Jeff Chilton, BS

Jeff is one of the foremost experts in the mushroom industry in the US, earned through decades of growing experience. Jeff studied ethnomycology – historical uses and sociological impact of fungi – at the University of Washington in the late 1960s, then went on to work on a commercial mushroom farm in 1973.

Over the following decade, he became the production manager, responsible for the cultivation of over 2 million pounds of Agaricus mushrooms per year. He was also involved in the research and development of shiitake, oyster, and enoki mushrooms, which ultimately resulted in the earliest sales of fresh shiitake mushrooms in the US in 1978. The presence of multiple varieties of mushrooms in grocery stores is something many of us kinds of take for granted now. But they weren’t always readily available in American stores, and we have Jeff to thank at least in part for that shift.

Fast-forward to 1989: Jeff founded Nammex, a business that introduced medicinal mushrooms to the US nutritional supplement industry. Jeff’s company was the first to offer a complete line of Certified Organic mushroom extracts to the US nutritional supplement industry. Nammex extracts are now used by many supplement companies and are noted for their high quality based on analysis of the active compounds.