Quinoa and Soy: the story of health, fashion and starvation

This is my comeback post. My views leanheavily towards traditional diets matched to geographical area of residence. Iwanted to start by focusing on two of the biggest intruders in the area of ancientfoods. They are ancient foods themselves. Keep reading for a classic story ofhow too much good in the wrong place and time can be indistinguishable from evil. 

Both quinoa and soy aren't grains, but they are the faddestgrain-alternatives to hit us in a long while. They are not only high inprotein, they are even complete proteins, a very rare feat in the plantkingdom. For Indians, they fit very nicely into our regimented world oftraditional foods. Quinoa substitutes for sabudana and rava so well in upmasand pulaos (the aftertaste is a sacrifice at the altar of one's health -whatever that may mean these days). And soy, well it substitutes for anything,for grains of course, for beans, for milk and more popularly, in its heavily processedform, for meat.

What follows is a story of the devastation that has trailed behindthese incredibly versatile grains (or grainoids). There are untold storiesbehind every fad, behind every new super-food that will “transform yourhealth”. Changing traditional diets comes with a cross that we must bear, orthat others must bear for us.

High protein: check. Traditionalfood: check. Low fat: check. No dead animals: check. In fact the New York Times notesthat NASA scientists declared quinoa to be the perfect balanced food for spacemissions.

The untold back story of Quinoa exploded with a  NYTimes article in early 2011. Several othermagazines have since noted that Quinoa’s price in Bolivia has tripled since 2006 making it unaffordable to many of those that cultivate it. In Lima, chicken isnow cheaper than quinoa and of course imported junk food is too, as it is anywhereelse. Somehow high processing costs + high transportation costs alwaystranslate to super cheap food. Sadly, over the same time period, quinoaconsumption in Bolivia has dropped by a third, being replaced by rice, noodlesand junk food. Malnutrition among children in quinoa-growing areas has risen.

Diverse rotation farming in Peru and Bolivia has turned intomono-cropping of quinoa over the years, a very dangerous practice potentiallystripping soil of nutrients, and creating an extremely unbalanced environment.An article published in 2010 in The Guardian noted a similar story withasparagus cultivation (also in Peru). Asparagus is a water intensive vegetablethat has caused drought like conditions in its native Inca valley, with amassive decrease in the water table. Mono cropping is involved in soycultivation as well, and will continue to be a cultivation method for all fadfoods that have a sudden increase in demand.

Vegetarians are one of the biggest markets for Quinoa and Soy.Given that the ethics of veganism hinges heavily on ecological destruction dueto confined lot animal operations (i.e., factory farms), the ecologicalfootprint of soy (which is the go-to food of choice for a majority of convertedvegetarians) is ironical: Soy cultivation is one of the two main reasons fordeforestation of the Amazon (the other being cattle ranching, quitejustly). 

The upsides to the stories are similar. Asparagus cultivation hasresulted in 10,000 new jobs in the Inca valley, leaving us with the question:should one buy asparagus from Peru so the farmers can go to work, or not buy itso their children don’t face drought? Ditto for Quinoa, except the scale ofjobs created in Peru and Bolivia is much higher.

But we don’t really buy Soy and Quinoa because we can send morepeople in the Altiplano to work. Neither do we eat them because they are tasty(most people can attest that both foods have a highly acquired taste, theactivation energy for which is high enough that you would have to besufficiently motivated otherwise).

Traditional food habits of Asians have long been a justificationfor the safety of eating Soy. But as much respected food author and sciencewriter Michael Pollan says, there isn’t really much record of any cultureeating as much soy in as many forms as is being consumed now. Quinoa, or theother hand hasn’t been modified much yet. It is likely safe, but perhapsunnecessary.

The point that I hope this discussion leads to is: Eat local. Eattraditional. Eat traditional and local if you can. What if traditional isvegetarian? Can one eat local and vegetarian? I am not sure, if you don’t livein a tropical country. For sure, one can’t eat local and vegan in temperateclimates. What does one eat in winter? What then, is the most ethical way toeat?

The scale is tight: there lie “health”, animal welfare andfashionable tastes on one side, and ecological devastation, malnutrition,genetic modification and jobs on the other. What will you choose?

References:                             

1.    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?_r=2&

2.   http://personal.lse.ac.uk/weinhold/Soy%20Paper_310.pdf

3.   http://commodityplatform.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/factsheet_paraguay_final_120609.pdf

4.   http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-or-why-the-world-still-needs-agricultural-economists/

5.   http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/michael-pollan-answers-readers-questions/

6.   http://www.examiner.com/article/the-politics-of-soy

7.   http://environmentalcommons.org/cetos/articles/soystory.html

8.   http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2110890,00.html

9.   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/14/quinoa-andes-bolivia-peru-crop

10.http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/15/peru-asparagus-british-wells

Ayurveda, Vegetarianism and the Weston Price/GAPS diet

Ever since I decided to take my son on the GAPS diet to heal Autism, I have been torn by the apparent conflict with Ayurvedic principles.  The GAPS diet calls for animal fat to be the basis of healing – including lard, ghee, butter, and fatty portions of meat. The GAPS book by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (Dr. NCM henceforth) goes to the extent of claiming that vegetarian diets are dangerous. While this statement alone should have pushed me off the book given that I come from a lineage that has eaten a lacto vegetarian diet for several hundred years (at a minimum), I stuck to it because the rest of the book made so much sense.

There are several arguments associated with the Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF) reasoning against a vegetarian diet. Some of them are based on Dr. Price’s tour of the world visiting native cultures and determining that all healthy cultures were those that consumed a traditional diet. However WAPF completely ignores the completely vegetarian populations of India, spanning several regions, each with its own flavor of vegetarianism [1].

There are several blog posts both for and against WAPF’s reasoning. My aim here is to simply present the points that strike me as WAPF’s biggest arsenal against vegetarian diets being healthy.

Low fat

The primary term associated with vegetarian diets is “low-fat”. In the GAPS community, this is almost a swear word. The concept of “low-fat” vegetarian diets might have originated with Dr. Dean Ornish [2] but this was likely in response to a increasingly processed way of eating which did rely on a lot of animal foods (processed again). There are no traditional vegetarian diets in India that try to be low-fat. Oil is used liberally in “tadkas”, where mustard (and other seeds and spices) are burst open in oil at its smoking point to release trace essential oils.

Vegetable Oils

Also the American vegetarian diet (a response to the factory-farmed processed meat industry) relies extensively on processed food. Most people aren’t familiar with a traditional way of cooking vegetables only without meat, and it is easier for them to eat out. Now processed foods will use cheap oils such as solvent extracted canola oil, soy oil made from GMO soy beans, etc. which contain primarily polyunsaturated fats that are not stable at high heats but are used at high temperatures anyway.

Traditional Indian vegetarian diets rely on ghee, sesame, coconut, or mustard oil, depending on the local crop. These oils are stable at relatively high temperatures, and were of course traditionally cold-pressed.

Protein, Iron and Vitamin deficiencies

Any diet that has survived a millennium cannot be anything but balanced. A population that is chronically deficient will by trial and error eventually switch to a balanced diet. Having said that, vegetarian sources of protein iron and B-vitamins are well known and we are not even talking about SOY here. Protein intake is very dependent on climatic and soil conditions and on the nature of local vegetation available. In that context, a traditional vegetarian diet usually evolves to include all essential nutrients in some form or other.

However there are no exclusive vegetarian diets in the Himalayan regions on India where vegetables are scarce in winter, and even the Kashmiri Brahmins eat meat (there are among the only Brahmins in India to do so, though some other Brahmins will eat fish – also rare).

Fermentation is a known source of probiotics and B-vitamins, and most regions in India eat some sort of fermented food in moderation. Lentils are eaten in abundance, typically with a ghee “tadka” to reduce the gassiness or Vata. In fact meat when eaten is eaten usually once a week, either as a treat or as a medicine.

Vegetarian diets today

Most of the comparison in the GAPS or Weston Price community seems to rely on a traditional meat eating diet versus a processed vegetarian diet (3). Some of  it sparingly refers to high heart disease among vegetarian Indians (3) without accounting for the onslaught of pesticides, hormones, and processing in current Indian food (courtesy the Green and White revolutions). This is inherently unfair.

Is a processed vegetarian diet better than a processed meat diet? Probably, because meat can bio-accumulate toxins. This also accounts for the popularity of the Ornish and MacDougall Diets.

Is a traditional diet better than a processed diet (whether veg or non-veg)? Of course!

Is a traditional vegetarian diet better than a traditional non-vegetarian diet? The answer is I don’t know. Physically, perhaps there is no difference. This is where I lean on Ayurveda, literally “the science of life”, the oldest system of traditional medicine. Meat is only considered a medicine, and that too only by some Vaidyas. Meat is said to increase Rajas and Tamas (or passion and inertia, as opposed to a calm, collected, intuitive stable nature or Sattva). This is now the realm of the mind, which eventually becomes the realm of the body. Yes, the body has to be addressed before the mind. But once there is health, per Ayurvedic principles, a wholesome traditional fresh vegetarian diet is most suitable for everybody.

Is a traditional vegetarian calmer than a traditional non-vegetarian? We really have very little data, except that historically India has not invaded any other country (though there have been internal invasions between kingdoms), and that India has always amalgamated all intruders to form a well-mixed accepting society, perhaps among the most truly secular in the world.  All I can say that you have to experiment on yourself to see if you are calmer when you don’t eat meat (but eat a balanced traditional vegetarian meal).

We know that every revered (or enlightened) saint (Buddhist or Hindu or Jain) has espoused vegetarianism and the doctrine of non-violence. And in eastern religions, it is generally believed that spiritual progress is difficult through a meat-eating diet.

I think there is some meat to the Sattvic theory (pun intended) and the doctrine of non-violence. But a vegetarian diet that is primarily non-organic, sourced from distant lands, based on processed foods and refined oils has violence embedded in the damage done to the ecosystem and to oneself.

And I will stick to the GAPS diet to see if it heals my son mostly because I haven't found a compelling alternative diet for Autism. But I will also attempt to go back to a sattvic vegetarian diet once he heals.

References:

1. An article by John Robbins: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/reflections-on-the-weston-a-price-foundation.html
2. “The 3 Season Diet” by John Douillard.
   http://www.amazon.com/The-3-Season-Diet-Intended-Cravings/dp/0609805436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331703428&sr=8-1
3. http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/myths-of-vegetarianism#7