The use of tartary buckwheat whole flour for bakery products: recent experience in Italy

Abstract

Nowadays consumers are paying increasing attention to the health subtle bearings of the food they
consume. The term nutraceutical has been adopted to point to those food preparations which are
acknowledged to possess health beneficial properties. Most of these properties rely on the presence of
bioactive compounds in the various food ingredients. Among bioactive food components an important
group is represented by the flavonoids, of which rutin is credited to exert a multiplicity of health
beneficial effects.
Tartary buckwheat (F. tataricum), whose whole flour contains high amounts of rutin (up to 2000
mg/100 g dry weight), offers the opportunity to obtain a new range of functional foods capable of
providing the consumers effective amounts of such bioactive compound through the daily average
consumption of traditional wheat based staples like bread and biscuits.
A preliminary attempt was made to verify the possibility to secure, through the preventive nutrition
approach, the multiplicity of health beneficial properties rutin is expected to exert, thanks to the
introduction of a few percent of tartary buckwheat whole flour in the original recipe of some traditional
backed foods typical of Tuscany, a Region of Central Italy.