Starchy fruit: breadfruit, banana-plantain, water chestnut - vegetarian lifestyle recipe book

Breadfruit is a large starchy fruit, used before it is fully ripe. The flesh is served boiled and mashed or cut into slices and roasted. Never raw. The seeds can also be roasted. The dried flesh can also be used as a flour.

Plantains contain more starch than other bananas and can be cooked as a vegetable. Banana flour is sometimes produced from plantains and used in the manufacture of baby foods.

Water Chestnuts are starchy nuts that were an important source of food in Europe in Neolithic times. They can be cooked by boiling or made into bread.

	protein	starch	sugar	fat	calcium/100g
Plantain	0.8%	23%	5.5%	0.2%	5mg

Sweet chestnut

These are an important crop of Southern Europe, and a staple food in some parts of Italy and France. They can be boiled and used as a vegetable, or used as a puree, or made into a flour for bread or pancakes. They are rich in many nutrients. They have the highest sugar content of any nut.

Starches of little nutritional value

Most refined starches have little to offer the healthy diet. These include cornflour, cornstarch, potato starch, as well as sago and tapioca (manioc, cassava).