It may be good for you, but there’s a backlash against quinoa, reports the Wall Street Journal in a truly entertaining article by Miriam Jordan about the “mother grain of the Incas” that has been touted as a superior alternative to bulgur wheat, couscous and rice.
Perhaps it’s been touted a bit too much. Detractors aren’t just taking aim at quinoa (“there’s a certain undeliciousness to the stuff”) but the “blind devotion” of its fanbase.
That fanbase may be shrinking. The WSJ cites Datamyne trade data in charting the rapid rise and current drop in US imports of quinoa.
Correction 9/18/13: The fad may fade, but imports of quinoa are not. An erroneous record from US Customs, source for Datamyne’s US import database, overstated the size of a 2011 shipment, resulting in the inflated total imports for 2011 originally reported. In fact, quinoa imports to the US totaled 3,406 tons in 2011 and rose in 2012. –Editor