Description

Chestnuts have been a major source of nutrition for many cultures over thousands of years. The Greeks and Romans cultivated wide-spreading chestnut trees that originated around the Caucasus region of the Black Sea. In Turkey there are trees today that are over 1,000 years old.
Up until the beginning of the 20th century there were four main species of chestnuts: European, American, Chinese and Japanese. The American species completely disappeared when a chestnut blight, introduced in 1904, destroyed “the giants of the Appalachian hardwood forests” (3.5 billions of trees on millions of acres) over a 40-year period.
Chestnuts, which must be cooked before eating, are a good source of many vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and minerals.