Fungi

Why would anybody want to eat fungus?!

It doesn't matter whether they say “champignons” or just plain “mushrooms”. What we are talking about is a category containing “any of a diverse group of eukaryotic single-celled or multinucleate organisms that live by decomposing and absorbing the organic material in which they grow, comprising the mushrooms, moulds, mildews, smuts, rusts, and yeasts”, and they are classified in the kingdom Fungi. In short, they're fungus!

So we are talking about a category of life form that is not a plant; nor is it animal. It's only relatives are mould (AmE: “mold”) and mildew.

Well I don't want to eat mould or mildew; they are horrible filth that has to be eradicated from the tiles in the bathroom. I don't eat things like that; and I don't eat mushrooms either. I cannot understand the fuss people make about them, the trouble they go to to find them (going out early and walking for miles to pick them), or the risks that they run of self-poisoning by picking the wrong kind.

People tell me “but they're lovely!” and so I can reveal I have had the misfortune to try mushroom. They tend to appear in steak and mushroom pie. Mushroom is like trying to eat bits of beige rubber. Yuck. As for other colours and varieties, and the way some people go to such trouble to get them ... they are still cousins of slime and mildew!! Direct spawn of rot and decay! No thank you.