Bleeding Heart

Campers, today I have distressing news about quinoa, one of the few gluten-free grains remaining on my ever-diminishing roster of allowable foods.

But first, a few titillating factoids that I failed to uncover during my initial web research so very long ago:

• quinoa was initially popularized in the USA by NASA scientists (they really get around, those guys), impressed by its unparalleled combination of amino acids and other life-enhancing nutrients
• quinoa prices have tripled in the last five years (darn - I should have bought those futures when I had the chance)
• quinoa is, strictly speaking, a chenopod - and a close relative of beets and spinach (a chenopod, as we all know, is distinguished by its petal-less flowers)
• quinoa grows best on salt flats

Now to my latest crisis. Buried in this morning's New York Times, barely noticeable amidst headlines about Libya, Japan, Yemen, and other hotbeds of international intrigue and hullabaloo, was a story about a place not generally on my current events radar: Bolivia.

I hereby admit that I know next to nothing about Bolivia. My most recent exposure to this rather underappreciated (by me, anyway) plurinational state was during a family movie-marathon session with Stephen Soderbergh's political epic Che, the subject of which is one of the Kid Squid's most esteemed heroes. Believe me - despite the delicious presence of Benicio del Toro, only a mother's love could have kept me sitting there for the four and one-half hours required to chart the great revolutionary's rise and fall.

Che would no doubt be discomposed by the circumstances surrounding capitalism's most recent South American casualties. It turns out that while quinoa prices have been climbing and Bolivia's export of the grain (sorry, chenopod) has been burgeoning, home consumption of the miracle food has plummeted by 34%. This is because rich American folks like me, who eat quinoa because it's cool and groovy and gluten free, have driven the price of quinoa beyond the reach of those who previously relied upon it as a staple. The foreign aid outfits who first organized quinoa growers to export their crops are now wringing their hands over the unforeseen consequences: higher profits for producers, to be sure, but at the cost of increased childhood malnutrition in quinoa-growing areas.

Oh, the guilt! In January I suffered torments over my failure to support organic beef producers in Paraguay - but that culpability was as nothing compared to being a prime cause of hunger in Salinas de Garci Mendoza.

I guess quinoa's another item that's off my dietary docket. Whatever is a politically conscious, hand-wringing, card-carrying gluten-freedom fighter to do?