Nutting it out

A little chestnut that weighs less than 10 grams is a traditional winter snack for food lovers in Shanghai. But eating chestnuts in China can be traced back to 7,000 years ago. References to chestnuts can be found in classic Chinese literature and poems.

The reason chestnuts became so popular in China, a nation that boasts a wide variety of food, is its delicious taste as well as its nutritional benefits. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, chestnut is good for kidneys.

In Western medicine, chestnuts are also seen as a health food. Fresh chestnuts have about 180 calories (800 kJ) per 100 grams of edible parts, which is much lower than walnuts, almonds, other nuts and dried fruit. Meanwhile, chestnuts contain no cholesterol and very little fat, mostly unsaturated, and no gluten.

Alternative ways to eat chestnuts

Other methods of eating the nut include roasting by mixing with a little sugar and drying and milling it into flour for preparing breads, cakes and pastas. Chestnuts can also be cooked with vegetables, poultry and other foods. They can be candied in sugar syrup then iced. The nut can also be peeled and eaten raw.

But the most popular method of preparing them in China is sweet and roasted.

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