No fungi? No forests, no food, no future!: If you’re celebrating the festive season with cheese, bread and a
glass of wine, beer or kombucha followed by chocolate, it might be a
good time to think about fungi. It’s what makes all those tasty items
possible!

In fact, almost all food production relies on fungi. Most plants need
it to obtain nutrients and water. Trees and other plants in a forest connect through intricate fungal, or mycorrhizal, networks
of tiny mycelium threads that transfer nutrients, water and information
between them, and that facilitate decomposition, without which life
couldn’t go on.

All fermented foods
— including beer, wine, chocolate, cheese, bread, soy sauce and tofu —
require yeasts, a single-celled fungus. Fungi have also been
indispensable in preserving foods. And cows and other ruminants need gut
fungi to break down grass.

“They are also to be thanked for many of the important medical
breakthroughs in human history that treat both physical and mental
ailments, for naturally sequestering and slowly releasing carbon, for
optimizing industrial processes, and so much more,” a Guardian article reports.