Quinoa should be taking over the world. This is why it isn’t

Quinoa, famous for protein and fiber content, still contains less protein and fiber than, say, oatmeal. It's okay - hyperventilating paleo bloggers have raised concerns about saponins -- but the whole "superfood" frenzy about quinoa is just a tad off base. It's okay, not bad for you, probably better than white rice or processed food, but most of what quinoa has going for it is simply that it is real and unmodified. If it "took over the world", it would be sweetened, boiled, extracted, and fried into chips with none of the nutritional benefits people are seeking therefrom anyway.

&quot;Quinoa is a low-calorie, gluten-free, high-protein grain that <i>tastes great</i>.&quot; (emphasis mine)<p>I&#x27;m a vegetarian, high-mileage distance runner who has every reason to enjoy quinoa. &quot;Tastes great&quot; is not one of the reasons I eat it. I choke it down as best I can because it&#x27;s good for me.

A particular concern with quinoa, given its narrow (native) growing area, and the poverty endemic to that area, is that worldwide demand for the crop has out-priced its growers&#x27; and their communities&#x27; ability to afford it in order to feed <i>themselves</i>. A select few brands set aside some of each harvest specifically for that purpose (and also put some of their profits back into improving the farms, sending the farmers&#x27; children to college, and that kind of thing), but so far, that&#x27;s decidedly not the norm.

&gt; Quinoa is a plant that produces a tremendous amount of seed. So you have potential, with intensive selection, to identify variants that have unusual characteristics.<p>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&#x27;s often at the cost of actual nutritional value:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;26&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;sunday&#x2F;breeding-th...</a>

Meh... Cannabis seed is more nutritious, and has more uses, as does the cannabis fibers, that quinoa pales in comparison. Cannabis is easier to grow as well.<p>If our governments weren&#x27;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.

Some puzzling stuff in this article. We&#x27;re apparently to believe that Colorado&#x27;s transportation infrastructure is far behind that of the Bolivian Andes?

A quick search revealed that quinoa is between £4.50 and £8 a kilo in the UK and brown rice is £1-£4 (depending on quality).<p>To the rice you could just add some bran (£2&#x2F;kilo, but you don&#x27;t need much) and another, cheap source of protein to make it similar to quinoa&#x27;s nutirtional values.

Quinoa is the perfect rice substitute. I switched over to Quinoa about 3 years ago instead of rice. Even though it&#x27;s super expensive (especially in Australia) it has health benefits that far outweigh other suitable grains that can be used as a rice substitute. Steam some vegetables, put them into a bowl with Quinoa, cook a nice massive mushroom and sit the Quinoa on-top and then sprinkle some Himalayan Rock Salt over the top and you&#x27;ve got yourself a delicious healthy meal.

<i>Quinoa should be taking over the world.</i><p>Why? It has some nutritional benefits and it tastes OK, but that&#x27;s all. I wouldn&#x27;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&#x27;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.

Quinoa gives me such gut-wrenching pain that I can no longer convince myself to eat it.<p>My girlfriend is vegetarian which is why I have such great armchair-scientific experience in describing this potentially-foul food.<p>I&#x27;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&#x27;s an incredibly strong deterrent from ever trying it again.<p>Having eaten razorblades is a pretty accurate description of how I can feel <i>for hours</i> after having eaten even a small portion of Quinoa.<p>That could be one reason why it isn&#x27;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.

Gluten Free? Big deal.<p>Also worth a read: <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/07/msg_and_gluten_intolerance_is_the_nocebo_effect_to_blame.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slate.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;health_and_science&#x2F;medical_exa...</a>

Quinoa is very expensive in India.<p>Indians have been using many millets like Finger Millet, Foxtail Millet, Little Millets, they are rich in proteins, gluten-free and all that.<p>It is only now that we are using polished white rice and have become highly vulnerable to lifestyle diseases like Diabetes.

Quinoa has totally replaced rice in our cooking at home. Just stick it in a rice cooker with water&#x2F;vegetable broth and it fluffs up just like rice.

For anyone looking to add a nutritional grain to their diet at a low cost, I highly recommend millet. It has similar nutritional value to quinoa but because it isn&#x27;t trendy (and thus doesn&#x27;t have the same supply issues) it can be 80% cheaper than quinoa in most stores.

Here&#x27;s how to explain the graph showing a bump and then a downturn in American consumption. Tastes funky; hard to cook; unfamiliar consistency. Enthusiastic people (my wife) buy it and it sits on the shelf, they don&#x27;t know what to do with it, lose interest.

Isn&#x27;t quinoa technically a fruit? One problem with it is when you cook it, unlike say rice, it&#x27;s tough to refrigerate or store it without it turning into a gelatinous mess.

Another viewpoint (not just on Quinoa): <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPGnBkH3fBg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fPGnBkH3fBg</a>

When I hear of the effect this is having on local farmers and their ability to feed their families, I&#x27;m confronted with the question:<p>Do I stop eating quinoa?<p>What is my responsibility?

I prefer chia. I mix it in with oatmeal and it tastes great (actually its more the gelatinous texture than taste).

I eat quinoa because of verity but thats just me.

Am I the only one who read that as &quot;Quora&quot; should be taking over the world and ... And went to the Post looking for a really strange article<p>Quite interesting nonetheless

from the article &quot;You don’t need a patent to grow a crop, of course.&quot;<p>Monsanto disagrees.