Elise Nanan 4c

Food and Nutrition

Is healthy eating just hype?

The video starts with an introduction to super foods, where it talks about how it’s in high demand
because of how “healthy” it is portrayed as. It is then said that these “superfoods” are confused for what
someone needs, and how it promises good health when that’s not the case. Superfoods started in the US
and is now being sold all around the world. They serve things that promise to have you “Slim, healthy and
happy” such as avocados, quinoa and chia. In Bochum Germany, there is a restaurant that serves these
“superfoods” that was created by a man named Florian Klar. He gets his foods from the supermarkets and
faraway lands like Bolivia.

In Bolivia, quinoa is a staple food grown on salt plains. The indigenous people of the South
America Andes highlands would cultivate this grain for 6 thousand years. Joachim Milz is a sustainable-
farming consultant who’s been watching the production of quinoa for years. Where llamas use to graze,
quinoa has replaced it and now quinoa plantation can be seen for miles and clearing the fields left the soil
to be exposed to things like wind erosion. With conditions like that, farmers won’t have the right
conditions to farm and they would need to produce elsewhere, with some already leaving.

The video goes on to a traditional farm that cultivates quinoa by hand. They show they would
work the soil and they talk about how, compared to the mechanical farming in the lowland plains, it’s
more environmentally friendly. Joachim brings some quinoa t show the farmers how it’s being sold in
places like Europe and Germany and they say that their “class 2” is bigger than what they were presented
with which was labelled “class 1” and that it’s most suited as a “class 3” and the others they were
presented with was more of just chicken feed than anything. The price fluctuated throughout the years,
and even though it remains sustainable with its quality yields, the way they work the land is at risk of
dying out.

Meanwhile, the European consumers are mostly unaware of the farmer’s problems, and the
superfoods continue to grow. The consumers are confused, probably meaning they don’t know about the
nutritional value in these foods, and need to have faith in advertisements. Doctor and Nutrition Specialist,
Matthias Riedl inspects superfoods at a supermarket to show that these “superfoods” are not as healthy as
they are advertised. Sample measurements were shown to have pesticides and metals within them. The
pesticide issue isn’t problem with quinoa, however, it says that many farmers have organic certification,
but this doesn’t mean the farming is sustainable. With the demand for it growing, Joachim fears that one
day there won’t be any quinoa left to farm in Bolivia, with some farmers even saying that yields get less
and less every year.

In the video’s final minutes, Joachim Milz says that people should think about how to produce
quinoa without destroying the whole region there. A village there, after the boom of quinoa, was revived,
and the people who had left to find new places to work had returned, since they finally had a place to
work. My final thoughts on superfoods, whether it’s just hype or not, I believe that it’s mostly hype. The
superfoods, I would say, are to just make a person feel like they are eating something healthy, when they
are probably consuming more sugar than they are trying to avoid. I also believe that the quinoa farmers
should start thinking more about the land they use and they should try to avoid destroying the area around
them as much as they could.