Selects: The Quinoa Revolution!

Happy Saturday. Hi everybody, Chuck here. We're going to go back in time today with this selection to February seventh, twenty seventeen.

The keene Wah Revolution, mainly.

Because I don't remember much about this one and I have to listen to these again. So I'm going to listen, and I hope you do too. Learn everything you always wanted to know and more about keenwa Right now.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W Chuck Bryant's right there, Jerry's right there. It's a little chilly in here, so it's Stuff you should know the podcast because it's chilly. That's the cherry on top, that's right.

Spoiler or not spoil or teaser at the end of this episode, let's say between the end and before listener mail that's agreeable to you.

At the forty three minute mark.

We are going to taste soilent for the first time.

Yeah, live on the air.

Yeah, I guess I should have thought this through. I took him out of the fridge already, so we wandered forty three minutes for it to warm up. Should we put them back?

Well, I wouldn't you know. I wasn't going to say anything then I was going to say something.

Should I put him back?

Well, it's probably best cold, don't.

Okay, Well hang on everybody, So, yes, we're gonna try soilent eventually in this episode.

That's right. I'm excited to try soilent or to talk about quin wa both.

Okay, So Chuck, you just kind of gave it away alongside the title. Sure, we're talking about queen wa today, not quinoa, no queen wah.

That's right. But superfood, yes, some say yeah.

I mean you can make a pretty good claim that it is a super food. And what is a superfood if not a type of food that has a lot going on just in and of itself. Yeah, it's super Yeah, Like blueberries are super fruit or a saii beerry super food? Yeah, or ASII berries Yeah, algae.

I didn't know algae was Oh yeah, I buy that.

Hemp seeds, sure, chia seeds, yeah.

A lot of nuts, rich crackers, I don't know. Those are just super super delicious and buttery. Yeah, with my crab dip especially.

Oh bet, one day, maybe I'll find out what you just want me to bring you crabdip. Yeah, give me a cooking lesson.

Uh So quinoa.

There are at least one hundred and twenty varieties, and it is nothing new. It's been around. In fact, we might as well dealt into a little history here. It's been cultivated for geez, more than five thousand years.

I saw up to eight thousand years.

Well it's more than five thousand, sure, well, I guess we could say more than five years.

Right, more than the last six months. Kima has been around on this planet.

Yeah, and it's an Andean plant and specifically originated around Lake Titi Kaka in Peru.

Yeah, in Bolivia in the Altiplano.

Yeah, it's wonderful, wonderful area.

Have you been.

Oh no, but just look at photos.

Sure, Machu Pichu.

Yeah, like we'll look at that place exactly one day.

Maybe I'd like to go for sure.

But it is there is historical evidence of it being domesticated, like we said, is maybe as long as eight thousand years ago. And they even saw in ancient tombs they saw little you know, archaeological drawings and things that what they think is quinoa. Right, So people were in ingesting it and using it as a super food way back when.

Yeah, and the fact that it grew up there, or grows up there, and not only grows, but thrives up in this high rocky i think, pretty much arid plateau that's also very cold. It doesn't make any sense that you'd have anything but like alpacas and lama's up there. But in fact, there's a plant that's one of the most nutritious foods on the planet that just so happens to thrive up there in Bolivia and Peru in the highlands.

Yeah, I mean the twenty first century when it really kind of became popular. And even in the last she's mid two thousands, you can even talk about it being trendy.

Well, supposedly the whole trend for keen wah, which, by the way, in typical stuff you should know, fashion has already come and gone, and now we're doing an episode on it.

Oh it's not gone, Are you sure? Oh?

Yeah, okay, Well do you know how ke hit the map, hit the scene.

Well, in a lot of different ways. I assume you think.

It's one thing only, right, Oprah. Yeah, she had something to do with it, for sure.

She was on some sort of cleansed diet in two thousand and eight and she ate keenwa and mushrooms, I guess, and everybody was like, what is that. She's like, oh, you've been calling it Canoa, it's keen wah.

Yeah.

He said, well we have to try this now.

Yeah.

Well, she definitely was a factor, Oprah. Her reach is wide, it is, but it doesn't reach me.

Are you're not an Oprah fan?

No?

I think she's fine. But I didn't learn about keen wa from her or anything else.

Where'd you learn about quene wa then?

Just you know, I think the first time I had it was in a restaurant, So it's to me it's spread because chefs.

Started using it because they watch Oprah.

Yeah, exactly. Chefs don't serve anything unless opiation zero here in the United States. You know, I talked about at least one hundred and twenty varieties. You're more than likely going to be eating the red, red, white, and blue, no red, white.

Or black varieties of quen wah. And do you eat it in your home? I guess we'll get to this stuff. But I'm curious of you've cooked with it.

A lot, not a lot. No, I've had it here or there. I've had in a couple of restaurants.

So this stuff is it's known as an ancient grain, but it's not exactly a grain, and it's not exactly a cereal. It's classified technically as a pseudo cereal, right, like fruity pebbles.

That's one hundred percent cereal.

Baby, they just came out with cinnamon pebbles.

Oh I bet those are good. Yeah, you can make click cinnamon old shoes and put them in a cereal box and it'd be good.

But uh, Quinwa technically is a pseudo cereal. It comes from the goosefoot plant.

Right, That's why it's not a cereal. Cereal is a grain that comes from a grass. Yeah, And Goosefoot's not a grass, it's a plant.

No, And it looks kind of weedy, and as we'll see later when you're cultivating, it looks alarmingly like some other weeds.

Weed.

We can be tricky with the capital w. Oh. Looks like marijuana, a little bit from afar.

Huh. That brilliant red and brilliant yellow marijuana looks like what it's growing.

I'm not sure you know what marijuana is.

Huh uh.

I'll show you a picture sometimes. Okay, okay.

It is labeled a whole grain though, because it's actually it fits the whole grain definition because it is the whole grain seed which you're eating.

Yeah, Like when you talk about grains usually again you're talking about these things from grasses like wheat, right, And there's such a thing as whole grain wheat. But once we process something, once we mille it or shell it, smack it on the bottom, whatever you do to them, you're actually removing certain parts of the grain.

Right.

So with like enriched white flour, you've taken a whole wheat grain and you've removed the bran and the germ, and you've just got yourself the endosperm still and the endosperm is what's used mostly for to produce white flour, and that's great. It's full of like quick, easily digestible carbs, but a lot of the nutrients are lost.

And actually not easily digestible for many people.

That's true too, Yeah, but a lot of the nutrients are lost in the process. So even if you can digest it no problem, you're not getting most of the nutrients that were there in the first place. With a whole grain, it's got the brand, the germ, and the endosperm, and they're all worked together to make you vastly healthier than you would be if you're just eating the endosperm like you do in white white flour.

Yeah, and Quenoi in particular, is it's really weird when you look at it. It's closer. You wouldn't think so, but it's closer to shard and beats and spinach, right the plant is anything else.

Yeah, it's crazy.

So imagine if, like from spinach plants, we got not only the leaves but also the seeds turned out to be whole grains. That's what's going on. It's a weird plant.

It is.

It shouldn't grow where it grows. It shouldn't be a cereal, shouldn't be a grain, it shouldn't be related to beets.

It shouldn't be delicious.

But it is.

That's right.

Uh.

And it's super super good for you, Like we're saying it's a super food. And one of the reasons, and another thing that makes it very strange is that it has a ton of protein, which is pretty unusual for a plant to have this much protein.

Yeah, this article made that point, but I wouldn't. Look, there's a lot of other plants that have pretty good amounts of protein in them.

What rivals quinoa in amounts.

At a mammy black beans, lima beans, chickpeas all beat it by a mile.

Yeah.

I just thought it was weird because not only did this article say it, I ran across it elsewhere too that they were like, this is it's amazing how much protein it has in it. It has like a decent amount, especially for a plant. It's just not like eye popping or anything like that.

You know, you just think it's hyperbole.

I kind of pooh pooed that one.

Okay, yeah, what it does have unless you think is not true as well, well, I'll be the judge of it, ten at least ten amino acids and that's good, right or.

Is it bad too?

I guess it's okay.

No, it's choco fl.

Amino acids, which are great for your body because our body cannot make amino acids, so we have to get them from food sources.

Well, they it can't make essential amino acids. It can make non essential amino acids, but the essential ones we have to get from food. And quin wat is in a very small group of plants that are complete sources of protein, meaning that they have all of the essential amino acids that we need in them. Yes, you don't find that in plants very frequently. No, that's what helps make it a superfood exactly.

It's not very high in calorie, no sugar, no cholesterol, no sodium.

What else?

Zinct a lot of zinc. Has a lot of potassium too. Apparently it has the most potassium of any food plant that is around. Potassium is really good at regulating blood pressure. Yeah, because potassium's in charge of things like fluid retention and electrical conduction throughout cells.

I think just compared to grains, there are plenty of other fruits with potassium.

Oh, okay, is that what it was?

Yeah? Like bananas are loaded with potassium, are they? Yeah?

Or is that the work of ever Barnee.

No, bananas are really good for you. What else? Fiber magnesium fol eight? Yeah, that's good and free.

Well that's a big one, man. So it's very commonly touted as a gluten free food grain, which is good for people who have Celiac disease. But apparently they've tested there's at least would you say, one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty varieties that are in like agricultural production right now, and somebody tested a bunch of them and they came up with like at least four that created a coeliac response. Oh really, Yeah, so you got

Well.

I think one of the deals though, is we're not seeing those in the marketplace though, which is one of the we'll get to it, but it's one of the potential problems is we're only eating like three or four of the one hundred and twenty varieties, and I think those are for sure gluten free. Okay, Like if you go to your grocery store, right, you're not going to see one hundred and twenty varieties of this stuff.

Oh man, you know, yeah, you're probably right.

Uh all right, well let's take a break and we're going to get back and talk a little bit about cooking this delicious stuff.

Selfish, selfish, So Chuck, you were going to lay it on everybody how to cook queen Wah.

It's easy. If you can cook rice, you can cook quenoa.

Yeah. I would say, well it than I would say it's easier than rice. It doesn't stick like rice does.

Yeah, exactly.

That's probably rice's biggest downfall.

The sticky. Yeah, it's also what makes it great though, too sure, depending on what kind of rice you're getting.

I eat keen white the house. I wouldn't say a lot, but enough, like.

Every couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, that's a lot, is it to me?

So what you do is you want to rinse it? Yeah, like you will some kinds of rice.

The bag you're you're buying is probably going to say pre rinsed or pre washed or something like that. You want to rinse it anyway.

Right, Yeah, they had this.

It's actually really good for you, this coating called sapanin, and despite its it's great health effects, when you add water to it, it lathers up like a soap, right yeah, and in fact it means it's from the Latin sappo, which is soap. So you don't I want to eat it even though it's good for you.

No, the plant produces it to keep like pests away from it from eating it.

Yeah, so you rinse that stuff off, get keenwa when you once you see it's really tiny. So you want to get a really fine strainer, not like a calender.

Right, you get a calendar. Then I'll like keenwas going.

To be eat down the drain man.

I hate mondays, So get like a sifter, really fine sifter, rinse it real good until it's the water's running clear, and basically cook it like rice. It's one part keen want of two parts water or broth. Well that's what I do. I use chicken broth.

You'd be a madman is to use like water in keene wah.

Or veggie broth if you're you know, weird.

Or off the meat.

I'm just kidding. Beef broth if you're gross.

That doesn't pair well with quen Wah. I could see it not.

I'm just not a big beef broth guy. I might have said, beef you did with a th, Yeah, it was cute beef broth.

Beef broth.

Uh, but I use chicken. I use like half.

So if I do the two cups of water, I'll do one cup water, one cup chicken broth.

Oh you cut your chicken broth.

Yeah, I just kind of do half and half.

I gotcha. You stomp on it, yeah.

Uh So then you cook it like rice, Like I said, you're gonna boil it, and then once it gets to a boil covered up, turn it down low and wait and let it simmer until it's all soaked up.

Yeah. And then this article. I'm not as acquainted with cooking quen wall as you are, but this article says that you want to look for the spirals, the seed spirals to be prominent. What's the deal with that?

You'll see when you look at it, like before you cook it, it looks different than afterward.

And that's the easiest way to say it. Like, once you look it's almost like they pop open or something, and it's just quite obvious. It's just big and light and fluffy, and you see the little seed spiral.

What's neat is And we kind of walked past it. But you said it a couple of times that that steppin' in.

Is good for really good for you.

Yeah, it has some amazing properties, Like it's anti tumor, anti ulcer, anti inflammatory. Yeah, and so you have to imagine, like again that this plant is growing in this random place where plants aren't really supposed to grow, and it thrives there and it's full of all these nutrients and the outer coating is an anti inflammatory, anti tumor agent.

Yeah, that you wash away. Yeah, it's kind of sad.

Well, you could save it, sip on it later. I wonder what would happen, Like, how would you have to ingest do you think, like would it have any anti inflammatory properties if you like drank sappening you think or do you need to like inject it into your eye.

I don't know, or mix it into a salve, maybe rub on your skin. Yeah, I'm not sure. It's a good question. I bet people know we'll hear about.

That up in Bolivia. They know.

Uh, so you can eat it in a variety of ways. You can just eat it as a side dish like you would with rice or couscous or whatever.

Mashed potatoes. Yeah, although I would eat the mashed potatoes.

You could mix it with mashed potatoes, right, No, I wouldn't do that. One one thing that the author of this article, I think it's a Leah Hoyt. She said that she likes to mix it in instead of bread crumbs into like meatballs or burger. Sure, why not?

Yeah, good keen wa burger? Yeah?

So is there such a thing as a keen wahburger? That's just keen wa? Could you make that? Or do you need something to bind it?

I think you probably need binding agents for beef, yeah, beef broths.

Or I don't know.

I've never made a keen waburger, and I don't make any kind of veggie burger.

By like in my home. Oh really, so I wouldn't really know how to go about that.

What do you do? Turkey burgers or I do? Turkey Turkey burgers are pretty good depending on the brand. Some are just like what is this texture? Yeah?

I mean I make them myself with my own little recipe. But that's just because Emily doesn't need beef beef mm hmm. So I've gotten so into the turkey burger that I don't even really I mean, I'll I'll have a beef burger out right never at home.

You and I are simpatico on the home burger cooking. Yeah, Hi, do you grill or do you skill it form and grill? Oh yeah, it's pretty great. Half watch you watch that grease strip out of the front. And I've noticed many times like I will do the same, drooling grease out of my mouth.

So here's my favorite keen wa dish. And I got it from a restaurant in New York that I can't remember, but they're all kinds of variations, but I have it.

I cook it and then put it in the fridge and chill it like overnight. So in the summer, I will get that cold quenewa and then dice up like some cucumber and some red onion, and I mean kind of anything you want like that fits a salad, summer salad, like orange pepper, like crunchy green pepper or roasted red pepper, garlic, throw some pine nuts.

In there summer right now, Like.

You get some basil, some fresh herbs.

That's the way to go, man.

Yeah, like anything that strikes your fancy. Maybe a little lemon juice, little apple cider, vinegar.

But the base of it is quene. Wah.

Yeah, and you just mix up anything that you kind of you know, I might add some texture like that crunch and and serve it alongside like a burger instead of fries.

Oh yeah, it's really really good.

And you know me, I'm I'm not into healthy foods like that a lot, which means it's good, which means it's really good. Yeah, and packed with protein, don't forget. That's right.

And it's a complete source of protein.

So that's or maybe some dried cranberry or golden raisins.

I'm not big on that kind of stuff in the salad. Oh yeah, I know a lot of people like it, not me.

Yeah, No, I don't love the golden raisins, but I do like the cranberry do Yeah. Yeah, I think it's nice. All right. So that's Chuck's recipe of the week.

That's pretty good.

We'll see that every week no matter what the topic is.

What are you going to come up with for the tartar grade?

Oh? Does you wait.

So here's the deal with keenwa. It's gotten really trendy. So in two thousand and seven, the United States was importing seven point three million pounds of quenwa. Twenty twelve, they were imported fifty seven million pounds, and who god knows what it is this year.

You know, a lot of that was the direct result of a single person of Oprah. Yeah, it all comes down to Oprah. No, there is this dude. He was a un development worker from Bolivia who'd moved to California, and he had obviously grown up at least familiar with keenwa, if not eating keen wa. His name was Sergio Nunez Darco, and he he saw that kin wa was starting to catch on a little bit. I guess he saw that

Yeah.

So he went around and he basically created a co op out of all the indigenous farmers who grow queenwa and Bolivia, yeah, and made the supply from them reliable enough and big enough to supply industry abroad. Around the world. This guy almost basically was the flashpoint for the Keenwa explosion. He helped it happen, and he made sure that it was based on the work of the people who were originally cultivating Kinwa, right, Yeah, which is a big one.

Yeah.

He went from in two thousand and five, he sold twenty five thousand dollars worth through his company, and these days he saw in about twenty six million dollars worth annually from his own facility and about forty million from other facilities. So he basically went around to them and said, Hey, these weekend farmers' markets are cute, but how would you like to be a part of the industrial food supply.

Yeah, you put down that pam flute. We're talking business here.

Did they play the pam flute?

Yeah? Those Andian Highlanders they love that.

They love that junking. Is that where zam Fear is from?

No, I think Sam Fear is. I think he's Mediterranean.

I want to say Greek.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Okay, I don't know if I'm getting He and Yanni confused.

Though, Oh yeah, maybe we are.

They seem like they probably at least go bowling together.

Yanni didn't play the pan flute, though, did he?

No?

No, okay, Sam Fear is definitely master of the pamphlet.

Well, of course you can't call yourself that on a CD unless Oprah has said.

So, right, and that has the stamp of approval.

So the price has really gone up too as a result. And it was not small for a lot of years. One metric ton was about five hundred dollars, and in two thousand and two that was thirteen hundred dollars, so that's almost threefold.

And again that was six years seven, almost seven years ago.

Yeah, it kept going up to I think it peaked in twenty twelve. Really, yeah, it was. The price went up quite a bit, so.

You would think that's great. These farmers are making a ton of money now, right.

Yes, apparently. I don't know where it started, but somebody created some I guess somebody wrote an article or started digging around and they said, hey, everybody, you guys are eating all this keen wak. Guess what you did. You drove up prices so much that the very indigenous people who have been cultivating this for thousands of years can't afford it anymore.

So stuck on that hipster, right, Like the people of Fiji are exporting Fiji water, but they're all don't have clean drinking water themselves. That kind of same thing, right.

It's basically an American pastime to take hipsters down a peg, isn't it?

Is it?

It seems like it anything hipsters, Like everybody goes to a lot of trouble to dig around and find what's wrong with it.

Yeah, like the one thing they can trace back just got to be bled on the hands somewhere. All right, Well, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about what this all means and whether or not that's even true.

Right after this salvash novision.

No, all right, So if it's being produced in the Andes and prices are going up, you would think that at some point people in the United States might try and take a stab at it. And that's exactly what happened and is happening. And you sent this great article is Quinoa, California Farmers and New k because Cale had a similar explosion in popularity, you know, over.

The past few years.

Kale's so hot.

Yeah.

I think Cale is out now, yeah, or at least made fun of I think for being hipstery and hot.

Yeah, I think the hipster's kind of chewed that up and spit it out. But it's still great.

I know. People just hate all that stuff.

Yeah, you know, just like what's trending and what's not and what we think is cool.

Let's write about.

It, right, And I read this really interesting article. I think it was a Mother Jones writer, like a Mother Jones AG writer, who basically said, like, hey, dudes, all of this stuff that you know is suddenly like the hot new superfood. It's niche food marketing. It's the same thing as like Oreos coming out with a new flavor every like couple months that you got to go try or something like that.

Yeah, like you're just a sheep for kale.

But but yeah, but geared toward people who don't eat junk food. But it's the same exact thing, so it don't be a chump.

Yeah, or at least don't get on your high horse about the other stuff, right being mass marketed.

Or being eaten by idiots and SAPs and simpletons. So the thing is the thing that made it even worse though, was the idea that like the huge demand in the expanded market for keen waw that was largely found in the United States was directly responsible for pricing indigenous farmers who were growing that keen waw out of it, so they weren't even eating it was the problem and is well supposedly right, And what they found was that one

Yeah, it was a story about it attached to it as well.

It was pretty eye opening.

Yeah, these dudes got together and they were trying to get to kind of the root of all this, and so they got a data source et Naho. It's the National Survey of Peru that they carry out every year about just Peruvian households and all kinds of data that they're collecting, but one of them is food. And there

Right, and they split the households into three groups.

Uh, those who grow and eat keenwa, those who eat it but don't grow it, and those who neither grow it nor eat it.

They say, yeah, I guess there's the final household is people that pronounce it quinola. It's like one household in Peru. It's like, what is this stuff?

Yeah?

Uh, And they all three showed a clear rise in their welfare, which they measured is a total value of goods consumed as that price of qen wah rose, and apparently that reflected in the increased living standards in.

Peru as a whole too. So at the height of that boom.

The welfare of the growers increased more rapidly than the other two groups, though, which you would you know that makes sense?

Yeah, and so you can. They basically tracked a direct correlation between the keen wah boom around the world and and a rise in the household welfare of keenwa farmers back in Peru.

Yeah.

So they conclusively proved pretty much that there there was no that these farmers weren't too poor to afford keenwa. But the other one was still left standing, right right, the idea that they were selling all their keenwah, but then they were still malnursed because they were buying less nutritionally dense food. Yeah, and that apparently they managed to disprove as well.

Yeah, at least that's what they're saying in this paper. I mean, we're not saying this is evidence, but at least this is what they dug out after pouring over these ten years worth of studies. They said this guy Andrew Stevens, a doctoral candidate, focused on specifically the Puno region in the Andes, which grows about eighty percent of all the kenwan Peru, and he said this is a it's a cultural and nutritionally hordant food, but it's not.

That was pretty surprising.

So it said they did not come cut back their consumption between twenty four and twenty twelve despite a fourfold price increase. They see no signs of changing calories, proteins or carbohydrates and the diet across Peru as a whole.

So they kind of debunked it.

Yeah, pretty cool. Hipster's rejoice, They shall rejoice, but there are still some outstanding problems, right, sure, So, like you said it was, you said that I mentioned it was a culturally important food, so much so that Bolivia and it's drafted two thousand and nine Constitution and shrine quen whas part of their food sovereignty, which is their right to protect culturally important food.

Yeah, like, hey, you're coming in here and you're basically taking this and now you're going to grow it all over the world.

Right, And they recognized the importance of queen wa for a very long time. There was apparently a Colorado researcher who went to Bolivia in nineteen eighty six and was shot dead trying to smuggle keen Wa seeds out of the country. Yeah, and I guess somebody from Colorado eventually got them out because Colorado State University patented a hybrid quin wa in nineteen ninety four based on Bolivian seeds, and the government of Bolivia called them bio pirates. WHOA, Yeah,

The other thing too, and I think you sent me this was that because there's more. Basically, there's sort of a land grab going on.

Yeah, this is where I was going in Peru where all of a sudden and they realize that you know, before when it wasn't worth that much money they I mean, sure they were producing it, but it wasn't like it is now. So all these people are saying, wait, this land that was once unused, like, is anyone claiming it? And there's sort of a rush to claim these lands. Well, there was fighting going on.

Yeah, there was violence that broke out in February of I think twenty fifteen maybe sorry, twenty fourteen, where one guy got his arm blown off by dynamite during this battle among hundreds of farmers for some land that had been sitting there abandoned for like decades. And part of the problem is when you're doing good agricultural practices. What did we talk about no till farming in.

I was thinking that too, I can't remember.

Well, we've definitely talked a lot about that. Yeah, And when you're using good agricultural practice, one of the main things you want to do is let fields lay fallow for a year season at a time. And they're not doing that anymore in the Andes. And again, this is really really fragile crop land that they're growing this stuff in, so they're not letting it lay fallow any longer. And

Yeah, yeah, man, what was that episode? It's totally on the tip of my tongue.

We talked a lot about no till no till farming.

I can't remember. I want to say I had something to do with the dust bowl, but we didn't do one on the dust ball.

We did we did one on the dust ball and desertification. Maybe it was the dust bowl.

Yeah, good one. Yeah.

So the lamas, that's one of the big issues, right, is that they're not letting them poop everywhere.

Well they're not. They're not lama farming like they used to. Lamas use a lot of grazing land and they're like, we can use that instead to grow quin wa.

Because king wa is more valuable than lamas.

Right, But lamas again and quen wah go together like rice and beans, and lama poop is almost like it's designed or tailored to fertilize quin wah. They started to use sheep poop instead, I guess imported sheep poop, and it allows a lot more pests and invasive weeds than lama poop does. Right, when lama poop is fertilizing, So the whole ecosystem is definitely being altered. Yeah, and not necessarily in good ways. Because of this huge demand and

It's so weird or not weird, but kind of sad that you can't you know, it can't just be a success story nuverous.

You know, I'm good with the bad.

I guess in the long run.

They're also worried that I was talking about all those different varieties. I saw the one hundred and twenty, but it says here there could be up to thousands of different varieties. Yeah, and farmers are abandoning most of these to concentrate on the ones that they can sell to you know, ship out to export to American markets or I guess just you know, not just America.

I think Europe has eaten stuff like crazy too, are they.

Yeah, but it says that those varieties are This guy says that they're the future of Quenwa because they can adapt to things like climate change. And if you narrow the varieties down to a certain few and they don't adapt, then you're kind of screwed.

Yeah, you're sol If you have three thousand to choose from to try to adapt to changing climate, then yeah, you're way better off. So crop diversity is pretty important. But yeah, that's getting erased as well.

Yeah, well they're trying to encourage it with these Andean farmers. At least they are working with Bolivia and Peru to develop internal markets for these threatened varieties, like with school food programs and stuff like, not necessarily to sell, but to use like within the country at hospitals and schools. They said they've been fairly successful with some of that stuff, so hopefully that continues.

See that. To me, that's what government subsidies are for stuff like that, for like small indigenous farmers who are protecting a thousand year old varieties of crops that are part of the cultural fabric of a country.

Yeah, for the future for all. Sure, they are growing at California though that article you sent this dude is growing it in the Sonoran Desert crazy in the Imperial Valley below sea level, in like one of the hottest places in North America. Yeah, they're growing quenwa.

Yeah. Well, part of the problem is quinoa is very closely related. I think it's in the same genus as something called lamb's quarters.

Yeah, that's the weed which.

Doesn't really matter up in the Alto Plano, but in California, lambs quarters is a toxic, toxic plant to livestock which might accidentally graze on it. Yeah, they're not thinking about that kind of stuff. And then it also carries a virus that kills alfalfa, which is very much grown in California to feed that live stock. Man. So there's it's it's weird. It's a complex, amazing plant that shouldn't exist.

Yeah, maybe that'll be the title quin Wa colon complex more complex than you think.

That's gooding.

Or maybe it should say, well, never mind, I'll forget that out. Or should we just brainstorm some more on let's show title?

Let's do it?

Are we gonna try that soilent? Yes, let's and then do listener mail.

Yeah, let's do.

That all right?

So, uh here we are. We're gonna try this.

Yeah, soilent. It's it a white bottle.

We caught a lot of flak about not having tried it and still done something. I'm like, well, here we go. Then, I'm not iridescent, but I've done an episode on iridescence. Give me a break, people.

I think you should probably shake well, right.

I think so, I don't know. We gotta go back and listen to the episode again. It's been a while.

People also thought that that was a sponsored episode by Soilent, and I was like, I think we said enough bad things about the taste. Yeah, you should have figured out that it was not.

All right, here we go, so this is us trying solent. We also want to say thanks again to Don Kent for sending this in.

It smells like.

That's a nice kind of a nice smell.

What does that smell like? It smells like cereal milk.

We got that a lot. A lot of people said it smelled like or it tastes like cheerios milk.

It's totally what it smells like.

Can we say cheerios? Or is this an episode for cheerios?

Now all right, I'm gonna should one.

I thought we were chugging the whole thing. No, oh, that's that's not bad. It is.

It's not bad at all.

One hundred percent cheerio cereal milk.

Yeah.

I think I would have come up with that even if somebody hadn't said it that's good.

Yeah, I mean it's sort of bland. It's definitely. It's not nearly a sweet. It's not like a honeynut cheerio milk.

No, that's true cinnamon toast crunch milk.

It's not bad.

I was dreading this. I thought it was going to be awful from all the comments. But it's not bad at all.

I like it. I can see how you would kind of start to crave it because it's got that like almost a fatty mouthfeel to it, you know what I mean? Yeah, like it really gets on the tongue.

Huh. All right, well there it is.

I should probably stop. It's pretty. It's got a lot of calories in it.

Yeah, I mean that's twenty percent if you're a daily nutrition.

Well thanks again to Don Kent. Thanks again to everybody who wrongly called us out for doing an ad for soilent.

The aftertaste is a little bit like milk of magnesia. I'm not kidding that, like my lana.

Yeah, no, I know, you mean kind of chalky. I don't have that. M oh. If you want to know more about soilet go listen to the soil Lamp sub In the meantime, if you want to know more about Queen Wa, type that word q U I n O A into the search bar houstuffworks dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for more soil it. I mean it's time for listening.

Now, all right, I'm gonna call yeah.

I definitely don't like the aftertaste, sort of chalking up on my throat and tongue.

I kind of like this stuff. I like food more, but that's not bad.

Sure.

Like if somebody said should I drink soil it, I'd say why not?

All right, I'm gonna call this.

Uh, just a nice email from this lovely Australian woman. Hey guys, been a long time listener, first time writer, currently living in Sydney, Australia, though I grew up in Tennessee and now I'm a Florida.

Resident all over the place. Wow, so maybe she's not Australian. I've been listening to y'all. Y'all since I was in college at UTK Go Balls, and I even brought you along with me while spending a year living in France. If you do end up reading this on the air, which I don't expect, I would be so thrilled. If you give a shout out to my little sister LB, currently in Portland. It's up LB.

She's used a little reverse psychology on.

You there, Yeah, she did. Anytime we make a road trip.

We put on stuff you should know, which insights a groan from her every time.

It's the chit chat that bugs her. We just gave her a shout out.

Yeah, well, she's not the only person to feel that way.

All right.

To get to the point, I was listening to The Dictator's episode and was so excited to hear you talking about Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In fact, that's my grandmother's maiden name. We pronounce it Suella, but whoever knows if that's the true pronunciation. Her family is from southern Italy and immigrated from Naples about one hundred years ago. She recently went on a trip to Italy and studied up on her ancestors and even visit a lot of the sites inscribed with his name.

That's pretty cool.

It's amazing to see a piece of your family history show up on your favorite podcast, even if it is about dictators. Gave me a chuckle. Thanks for keeping me entertained. Just recently caught up to all the episodes on iTunes. I know, I know there are much more. Yeah, on your mini more.

On your website.

Wow, she is a listener, how she is?

And that's Sarah right. Now in Sydney.

Thanks a lot, Sarah appreciate that. So wait, is she from Australia. She's just living in Australia.

Now, I think she's just living there.

Okay, got it. If you want to let us know about your world travels, all that jazz, like Sarah did, you can send us an email of the Stuff podcast the House. Stufffors dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.

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