well, that explains a lot...i heard a partial explanation on this once....tried it with 3 kids on vv2 and only got one mushie...now I know why!!!

its been working well in VV1 to help my villagers get food while i wait for scientists to get enough tech points together so i can buy lev 3 farming

VV1:

When my villagers got low on food, and wouldn't always plant new crops on their own (they were tending to run out of food and started starving themselves when I "quit" the game), I finally made the decision to buy the third level of farming tech (I'd been trying to hold out, because I wanted the third level of construction instead). This taught them to fish, and gave them an infinite food supply. Now when I quit the game, I don't have to worry about them running low on food, because they automatically fish, and even plant and harvest crops. This also seems to help the scientists continue their research, because they're not pacing back and forth, "worrying about food".

Sorry for the double post. I went to edit, only to find there's no edit button.

Anyway, I tried that mushroom trick, just to see if it would work, and cool! It did.

Yeah sorry guys, I did forget to mention that not all the kids stay on. Hadn't worked out about the 2 oldest kids tho, so that was interesting to know, I just thought it was random.

That's right for VV2! But in VV1, all the kids may pick it up (except if it too late! )