What does popularity in the U.S. do to an ingredient?

On loving quinoa before it was on restaurant menus

I grew up in the 90s eating brown rice, millet, amaranth, and quinoa for breakfast. My Mom alternated between the foods she bought in bulk, and we'd top them with maple syrup, an assortment of nuts, seeds, dried or fresh fruit, and sometimes a splash of milk. This was normal for me, and like most children, I assumed everyone ate the way I ate. Later, when I was in high school and college, quinoa suddenly was everywhere, and most people I knew hadn't ever eaten it. That's when I realized how unusual the breakfasts of my youth were.

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel on desert-adapted and climate-smart agriculture. The local agricultural experts talked about foods such as prickly pear fruit and paddles, agave, and corn—grown the old way using little water. During the Q&A, someone asked how restaurants and chefs can help the cause by popularizing such ingredients. As the panelists answered, there was some tension. Some were excited about chefs' role in introducing people to a broader range of food. Others were cautious and skeptical about who would benefit from the popularity. 

What happens when an ingredient outside the list of foods grown in conventional U.S. farming is popularized? It can raise awareness, that's true. A few years ago, the Tempe restaurant Cotton and Copper prized local and foraged ingredients, which sparked my interest in learning about foods indigenous to Arizona. The restaurant has since closed, but it has left an impression, and other Phoenix chefs are creating menus focusing on the desert's diversity and abundance. It's no longer surprising for me to see a tepary bean dish on the menu.

When I was eating quinoa in the 90s, my Mom says it was seen as a specialty health food imported from Peru. It wasn't on menus or in grocery stores. Then, "the price of quinoa tripled from 2006 to 2013 as America and Europe discovered this new superfood," writes NPR. I want to pause and look at that sentence again. America and Europe discovered a new superfood? It makes quinoa sound like something that didn't exist before 2006. Who discovered it? Who already knew about it? Where is their expertise? Did they benefit from quinoa becoming popular amongst Americans and Europeans? This idea is everywhere: That because something is new to someone, it didn't exist until they found it. I noticed this tendency in myself, too, when I became interested in writing about Arizona’s food and agriculture.

I'm reading "Sweetness and Power" by Sidney W. Mintz about the meteoric rise of the consumption and production of sugar. He writes, "Social phenomena are by their nature historical, which is to say that the relationships among events in one 'moment' can never be abstracted from their past and future settings." Quinoa was popular before the U.S. existed, and can’t be abstracted from that past. "Because of quinoa's nutritional and spiritual importance, the Spanish banned the growing of the crop as a means of subjugation upon their defeat of the Incas in 1533. They mandated the growing of imported wheat instead." Who did quinoa's renewed popularity in our recent history serve? Did small farms in Peru get the lion's share of the profit? Or did it line the pockets of the already wealthy food corporations supplying most U.S. grocery stores?

There's a false connection between a food trend and that food item being considered new. It's only new to a portion of people and perhaps those marketing the food. The tepary bean has been grown by Indigenous communities in the Sonoran desert for four thousand years. Prickly pear has been eaten and used in many ways for centuries, long before it became famous as a bright red candy found in tourist shops.

Take prickly pear, for example. What if effort was put into growing it so more people could eat it? How would that happen? Would it benefit farmers in Arizona? Would it be taken over by industrial forces? Should everyone everywhere eat prickly pear? Let's ship it around the world!! ... Doesn't that fall into some of the same problems we're facing with other conventional crops? To echo what I heard at the panel, if a new food system is to be imagined and realized where Indigenous foods are grown more, I think those foods need to feed Indigenous communities first.

Lack of knowledge of indigenous ingredients is often considered a byproduct of the U.S.'s diverse identity rather than an integral part of the suppression of Indigenous Peoples to build and grow the U.S. "A product that the poor eat, both because they are accustomed to it and because they have no choice, will be praised by the rich, who will hardly ever eat it," Mintz writes. The state has suppressed and terrorized Indigenous communities and their food traditions. There's no way to erase or even fully make this history right, so the past must be part of making amends. The food history in the U.S. is filled with explorers discovering new-to-them foods and either taking them for their own gain or rejecting them as backward. There was no habit of exploring the context of the foods and getting to know the people already growing and eating them.

How is curiosity encouraged without misplaced ownership or ignoring the past? Part of the answer, I think, is asking: What’s the context of this food that’s new to me? This approach allows for meaningful connections between food, land, and people rather than division, appropriation, or hoarding. Mintz writes, "I don't think meanings inhere in substances naturally or inevitably. Rather, I believe that meaning arises out of use, as people use substances in social relationships."

In the 90s, my Mom also made a quinoa salad with shrimp, green onions, fresh tomatoes, and feta cheese. She'd serve it in a white and blue ceramic bowl that was low and wide. There was eventually a chip on the edge, but it worked just fine. I still crave it – the salad, the experience. Quinoa is nostalgia for me, an ingredient imbued with personal and familial meaning.

Newness and seeking it out is different than being guided solely by whatever is popular. What does it say about me as an eater if I'm more interested in menus with trending ingredients than learning about what grows best where I live? Alicia Kennedy recently wrote about this in her essay "On Seasons," "While it's easy for us in the U.S. to consider the regions of Italy, France, China, Spain, and India, and all the varieties of cuisines encompassed there, the United States, despite its massive size, has come to be considered monolithic. This is no doubt owed to the sameness of the supermarket availability wherever one might be, stocked as they are by industrial farms. But that means so much is missed." Many may benefit from an increased focus on getting to know the food that grows best where we live rather than looking for the next ingredient to throw in the popularization machine. 

While reading "Sweetness and Power," I was struck by this passage toward the end of his introduction, "It would, of course, be immensely satisfying to be able to declare that my brooding about sugar for thirty years has resulted in some clear-cut alignment, the solution to a puzzle, the resolution of some contradiction, perhaps even a discovery. But I remain uncertain. This book has tended to write itself; I have watched the process, hoping it would reveal something I did not already know." It reminded me of a quote from Adrienne Rich's "Notes toward a politics of Location" that was published a year earlier in 1984, "I come here with notes but without absolute conclusions. This is not a sign of loss of faith or hope. These notes are the marks of a struggle to keep moving, a struggle for accountability."

I have no idea if Mintz and Rich knew each other, but I like to think of them talking together – like they do in my head as I read them. This quote from Rich is foundational to this newsletter, and so I don't have "absolute conclusions" either. I am concerned, though, when I see liberation trying to be made via the same machine that has brought so much injustice.

Yesterday, I noticed the forlorn bag of quinoa on my shelf. I cook it occasionally but always have it around out of habit. I cooked the quinoa in my InstaPot and let it cool in a wide bowl. Then, throughout the day, I quick-pickled white onion slices, sauteed mixed greens and parsley with garlic, and baked tofu. Later, I mixed everything into the bowl of quinoa and shredded parmesan on top. I added a drizzle of balsamic vinegar at the last minute over my portion. It tasted old and new, and that is good.

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Reading - Hurley Winkler (who writes the excellent

Lonely Victories

) interviewed Matt Bell (who writes another Substack I love

No Failure, Only Practice

) about writing and the creative process. Books in my current stack: No Meat Required by Alicia Kennedy, How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz, and Persuasion by Jane Austen. Also a slew of short stories submitted to the Nashville Review where I’m a volunteer reader.

Writing - Not too much this week beside the newsletter.

Cooking - Roasted zucchini and tomatoes, separately. The leftover tomatoes I warmed up in a pan with greens and cracked in an egg to fry, and ate that on toast. Perfection.