This review is written about “Chaga Mushroom Cultivation” by Aaron Nelson. The cover of the Chaga book states, it’s a comprehensive guide to using medicinal mushroom with benefitting recipes.
The “Chaga Mushroom Cultivation” consists of two parts. In the part named Introduction, the author has sectioned out the most common questions asked about Chaga. The first alarm bells about the quality of the book rose when looking at the table of contents, seeing the following chapters “How the Chaga Grows”, and “How Chaga Grow”. The rest of the first section consists of introducing the Chaga mushroom, its history, life cycle, why and how to harvest Chaga, with the mushroom’s benefits and health risks.
The “Benefits” chapter in the book touches briefly on health-improving aspects of Chaga like; Slowing the aging process, Lowering cholesterol, Preventing and fighting cancer, Lowering blood pressure, Supporting the immune system, Fighting inflammation, and Lowering blood sugar. Although mentioning a few studies in that chapter, the book lacks specific references to any scientific studies.
The second part of the book consists of 27 recipes, of which only twelve references some form of the Chaga mushroom. Unfortunately, most of these recipes include product placements and can be found online in their original form. The Mushroom and leek soup recipe seems to be the author’s favorite, as it repeats twice in the recipes section.
Related: Chaga Recipes
The 73-page Chaga book is full of very generic information. Printed in black and white, the book doesn’t include any images. Sadly, it’s also full of typing and grammatical errors.
It looks like there have been hundreds of low-content paperback books published by Aaron Nelson Ph.D. from “Bulldog breeding for beginners and dummies: bulldog care and information guide” to “Python analysis: the data analysis workshop”.
