Quinoa Conundrum

Nope, I've not joined the Green Party. For the next few months I'm going gluten- free in an attempt to see if doing so has any sort of impact on my non- existent iron levels (it's a long boring story if anyone needs to be suitably numbed). If it doesn't work I'll be stuffing a sausage sandwich (oooh innuendo) ASAP, but if it does then the gluten- free life is mine...Cutting out a large swathe of food items was never going to be easy (no pesto pasta sobs). I nearly had a breakdown upon realising that Kit Kat Crunchy Peanut Butter bars contain gluten... However it also posed an interesting opportunity to try different things, and to completely rethink the menu. So I invested in a few cookbooks and set about finding something to eat as a replacement to my mid- lecture bag of Maltesers (no Maltesers, potentially ever again, the pain). The most suitable thing seemed to be quinoa cereal bars- and here begins the problem.A few years ago (back when I had never heard of the pseudo- cereal, and pronounced it qui-no-ah) I read an article in The Guardian (yes people, I read The Guardian- I also read The Telegraph, doing both gives a balanced view). The article in question was about the newly popular "superfood" quinoa, and the fact that Western demand for the crop was driving up domestic prices, meaning that indigenous people were no longer able to afford to buy their staple crop.Buying the little bag of quinoa was a difficult task. Not quite as bad as buying battery eggs or Danish bacon (because they are so obviously wrong) but still a niggling feeling that I was doing something bad. I still bought it, because it looks like quinoa is a central concept of any non- gluten diet that doesn't revolve around heavily processed wheat substitutes.So I baked the cereal bars, combining quinoa with banana, a mixture of non- wheat flours, maple syrup, vanilla extract and chia seeds. And then it struck me- these ingredients came with a heck of a lot of food miles. Yes, the vanilla extract was labelled as Fair Trade. Yes I presume that Waitrose source their chia seeds from reliable traders. However that doesn't change the fact that none of these ingredients (not even my coconut oil) were produced in the UK. Quinoa is not commercially produced in Europe- although there is a Shropshire farmer growing it.These ingredients are all pretty central to a "clean-eating", vegetarian or vegan diet. Most of these diets revolve around a policy of ethics; of reducing animal suffering, of reducing pesticide use, of sustainable sourcing and healthy eating. But how sustainable and ethical is it to buy food produced half way across the world, sometimes to the detriment of local people? If global trade were to stop, what would these people eat?Will we ever grow quinoa commercially in the UK? Should we attempt to grow quinoa commerciallyin the UK? And what will happen to the South American farmers producing quinoa if the West suddenly gives up on this superfood?I haven't got the answers.Off to make some (British) poached eggs... With some decidedly un-British avocado and spinach.