Selected traditional foods from Russian Federation in the frame of BaSeFood project

Introduction. Russian Federation traditional foods are part of the cultural heritage. Some of them, unfortunately, are almost forgotten, and their recipes are preserved only in old cookbooks. Others are prepared only in some regions of Russia. However, some traditional foods are still part of the usual dietary patterns of most Russians. The latter include buckwheat porridge and, to a lesser extent, kvass and okroshka, for which consumption increases significantly in the summer. This work aims to determine the nutritional composition of five traditional foods from Russian Federation that have been prioritised in the frame of the BaSeFood project (Sustainable Exploitation of Bioactive Components Black Sea Area traditional foods). Material and methods. Five traditional foods: buckwheat porridge crumby, vegetable okroshka, watermelon juice, mustard oil and kvass southern were selected and the nutritional composition was determined. The following components: moisture, ash, total nitrogen (for protein), total fat, individual fatty acids, starch, total sugars and dietary fibre were quantified for each food. Results. The energy value for the analysed traditional foods varied between 18 kJ/4 kcal and 3760 kJ/900 kcal, for kvass southern and mustard oil, respectively. From the five selected Russian traditional foods, 3 contain mainly water (92.2  0.02 g/100 g for watermelon juice, 92.4  0.03 g/100 g for vegetable okroshka and 98.7  0.03 g/100 g for kvass southern. The food with the highest monounsaturated fatty acids content was mustard oil (55.1 ± 0.68 g/100 g), and it also has a high polyunsaturated fatty acids content (38.0 ± 0.56 g/100 g). Buckwheat porridge crumby has a significant amount of available carbohydrates (about 24%) and about 5% of total dietary fibre because it is prepared with buckwheat. For watermelon juice the available carbohydrates are mainly sugars (6.43  0.14 g/100 g). All results are given per 100 g of edible portion. Conclusions. New data on nutritional composition of Russian traditional foods will enhance the knowledge base on traditional foods which is necessary for the development of exploitation plans and will be useful for their promotion.