5 Feb /16

Quinoa

Quinoa – Word of the day - EVS Translations
Quinoa – Word of the day – EVS Translations

The latest hype about quinoa can be equally well described as the one for coconut oil, one must had been in a coma in the last years, as an only plausible excuse to have missed out the talk about it.

The most confusing part about the protein-rich crop, appears to be its pronunciation. Regardless of whether we ask for /keenoua/ or /keenwah/; the grain should keep us all full, satisfied and healthy.

And could we possibly think any differently, knowing that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) declared 2013 to be the International Year of Quinoa?

Quinoa – History

FAO’s objective was to draw attention to the role quinoa could play in providing food security for poor regions, along with a recognition of the Andean people (the aboriginal inhabitants of the area of the Central Andes in South America), who were the first to domesticate the crop some 3000-4000 years ago.

So what is all the hype about? From the Incas who held the crop to be sacred and referred to it as chisaya mama or “mother of all grains”, to nowadays when it is labelled as a super food, quinoa has always been incredibly nutritious.

Quinoa, among from been amino acid- and protein-rich and containing good levels of E and several B vitamins, also contains plant antioxidants which have anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-depressant effects and is higher in fibre than most grains.

It is one of the few grain crops to not contain gluten, which makes it suitable for people who suffer celiac disease or have problems with digestion.

It is considered as a possible crop on NASA Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration human occupied space flights.

Maybe the future will see quinoa harvested on other planets, but the past had seen its decline when the Spanish conquests of South America forbade its cultivation and forced the Incas to grow wheat instead.

The commercial quinoa exports to the US started in only the 80s and the last decade saw a tremendous increase in the world production, driven by the higher awareness of the health benefits of quinoa consumption.

Quinoa, as a word, is believed to be a borrowing from the Spanish pronunciation of Quechua, the South American language; with the first written British record coming from 1598, from a translation of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Voyages into the East and West Indies: “A kind of fruit called Quinua..wherof they make their drinks, and eat it..as we do rice”.

That record came four decades after the Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, firstly described how quinoa was cultivated in Peru, as Clements Robert Markham in his Peruvian bark: a popular account of the introduction of chinchona cultivation into British Indi confirms in 1880: “The earliest mention of the quinua grain of Peru occurs in the ‘Cronica’ of Pedro de Cieza de Leon”.

Nowadays, Peru keeps its top place among the largest producers and exporters of quinoa, while the grain has earned a top position among the modern super foods.