CHESTNUT FLOUR AND APPLICATIONS OF UTILIZATION

Abstract

In recent years, with the increasing of people’s interest in nutrition and health subjects, importance of nutrition has been increased steadily and number of studies on enrichment of foods and production of functional products have been increased. Enrichment of foods is one of the developed applications for solution of health problems which are likely to be seen in society. For this purpose, various foods having various properties are being developed with the use of different fruits and vegetables’ flours. Chestnut has a rich nutrition items, it has been used since previous times in nutrition and in daily diets due to being grown at natural conditions as well. Basically, being composed of carbohydrate, water, and a very low amount of fat, chestnut shows cereal features rather than fruit. When grinded, chestnut becomes a lightcolored flour. This flour is used in puddings, bakery products, and production of bread, breakfast cereals, soup and sauces. In food industry, there are intensive studies on the production of especially cereal products with different wheat flour and different flour additives. In the light of these studies, some Europe countries, mainly in Italy, especially use of chestnut is being widespread in commercial scale in the production of biscuit, breakfast cereal, muffin and dessert. Instead of wheat flour chestnut flour is used or added in different substitution rates. Within the scope of this review, properties of chestnut fruit, nutritional facts of chestnut, chestnut flour and properties, utilization of chestnut flour in food industry were discussed.