Submission: UCLA dining halls should remove quinoa from menus

In the past two decades, knowledge of quinoa and its ample health benefits has caused it to rise in popularity among health enthusiasts.

According to Medical News Today, quinoa aids the digestive system and provides us with important vitamins, minerals and fiber. It is superior in comparison to simple carbs such as white pasta that do not have much nutritional value, as quinoa is able to keep us full longer. This superfood has been springing up at all of the local supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Trader Joe’s, and is even at Bruin Plate, our very own dining hall here at UCLA.

We seem to know so much about quinoa’s potential health benefits, but very little about the growing controversy surrounding quinoa consumption. It is time we, as educated university students, become more aware of our eating habits and their effects on others.

Currently, quinoa is only grown in a few locations around the world, with the south Altiplano region of Bolivia being one of them. As quinoa began growing in popularity, Bolivia’s quinoa production began to grow as well. Initially, this was seen as a way for Bolivia to stimulate its struggling economy, one where 45 percent of its residents live below the poverty line.

However, things started to look less ideal as there began to be too much demand.

Bolivian farmers have started to replace the production of other staple crops for more quinoa, and have even limited their own consumption of quinoa just to push out a few additional exports. Furthermore, the general Bolivian population can no longer afford quinoa since prices have risen 40 percent from what they previously were. For personal consumption, they resort to simple carbs and other cheap forms of food, escalating Bolivia’s known malnutrition problem.

Even with the extreme increase in production, Bolivian farmers are still unable to meet demand. In fact, research has shown that demand for quinoa is estimated to increase by 0.08 percent per year, but supply is only expected to increase 0.02 percent each year. In simple economic terms, this means that supply will never meet demand, driving up prices to where quinoa is almost two times more expensive per pound than its brown rice counterpart.

This overproduction of quinoa is leading to environmental issues as well. Due to improper use of farming machinery as well as the over-cultivation of the land, yields are slowly diminishing. If Bolivian farmers continue this trend, quinoa production will not be a sustainable source of income and growth.

This growing quinoa problem relates back to UCLA. Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, enacted the Global Food Initiative aimed at achieving sustainable and nutritious eating both on campus and around the world through university research and outreach. If UCLA sticks to the goals of this university-wide initiative, quinoa should be removed from our dining hall menus.

It is hard to care about this issue purely out of the goodness in our hearts, so let’s think of it in terms of something that is always looming over all of us: college tuition and fees.

In a way, the money we pay for on-campus housing contributes partially to the purchase of this luxuriously expensive seed. At our dining halls, we already have white rice, brown rice, pasta, bulgar wheat and buckwheat noodles. There’s no need to use our money to add quinoa to this extensive list.

Not to mention, research shows that college dining halls throw away 22 million pounds of edible food annually. It would be a shame for quinoa to continue contributing to that 22 million pounds, especially when we consider the hard work Bolivian farmers put into producing this crop, and the people it could have fed if it was kept for domestic consumption within Bolivia.

UCLA’s consumption of quinoa at Bruin Plate represents a very small, almost negligible amount of the quinoa that is actually consumed across our nation. Nonetheless, I still believe we should remove quinoa from our menus because it is not the action that makes a difference, but what the action represents.

Removing quinoa from our dining halls will not solve the unmet international demand and the subsequent issues imposed onto Bolivia, but becoming conscious of our eating habits and spreading awareness of the issue to inspire change will.

Poon is a fourth-year business economics student.