How Hipster #Food Trends Are Ruining the World | Highsnobiety
▻http://www.highsnobiety.com/2016/10/27/hipster-food-trends-ruining-world
Take quinoa for example. I was initially introduced to the South American grain through a hippie friend that likes to spend their weekend walking barefoot through the English countryside, and talks about “energy” and “the universe” without any hint of irony. In parts of Peru and Bolivia, where it has been cultivated for several millennia, quinoa is an essential cornerstone of the local #diet in the same way that rice is in Asia and bread is in Europe. But a spike in Western demand for quinoa caused its #price to triple in the years between 2006 and 2013.
By the end of this period, quinoa had become more expensive than chicken in the Peruvian capital of Lima, not to mention that the #lucrative sums that could be earned from exporting it to moneyed overseas markets made supplies scarcer. This has forced the local populace into spending their money on cheaper imported Western junk food because they can afford little else. So much for those hippie ideals of universal love.