The History of Quinoa

How did a plant that Victorian botanists dismissed as something you'd find growing on a rubbish heap become the sacred mother grain of the Inca Empire — and how did the Spanish nearly stamp it out of existence by banning it as a religious act? Why did quinoa's spectacular twenty-first century success on global markets cause farming communities who had grown it for seven thousand years to start eating less of it? And, what exactly is the "quinoa paradox"?

Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of quinoa — from the shores of Lake Titicaca to the UN General Assembly, via a golden digging stick, four centuries of colonial suppression, and a UN resolution...

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