Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?

A comment by Joanne Blythman in the Guardian (UK): 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 fitted 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....

Photo of quinoa by Vi..Cult..., Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Half of all food 'wasted' report claims

BBC: As much as half of the world's food, amounting to two billion tonnes worth, is wasted, a UK-based report has claimed. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers said the waste was being caused by poor storage, strict sell-by dates, bulk offers and consumer fussiness.

The study also found that up to 30% of vegetables in the UK were not harvested because of their physical appearance. The institution's Dr Tim Fox said the level of waste was "staggering".

The report said that between 30% and 50% of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year went to waste. It suggested that half the food bought in Europe and the US was thrown away.

Dr Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: "The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population - as well as those in hunger today. Food waste is a subject that people get very incensed about. But this report, while re-iterating the scale of the problem, doesn't really advance the story.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers review draws heavily on work carried out over a number of years for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of UN. However one expert in the field suggested that there was no absolutely reliable global data on the level of waste. One of the boldest claims in the report is that "30% of the UK vegetable crop is never harvested."...

Food waste photographed by Muu-karhu, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The Green Revolution is wilting

Seed Daily via SPX: The Green Revolution has stagnated for key food crops in many regions of the world, according to a study published in the Nature Communications by scientists with the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Led by IonE research fellow Deepak Ray, the study team developed geographically detailed maps of annual crop harvested areas and yields of maize (corn), rice, wheat and soybeans from 1961 to 2008.

It found that although virtually all regions showed a yield increase sometime during that period, in 24 to 39 percent of the harvested areas (depending on the crop) yield plateaued or outright declined in recent years.

Among the top crop-producing nations, vast areas of two of the most populous - China and India - are witnessing especially concerning stagnation or decline in yield. "This study clearly delineates areas where yields for important food crops are stagnating, declining, or never improved, as well areas where yields are still rapidly improving," Ray says.

"As a result, it both sounds the alert for where we must shift our course if we are to feed a growing population in the decades to come, and points to positive examples to emulate."

Interestingly, the researchers found that yields of wheat and rice - two crops that are largely used as food crops, and which supply roughly half of the world's dietary calories - are declining across a higher percentage of cropland than those of corn and soybean, which are used largely to produce meat or biofuels....

A rice field in Indonesia, shot by Mark Veeraart, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Rise in diabetes and non-communicable diseases linked to climate change

Tim Smedley in the Guardian (UK): "Epidemic" is an over-used word. But when the the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) uses it, it's worth listening. Rapidly increasing instances of a disease is afterall the very definition of the word. And that is exactly what's happening, says Ann Keeling, IDF's chief executive and chair of the NCD Alliance – comprising the IDF, the World Heart Federation, International Union For Cancer Control, and voluntary scientific organisation The Union (TB and lung disease).

"Type 2 diabetes is driven by both over nutrition and malnutrition", says Keeling. "These are global risks and global threats. We're seeing, particularly in middle income countries, type 2 diabetes related to maternal malnutrition. The dysfunctional food system is very much connected to what's happening in global agriculture changes and ... it is leading to both huge numbers of people who are malnourished and huge numbers of people that are obese."

The numbers are overwhelming: 366 million people have diabetes worldwide, expected to rise to half a billion – one in 10 adults – by 2030. The reason for the rise, along with a growing population, is climate change.

Given that diabetes already causes 4.6m deaths and costs more than £300bn ($465bn) globally every year in direct health care costs, the situation is not sustainable. The vast majority – 80% – of people with diabetes live in low-to-middle-income countries, which are due to be the worst effected by extreme weather and crop failures caused by climate change. At the same time urbanisation is leading to increasingly sedentary lifestyles, with obesity and diabetes as a result....

Photo by ParentingPatch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license