And honestly, they kinda taste terrible if you’re just tasting the powder… which is really annoying, since Cordyceps powder literally smells like sugar cookies.

But the good news is that though they taste like actual dirt by themselves, pure mushroom powders are quite easy to blend into otherwise-tasty foods.

My recommendation would be to start out trying recipes with stronger flavors, like this, to get used to it.

Incorporating spices that are used to help balance other flavors is a good little trick. Think cinnamon, lemon, cayenne. Tastes that are used to “cut” the bitterness of other things often work well for mushroom powders, too.

Because honestly, I don’t even notice that the mushrooms have been blended into this one. And one of those spices just so happens to be the secret ingredient in here. ;)

Let’s get to this flu season drink recipe, yes?

Flu Season Mocha

Prep time: 10 minutes (including coffee-brewing time)

Yield: 1 serving 

Ingredients

1 cup brewed coffee of choice

1 scoop Vital Proteins Mocha Creamer

1/2 tsp chaga extract

1/2 tsp organic ceylon cinnamon

Stevia, to taste (optional)

1/2 tsp cordyceps extract, if you’re already sick + need mental endurance to continue working (obviously not recommended, but sometimes you’ve gotta do it!)