The Uncomfortable Truth About Quinoa
#1
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More and more reasons why we must eat locally grown food!
We must start considering the impact of our market habits.
A truly enlightened population will.


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The Guardian / By Joanna Blythman
Can Healthy Food Eaters Stomach the Uncomfortable Truth About Quinoa?
The people who first cultivated the grain can't afford to eat it.
January 18, 2013

Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fit in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods".

Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as a credibly nutritious substitute for meat. Unusual among grains, quinoa has a high protein content (between 14%-18%), and it contains all those pesky, yet essential, amino acids needed for good health that can prove so elusive to vegetarians who prefer not to pop food supplements.

Sales took off. Quinoa was, in marketing speak, the "miracle grain of the Andes", a healthy, right-on, ethical addition to the meat avoider's larder (no dead animals, just a crop that doesn't feel pain). Consequently, the price shot up – it has tripled since 2006 – with more rarified black, red and "royal" types commanding particularly handsome premiums.

But there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fuelled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.

In fact, the quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there.

It's beginning to look like a cautionary tale of how a focus on exporting premium foods can damage the producer country's food security. Feeding our apparently insatiable 365-day-a-year hunger for this luxury vegetable, Peru has also cornered the world market in asparagus. Result? In the arid Ica region where Peruvian asparagus production is concentrated, this thirsty export vegetable has depleted the water resources on which local people depend. NGOs report that asparagus labourers toil in sub-standard conditions and cannot afford to feed their children while fat cat exporters and foreign supermarkets cream off the profits. That's the pedigree of all those bunches of pricy spears on supermarket shelves.

Soya, a foodstuff beloved of the vegan lobby as an alternative to dairy products, is another problematic import, one that drives environmental destruction [see footnote]. Embarrassingly, for those who portray it as a progressive alternative to planet-destroying meat, soya production is now one of the two main causes of deforestation in South America, along with cattle ranching, where vast expanses of forest and grassland have been felled to make way for huge plantations.

Rest of article:
http://www.alternet.org/food/can-healthy...79751&t=16
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#2
Just discussing this on my other forum. However, I must confess to never having had quinoa. But if you want to eat local what are your parameters? Wheat? Corn? Rice? Are you eating local? I doubt I am.
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#3
Back about 13 years ago we tried quinoa with boy due to his diet alterations. Nasty shit, but he ate it once in a while. We still keep a little around for the warden to graze on but boy and I refuse to eat it.
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#4
(01-19-2013, 09:48 PM)Tiamat Wrote: Just discussing this on my other forum. However, I must confess to never having had quinoa. But if you want to eat local what are your parameters? Wheat? Corn? Rice? Are you eating local? I doubt I am.

I have some but haven't made it yet.
It's supposed to be really good for me because of the high protein.
Tiamat, I'm just as questioning as you about this.
I don't know what our parameters should be.
I'm just to the point of understanding how it's all going wrong.
I love organic brown rice from the Sacto Valley...that's local, right?
And someone needs to start farming quinoa.
Hmmm...parameters.
I'd have to include California rice and artichokes. Confused
Maybe Idaho potatoes...although there's those great big delicious ones from
Klamath.
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#5
(01-19-2013, 10:21 PM)Clone Wrote:
(01-19-2013, 09:48 PM)Tiamat Wrote: Just discussing this on my other forum. However, I must confess to never having had quinoa. But if you want to eat local what are your parameters? Wheat? Corn? Rice? Are you eating local? I doubt I am.

I have some but haven't made it yet.
It's supposed to be really good for me because of the high protein.
Tiamat, I'm just as questioning as you about this.
I don't know what our parameters should be.
I'm just to the point of understanding how it's all going wrong.
I love organic brown rice from the Sacto Valley...that's local, right?
And someone needs to start farming quinoa.
Hmmm...parameters.
I'd have to include California rice and artichokes. Confused
Maybe Idaho potatoes...although there's those great big delicious ones from
Klamath.


The article you post mentions the Fife Diet failure to successfully grow Quinoa. Don't' know if it could happen here. There's a challenge on MT I believe for eating locally with different levels.
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#6
(01-19-2013, 10:34 PM)Tiamat Wrote: The article you post mentions the Fife Diet failure to successfully grow Quinoa. Don't' know if it could happen here. There's a challenge on MT I believe for eating locally with different levels.

Interesting....so what are locavores eating right now?
Preserved food from the summer?
They must have root cellars and stored grain.
Mushrooms are local.
Or proficient hunters and fishermen!
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#7
Now I'm drifting from the op, but England went into extreme rationing and increased it's local food production. As a model to look at , how would you feel about using that as your current diet now. Even then, the health of those living on the national rationing improved, due to less processed and more whole food, with reduced fat and extra veg and whole meals and in general less calories:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...tions.html


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Can a modern family survive on wartime rations?

[Image: WartimeRations_468x387.jpg]

While this was ostensibly introduced to share out limited resources, there was a secret agenda behind the weekly food allowances: to attack "dietetic ignorance" among the population and so improve the nation's health.

It worked. Britons ate better than they ever had before or, some experts claim, since.

As a result of the balanced diet provided by rationing, children's health improved and on average they were taller and heavier than before the war.

The incidence of anaemia and tooth decay dropped - while the average age at which people died from natural causes increased, despite the stresses and strains of war.

The principles behind rationing sound surprisingly similar to today's health messages: reduced consumption of meat, fats and sugar and more of the sort of foods, such as vegetables, which provide essential vitamins and minerals.



So would a wartime diet help us today? The greatest benefit would be the cut in calories.

Under rationing, men were allowed 3,000 calories a day - slightly higher than 2,500 recommended today. But the reality is most of us consume as much as 3,100 calories.

As Dr Toni Steer, a nutritionist with the Medical Research Council, explains: "Whatever people consume today, it is too much. The reason so many of us are overweight is because we eat too much and exercise too little.


A war-time regiment would also help reduce your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as cancers such as post-menopausal breast cancer, kidney and colon cancer.

Under rationing, people ate very little meat.

"On average in the UK we eat 40-50 per cent more protein than we actually need," says Dr Steer. Eating less meat would reduce the risk of heart disease, and possibly bowel cancer.

When it comes to fat, although we eat only a fraction more than people consumed during the war, far more of our fat is saturated.

But perhaps the biggest change in swopping to a wartime regimen would be the reduction in sugar.

Under rationing, every adult was allowed 8oz (230g) a week - on average we have twice that now.

Just one bowl of a typical breakfast cereal, a serving of baked beans with lunch and a Jaffa Cake would take you over your World War II sugar ration without so much as a sprinkling of white stuff.

As well as affecting dental health, excess sugar consumption has been linked to weight gain, diabetes and by some experts even to cancer.

During the war they even drank their tea more healthily. Research has shown that three cups of tea a day can cut the risk of heart attack by 11 per cent and stave off some forms of cancer.

But you get greater benefit from its healthgiving properties if you let leaves steep for five minutes in a pot rather than giving a tea bag a quick dunk in a mug.


And when it comes to fruit and vegetables, the wartime diet lacked the variety experts say we need to get essential vitamins and minerals.

But if the wartime diet was healthier than what most of us eat today, is it actually practical? And would it be enough to sustain the frenetic pace of our modern lifestyle? We asked a family of six to live on rations for ten days. Here is their verdict.

DEE BROOKER, 38, a housewife, husband Colin, 45, a civil servant, and their four children (Felicity, eight, Oliver, seven, Emily, four, and Ben, two) live in Oxfordshire. Dee says:

The first shock was the weekly shop. My supermarket trolley is normally groaning with breakfast cereal, pizzas, pasta and snacks (including eight or nine packets of biscuits) but it now contained porridge oats, cornflakes, wholemeal bread, milk and rather grubby-looking root vegetables.

I'd had to clear out the food cupboards and was rather ashamed of the piles of crisps, cereal bars, biscuits and chocolate. But I was also worried about how on earth we were going to manage - like many parents, we use food treats as bribes and I don't have an alternative parenting strategy.

And although the rations cost less than half my normal shop, I wasn't sure an entire family would survive for a week on so little.

Breakfast was the first hurdle - this is usually Coco Pops or chocolate chip brioche rolls, and I wasn't sure the kids would even try anything else. But they did eat the porridge.

A typical lunch is sandwiches ( chocolate spread for the children, ham or cheese for the adults), crisps, cheese strings, yoghurts - the older children have school dinners.

The wartime version was corned beef sandwiches (wholemeal bread) plus an apple for Colin; jam sandwiches and slice of homemade cake with sliced apple for the children.

I think dinner was the most difficult. We usually have something like readymade enchiladas with beef mince, followed by cheesecake or biscuits.

One of our first wartime dinners was vegetable terrine, ham with mashed swede; wholemeal bread and butter; roly poly pudding; homemade biscuits.

The first thing I noticed was how little food we were wasting. Because we all snack throughout the day, no one is hungry at meal times, and I frequently throw good food in the bin.

But because supplies were limited, I had to serve smaller portions, and the kids were rationed to one homemade biscuit after school.

Every time I placed a meal on the table they'd stare at it in horror, then hunger would get the better of them. I told them this was it, if they didn't eat it there was nothing else (which was true), and they all at least tried everything I made. We had surprisingly few complaints (although I know they did miss
And as we were filling up on vegetables at every meal - a lot more than we would eat normally - we weren't hungry between meals and didn't feel the urge to snack.

After nearly ten days I'd lost 2lb and was back to a size 10, and Colin was thrilled to have lost 5lb and half an inch off his waist.

Emily and Ben appeared slimmer - a good thing as they were looking rather chubby. The others were on school dinners which is probably why there was no difference in their weight.

Colin and I also had more energy, and our digestive systems seemed to benefit - we've both become wonderfully regular in our trips to the loo.

But I think the real transformation was in the children: they slept better, had more energy and weren't as "hyper"; there was markedly less fighting and whingeing.

And Oliver was transformed - he normally spends a lot of time slumped in front of the TV and is quite lethargic, but he's been extremely active, careering around like a madman, which is totally out of character.

The only blip was when he once resolutely refused to eat any more porridge and then wouldn't come to the table to join us for spam fritters at lunchtime.

I finally managed to win him round with some plain air-popped popcorn, and he joined us for the evening meal (fish pie with parsnips).

Now that we've gone back to our old food, the tantrums and general irritability levels have started to rise.

They have returned to the old "I want" whingeing, which is probably my fault for having treats like chocolate biscuits in the kitchen again.

But I am determined not to let so much sugar and additives creep into our diet.

I guess the real downside of wartime rationing was the preparation time.

Meals normally take me about 30 minutes and while I really enjoyed cooking from scratch and the fact that I could see exactly how much salt, sugar and fat we were eating, it all took so long.

One day I spent five hours chopping and preparing food and I was tied to that cooker for two to three hours most days.

It's a real shame that so much convenience food has to be unhealthy and that the only way to get really good food is to spend a lot of time preparing it.

Nutritionist's verdict

Dr Steer says: Wartime rations seem to have boosted the family's vegetable and fibre intake.

This will have improved the efficiency of their digestive systems and made them feel less lethargic.

Sticking to this diet longer term would help their cardiovascular health.

The switch from grazing on highlyrefined, sugary, salty snacks to eating three main meals a day would also have improved their energy levels.

Unrefined foods result in a slower release of energy into the blood, which avoids the energy peaks and troughs associated with eating sugary, refined foods.

But I'm not sure the wartime diet provides the variety and choice that makes eating an enjoyable, pleasurable experience.

The modern diet presents huge opportunities for variety, and research is increasingly showing that a varied diet provides the best balance of nutrients we need to be healthy.

We just need to eat a little less.


Now of course by this, I mean to utilize some workable version of the Wartime ration diet at home .
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#8
Interesting.
Sometimes it feels as though I need to be forced into it, myself.

BTW, what is mashed swede?????
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#9
It's hard to eat them whole.
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#10
(01-19-2013, 11:31 PM)Clone Wrote: Interesting.
Sometimes it feels as though I need to be forced into it, myself.

BTW, what is mashed swede?????

A swede? A turnip or rutabaga. Easy to grow in a back yard garden by the way, with greens for harvesting and a low glycemic root for later.
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#11
(01-19-2013, 11:46 PM)Tiamat Wrote:
(01-19-2013, 11:31 PM)Clone Wrote: Interesting.
Sometimes it feels as though I need to be forced into it, myself.

BTW, what is mashed swede?????

A swede? A turnip or rutabaga. Easy to grow in a back yard garden by the way, with greens for harvesting and a low glycemic root for later.

I just finished a rather good novel set on the island of Guernsey during WW!!.
When the coffee ran out they devised a coffee substitute made from ground, roasted turnip. It didn't sound very appetizing.
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#12
I have tried quinoa in 3 different recipes... Bleck! It is NOT something I will ever choose to eat again. DISLIKE!
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#13
Another consequence of quinoa and the land and the people is that it is providing some financial security for those farmers that had otherwise useless patches of soil.
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#14
By sucking up what already were scarce water resources, leaving everybody else without while their local crops are priced beyond their reach and exported? You have a funny set of values, OL.

Let me guess. Some local politician collected some graft off this too, and that's a plus.
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#15
(01-20-2013, 10:13 AM)PonderThis Wrote: By sucking up what already were scarce water resources for water, leaving everybody else without while their local crops are exported and priced beyond their reach? You have a funny set of values, OL.

You don't read much do you? The land quinoa is grown on is useless otherwise. It's land that is already drought stricken and has poor nutritional value for growing. That's what makes it perfect for quinoa. It has helped small, poor family farmers have a little bit if financial security and be able to afford a few things we take for granted.
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#16
(01-20-2013, 10:17 AM)orygunluvr Wrote:
(01-20-2013, 10:13 AM)PonderThis Wrote: By sucking up what already were scarce water resources for water, leaving everybody else without while their local crops are exported and priced beyond their reach? You have a funny set of values, OL.

You don't read much do you? The land quinoa is grown on is useless otherwise. It's land that is already drought stricken and has poor nutritional value for growing. That's what makes it perfect for quinoa. It has helped small, poor family farmers have a little bit if financial security and be able to afford a few things we take for granted.

You're right, I got sidetracked in the original article by this statement "It's beginning to look like a cautionary tale of how a focus on exporting premium foods can damage the producer country's food security. Feeding our apparently insatiable 365-day-a-year hunger for this luxury vegetable, Peru has also cornered the world market in asparagus. Result? In the arid Ica region where Peruvian asparagus production is concentrated, this thirsty export vegetable has depleted the water resources on which local people depend." Upon research, I can't find that Quinoa production relies on anything but rainfall. Someone else tell me if that's wrong.
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#17
Quinoa grows perfectly where it is, so the rainfall must be enough. No?
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#18
You might google "Quinoa brings riches to the Andes", an article written 6 days ago by, you guessed it, the guardian uk.
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#19
(01-20-2013, 10:17 AM)orygunluvr Wrote: You don't read much do you? The land quinoa is grown on is useless otherwise. It's land that is already drought stricken and has poor nutritional value for growing. That's what makes it perfect for quinoa. It has helped small, poor family farmers have a little bit if financial security and be able to afford a few things we take for granted.

But there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fuelled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.

In fact, the quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there.


I know, let them eat cake.
(sigh)
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#20
I googled several stories on it. That's why I told you you were right. I don't just hand those out, you know. Smiling

p.s. I even googled quinoa's growing requirements, and about it being grown experimentally in the northwest and Canada.
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