The European chestnut is an edible
nut, whose composition allowed to this fruit to represent a staple
food in Southern Europe, Turkey and Eastern Asia for hundreds of
years, largely replacing cereals. In this study, for the first time,
chestnuts were evaluated as a new support for the delivery of
probiotic microorganisms. In the first part of the work, 28 LAB
strain were screened for the ability to pass through TGI. St. thermophilus
strains are known to be sensitive to gastric acidic conditions
and, actually, just two strains out of ten showed, in agreement
with previous studies (Vinderola and Reinheimer, 2003), resistance
to the tested biological barriers. Identical percent of survivors was
recorded within St. macedonicus strains. St. macedonicus, even being
GRAS and able to pass successfully through mouse TGI
(Maragkoudakis et al., 2009), has never being systematically studied
for its potential as probiotic.