The most popular food in the fall season is chestnuts. Autumn lovers look forward to these months of the year to taste this product again, both cooked and raw. The chestnut is a high energy food and, therefore, it has remarkable nutritional properties, which manage to make it the ideal fruit for the contrast of certain ailments. But you have to be careful, because despite this, its consumption is not suitable for everyone.
Now let’s try to learn a few more things about this particular seasonal plant. The chestnut tree is a typical plant of the temperate regions of Europe, Asia and also West Africa, generally the trees are located mainly in the hills or mountains where the chestnuts are harvested in the months of October and November . As mentioned above, the chestnut is a food with a high energy capacity, a characteristic to be taken into account.
More specifically, the calories they contain depend in particular on the complex carbohydrates they contain, that is to say essentially starch. In chestnuts we also find a good percentage of proteins of medium biological value and also an insignificant amount of unsaturated fats. The important elements of this fruit are fiber, carbohydrates and purines. As for cholesterol, there is no trace of it in chestnuts. Moreover, they do not even contain considerable amounts of histamine, so, therefore, they do not cause frequent allergic-type adverse reactions.
Doctors also recommend them because they bring a lot of mineral salts to our body, such as potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, magnesium, calcium and iron. Let’s not forget the vitamin aspect, in which we find instead vitamin C in large quantities, which however is lost when the fruit is cooked because the vitamin is very heat-sensitive. Chestnuts, like all foods, have their own advantages and disadvantages, and therefore are suitable for some subjects rather than others. In general, since they are mainly composed of carbohydrates and calories, their consumption should not exceed two/three times a week.
Precisely because of their high nutritional value, they fit into the diet of people suffering from: vitamin deficiency, anemia, weakness and constipation. In addition, it is rich in folic acid, a substance that helps prevent certain types of fetal malformations, which is why chestnuts can be recommended in the diet of pregnant women. Finally, all these characteristics make them suitable for a diet for high cholesterol, which is based on low-fat foods.