Quinoa should be taking over the world. This is why it isn’t
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100 calories of Quinoa
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=83+g+quinoa
100 calories of Oatmeal
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=26+g+oatmeal
However if you look at the vitamins, oatmeal wins.
I also wouldn't call Quinoa a super food, but it does fill a gap left by other grains and is definitely a worthy addition to a healthy balanced diet.
The vitamins is probably missing data-- Vitamin C is biochemically critical, so a plant would have some amount of it.
See http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/6359?fg=&man=&lfacet=... and http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/1866
http://food.vegtalk.org/nutrients/cereals/protein.html
It shows that some products, like wheat durum are richer in proteins but with the almost the same amount of calories.
[0] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/6/1207.full (note - this was just a quick google, I'm no expert in this area)
The "correct" macronutrient values with some comparisons:
Quinoa: 368kcal / Protein 14g / Fat 6g / Carbs 64g
Oats: 379/13/6/67
Regular pasta: 360/12/1/72
Couscous: 361/13/1/72
"Quinoa is a low-calorie, gluten-free, high-protein grain that tastes great." says the author.
It's gluten free, which is important for some people (a lot if you buy into wheat belly). It's another source of a complete protein, which is important for vegans.
Not all popular health foods get converted into crap. There might be unhealthy variants of these, but fruits, vegetables, legumes, fish and soy tend to be popular and healthy. I'd even say that processed foods which are based on these, like french fries, are better than those based on sugar (like a chocolate bar).
It's about perspective. In a world where people eat fabricated sugars and fat, you're doing a disservice to it. It is, categorically, healthy.
I'm afraid you've forgotten about what is, likely, the most critical piece of dietary advice in the past 30 years. Specifically, that unnatural trans-isomer fatty acids should never be consumed. Glutens, saponins, oligosaccharides etc are irritants; elaidic acid is basically toxic. Unfortunately, while some stable non-hydrogenated oils like palm oil have become popular, it seems that popular opinion at large generally forgot trans fats existed after 2009. They still exist and they're still really bad for you. So don't eat french fries, is what I'm saying. Or other deep-fried things from restaurants that haven't eliminated hydrogenated oils from their cooking. In-N-Out is ahead of the curve on this. Five Guys is as well.
>"Probably better than processed food"
Originally that sentence just said "probably better than rice", and was modified until it sounded silly...
Gluten is most likely not the problem for most people with digestive problems, although there is a strong belief that gluten is bad.
The most likely reason why many people have problems digesting wheat, is because it contains fructans. Nobody can digest it, but it causes more problems for some than for others, e.g. if you have IBS (which about 1 in 7 people has). Spelt, an ancient variety of wheat, also contains gluten, but has low levels of fructans, and is thus more easily digested.
There is a pretty well-researched diet for people with IBS, called the Low FODMAP (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols) diet. It tries to reduce the amount of complex carbohydrates (which are not easily digestible) from the diet to a level where they do not cause digestive problems.
Unfortunately, it is not widely known yet, so a lot of people buy into all kinds of wishful thinking (that often comes with a price tag).
Have you seen kale chips and vegetable chips? Apparently the only way to convince people to eat their vegetables is to fry it and add a bunch of salt.
I agree with the parent, if quinoa actually became popular, the food industry will figure out a way to fuck it up.
I'm a vegetarian, high-mileage distance runner who has every reason to enjoy quinoa. "Tastes great" is not one of the reasons I eat it. I choke it down as best I can because it's good for me.
I probably wouldn't eat it daily for exactly the same reasons you state.
Seriously, if I need to boil something in sodium to make it taste great, that kind of defeats the purpose.
That said, it's not clear why you'd regard adding a little salt as bad unless you had a serious medical condition prohibiting it. I get that you'd want to avoid the absurd amounts a lot of prepared foods include, just for taste.
For the next episode of "Ask HN: food preparation", how about a way to make tempeh edible? That I have tried at home enough times that I gave up. :-)
A go-to dish for me. Really easy and tasty. Measurements are basically guesses, I usually just eyeball it.
In case you've never heard of it, Scott Kurek relased a book called Eat and Run a year ago, it's packed with very nice vegetarian/vegan recipes and a very nice motivator for any runner.
Having your crops be too valuable to eat is a good problem to have; these farmers incomes have more than sextupled. That easily lets them sell the crop and buy other food like everyone else.
[citation needed].
It feels weird that local food is exported as a cash crop, and other food is imported.
They can grow quinoa and eat the seeds or export them and import a more diverse diet.
Even if other countries can cultivate quinoa, it may make sense for Andeans to export their quinoa and import other foods.
So the citation you are looking for is the bunch of sentences before the one you quote.
* which sounds a little bit like an open question "am I wrong ?" type.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...
An interesting parallel in urban environments in more developed countries is the phenomenon of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert - malnutrition can occur even when families have enough money to avoid it.
It turns out many subsistence farmers (of which there are roughly a billion) are net consumers of their staple crop. In order to survive, the poor diversify across a variety of agricultural products. Large industrial farming operations are growing the rest of the rice/maize ... and I'm guessing quinoa.
So, if the same pattern holds here, farmers consume more quinoa than they sell, and suffer when prices go up.
Unless there are other foods they can buy which are cheaper. Then they benefit from the higher prices and don't pay them.
If the price of the staple increases dramatically, can't they shift towards eating other crops (that they were previously net producers of)?
Again, those other crops are likely more expensive per calorie. That means there is no mix of consumption that will get them the same amount of calories they previously consumed, which for subsistence farmers will often mean malnutrition if not starvation.
In terms of effort required to grow those crops, or in terms of market price? If they're growing the crops in order to eat them, the market price isn't relevant (except that if those other crops are expensive on the market, they can sell those for a profit, too).
I mean, I'm not saying taxation is the only way it's easier for others to get their hands on your crops if the crops are bought and sold... but it's one of the more clear examples.
The only possible explanation would be that the resources (farming equipment, seeds, fertilizer?) required to grow the crop go up in price as the price of the crop does - in which case, blame the suppliers of these resources.
1. Farmers used to have 100-200 acres apiece. At that point you can feed a family even with very low yields. There were few (if any) large-scale farming operations for them to buy from, anyway.
2. Each generation, the farmer would divide the land up amongst his sons.
3. Fast-forward to today, farmers have more like 2 acres, and with traditional farming techniques don't have enough yield to feed their families.
4. They make up the difference with cattle, chickens, beans, odd jobs - or don't make up the difference, as malnutrition and starvation are a constant problem. But if they make enough money, there is a national maize market to buy from, which previously there wasn't. Hence, they're net maize consumers.
"subsistence farmers are net consumers of their staple crop. In order to survive, the poor diversify across a variety of agricultural products"
I don't understand the downvotes for the parent. They are growing other products, or have cash from other activities, and use this to buy the staple they can't grow. If price of staple rises and price of other products and services does not, they can't afford to do this. The beneficiaries are large industrial farmers of the staple. Did I miss something?
If there is in fact a problem (and I do question its existence), I believe lukasb is looking for it in the wrong place.
Now, farmers are selling quinoa to foreigners, so the farmers are making more money, but everyone else is paying more for food.
One solution would be to impose some sort of tax, to share the windfall quinoa profits with the former customers, or cooperative community ownership of the farms. Or farmers spending their increased profits on the labors of other locals in the community.
The local community loses cheap quinoa, but gains with the influx of money from abroad.
Malnutrition has been an endemic problem in Bolivia since the Spaniards pillaged its mineral wealth. This does little to improve things.
[1] http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-...
[2] http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/05/bolivian-quinoa-questions-pro...
Sometimes a "more problems" verdict neglects the idea of different qualities of problems. More money usually comes with a higher quantity of problems, for example...
With the price rising they can actually afford a better living. For them, getting a little richer than they are means consuming less quinoa, and more meat, more fruit and vegetables. And they can afford stuff other than food, which seems to be a novel idea.
"In Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, a village of beleaguered peasants seeks to protect itself from marauding bandits by hiring a squad of samurai. To show their esteem, they offer up precious white rice to the warriors, saving only lowly millet for themselves. "
I mean, there's a lot of faults in Latin American populist leftist politics, but this kind of thing is the sort of stuff they're supposed to excel at.
Will it still be as nutritious after all that selection though? There was an article pointing out that when farmers select for bigger, shinier, more marketable fruit, it's often at the cost of actual nutritional value:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-th...
People have preferences for some characteristics in something which would seem to be very ordinary.
Maybe quinoa is different, but who knows, at this point. Maybe it's like oats. Oats are oats are oats, for most people, I think (except for the cutting vs rolling process)
To you, maybe. I prefer it, mainly because it has a taste, especially compared to white rice.
Also, trying to live on white rice can lead to beriberi because white rice, shorn of the husk, bran, and germ, is vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficient: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriberi
> has anti-nutrients that block absorption of B vitamins and minerals like magnesium
This is the first I've heard of this.
This source seems to contradict it:
http://web.mit.edu/athletics/sportsmedicine/wcrvitamins.html
> THIAMIN (B1)
> Food Sources
> Fortified breakfast cereal or wheat germ breakfast cereal, soybeans, peanuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, brazil nuts, whole grains, pork, oatmeal, whole wheat, hazelnuts, brown rice, rye, pinto beans, red beans, millet, buckwheat, frozen peas, walnuts, garlic, pumpkin seeds, potatoes, chicken.
This source also doesn't mention it, and it's all about the nutritional deficiencies of rice, including brown rice:
http://www.ask.com/explore/negative-nutritional-value-rice-5...
The closest it comes is a warning about inhibiting the uptake of zinc and iron. In fact, it explicitly calls out the vitamin B content of brown rice as being very good, especially compared to white rice.
So, do you have any sources to share with us?
http://anthonycolpo.com/the-whole-grain-scam/
it's very thoroughly researched and sourced
If our governments weren't so afraid of people getting stoned the economic benefits of cannabis would make it a major cash crop capable of outperforming quinoa in every aspect.
To the rice you could just add some bran (£2/kilo, but you don't need much) and another, cheap source of protein to make it similar to quinoa's nutirtional values.
Between 2006 and early 2013 quinoa crop prices have tripled.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa#Rising_popularity_and_cr...
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-s...
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-andes-bol...
Why? It has some nutritional benefits and it tastes OK, but that's all. I wouldn't want to eat it all the time. This is a crap story, with this bolted-on conspiracy near the end that quinoa is losing out because it can't compete with Big Ag. Give it a chance to succeed or fail on its own merits - because it might well be a fad, like Acai berries were two years ago.
My girlfriend is vegetarian which is why I have such great armchair-scientific experience in describing this potentially-foul food.
I've been told to wash the Quinoa to remove the saponin from it before cooking, which worked on occasion. But when you get that gut-pain from eating Quinoa even once it's an incredibly strong deterrent from ever trying it again.
Having eaten razorblades is a pretty accurate description of how I can feel for hours after having eaten even a small portion of Quinoa.
That could be one reason why it isn't taking over the globe. Because some people can get violently ill after eating it. Last I heard, nobody has a chance of developing horribly painful symptoms after eating rice.
Also worth a read: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
Also, have you had Quinoa? That shit is delicious and easy to cook. Throw it in a rice cooker, add some water, wait 15m - BOOM - tasty nom noms, no additives required.
Rice is generally pretty boring and you need to add something to it (Basmati smells nice, but still tastes pretty bland, short grain / Japanese style rice has at least some taste, but nothing interesting). It really doesn't add much to anything nutritionally either.
Wheat and corn is in fucking everything, so when you finally do eat corn or wheat it tastes like nothing because your goddamn peanut butter is hydrogenated corn syrup anyway.
Personally, I can't wait until quinoa is everywhere. It looks a lot more interesting than trying to invest in making better corn or wheat at this point!
I'd say that's the problem it's trendy to talk about gluten and be on a paleo diet and it turns people off.
It seems a very small percentage of the population has celiac disease or Crohn's from what I can find it's 0.75% and 0.1% respectively of the general population of various countries that track it. Although I do realize you don't have to be born with either disease you they can develop either or both later in life and sometimes not even show symptoms.
And since you're using a cooker, do you have the cheapo one, or a high-end cooker that can do slow cooks? The slower it cooks the more flavor it tends to have, IMHO.
But yeah, unless you're doing say, basmati brown rice (lowest glycemic load), rice isn't exactly densely nutritious compared to it's calorie/glycemic load.
Indians have been using many millets like Finger Millet, Foxtail Millet, Little Millets, they are rich in proteins, gluten-free and all that.
It is only now that we are using polished white rice and have become highly vulnerable to lifestyle diseases like Diabetes.
It looks a lot like white flour to me:
http://skipthepie.org/cereal-grains-and-pasta/millet-flour/c...
Some say goitrogens in millet is bad for you (if you eat large quantity)
http://www.womentowomen.com/hypothyroidism/goitrogenicfoods-...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100+g+millet http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100+g+quinoa
Also, having too much of any one food is bad for you. I'm not suggesting that you start baking your own bread with millet flour - just that the next time you would cook up some rice or quinoa, give millet a try. It's a very healthy whole grain and can be a welcome part of a well balanced diet for many people trying to eat healthier.
I'm confused about the refrigeration comment though - I make quinoa all the time and have not had that issue.
What's your recipe?
I should have added a time parameter to my storage comment. We typically make a bunch of rice, like 6 cups uncooked and keep it in a big container for the week. With quinoa, by the end of the week it's pretty gross, kind of a big blob.
Anecdote - Of all the times I've had food poisoning, probably half of them have been because I've kept cooked rice around too long. I might just be unlucky though!
It's almost as good as fresh cooked rice and keeps for weeks and weeks in your freezer.
Do I stop eating quinoa?
What is my responsibility?
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WomensHealth/north-carolina-sen...
Quite interesting nonetheless
Monsanto disagrees.