Quinoa I am no SpaghettiO!

By Joan McDaniel February 12, 2014

I may look like spaghettiO’s but I am anything but – Quinoa

What is Quinoa? (You pronounce it like saying Quinoa What? Quin KEEN-WAH.)

When it comes to food, you may know what SpaghettOs are but what is Quinoa? Quinoa is a seed a product made by nature. You eat it like a grain or a cereal but it is a seed. Quinoa may just be as close to a perfect food source in the balance of nutrition it provides. It may just be one of the best food replacements for the high processed cereal grains, pasta, rice and wheat. It can replace empty carbs and empty calories with complete proteins and be 100% natural. Your body can only digest natural nutrients the rest it converts to sugar. If it grows in the dirt I call it a good carb., if it is created in the lab I call it a bad carb. In case it didn’t get it Quinoa grows in the ground, SpaghettOs was created by man.

Quinoa can proudly wear the label 100% Natural and SpaghettOs can wear the label “READY IN 3 MINUTES!”

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Quinoa Cooked Completely 100% Natural What are SpaghettOs?

American Marketing

Anything but Natural but marketed as “less messy” than spaghetti.

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SpaghettOs made a mint for Wall Street

Quinoa is natural, anyone can grow it in their own garden. It cannot be patented or controlled by a cartel to justify a high-financed add campaign to make its investors rich beyond imagination. What made me think of SpaghettOs, It’s shape – its round and Quinoa is round after that there isn’t any comparison.

But, the more I looked at SpaghettOs, the more I saw the history of Big Food. It is my contention that Big Food controls what we eat and dictates what it claims to be good nutrition. SpaghettOs was one if not the first product that was marketed so successfully it’s theme song hit the top of popularity charts. It was the first product after the Hershey Chocolate Bar to promote “Fast Food”, “Pre-Made”, “Easy”, and “Fortified with Vitamins”.

So who put Big Food in charge of our nutrition?

A Brief history of America’s extremely profitable food industry

Crisco in 1911 started the very successful mass marketing campaign for its lab created replacement of oil from animal fat like lard. Hershey Chocolate enjoyed major product success without mass marketing for its addictive Sugar sold itself.

In the 1950 the first national road system created by the Eisenhower administration, advanced mass distributions systems and TV was just getting started. Radio, Television an increased public interest opened the world of mass market and mass advertising. The idea of pre-made food or fast food was just germinating.

These new systems led for the success of such companies as meat processors like Armour and Swift, Heinz, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, and Quaker Oats, These companies could now sell their brands nationally.

Campbell Soup invested heavily in advertising since its start and many of its promotional campaigns have proven to be very strong money makers for the advertising and investment market. Perhaps best known are the “Campbell Kids” designed by illustrator Grace Drayton. Ronald Reagan was a spokesman for V8 when Campbell’s acquired the brand in 1948.

Campbell Soup Company and Food Advertising

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“Campbell’s Kids”

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Campbell Soup Product Line

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READY IN 3 MINUTES!

With the SpaghettiOs the germinating idea of pre-prepared food saw the light of day. SpaghettOs was introduced by Campbell’s Soup Company under the brand name Franco-American. It not only made the previously unknown company a household name it made the product’s catchy sing along advertising jingle, ”Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs,” quickly climbed to the top of the music charts. It was derived from the song, “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again“, and its original TV version was likewise sung by Jimmie Rodgers.

The product was the brain child of Donald Goerke (1926 – 2010) called “the Daddy-O of SpaghettiOs”

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Clik here to view.Donald Goerke – ( Born in 1926 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Died January 2010 at his home in Delran, New Jersey he was 83 Years old) He was in market research and worked 35 years for The Campbell Soup Company from 1955 to 1990. He was the research director of Campbell’s Franco-American division where he and his team developed a canned pasta that would appeal to children. They settled on the “O” shape and came up with the marketing campaign of “The neat, round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon: Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs”.

The product, promoted in TV commercials became a major success. Goerke attributed the product’s enduring popularity with mothers and children to the fact that “it was easy to use”. He appeared on the television program “Whats My Line?, and hobnobbed with celebrities including President Ronald Reagan and Martha Stewart. He later became the sponsor of the lassie television series.

They may claim to product to be healthy but it is anything but. Nothing about it is natural – Nothing except maybe the can.

Before I go into Quinoa – a Word Rice and Wheat

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Rice Plant

Rice is a natural product and is a cereal grain, but its outer layer the Chaff or hull cannot be consumed – We cannot chew or digest it. The seeds of the rice plant are first milled using a rice huller to remove the chaff (the outer husk of the grain). At this point the product is called brown rice. The milling may continue removing the bran, i.e., (the rest of the husk and the germ therefore creating white rice. White rice keeps longer, but lacks all the important nutrients and becomes what I call a Bad Carb for all that is left the body converts to sugar.

Kinds of Rice

Brown rice – Is milled with its nutritious brown layer left on

White rice – is polished and the bran layer removed to get silky white rice

Parboiled (Sella) – is soaked in water and milled thereby soaking the nutrients inside the rice.Image may be NSFW.
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The Milling steps of rice

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Whole Rice Grain

Wheat

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Wheat is a cereal grain originally from the Levant region of the Near East and Ethiopian Highlands, and now cultivated worldwide. Wheat like rice has outer shells or hulls that have to be milled for digestion.

White flour and white rice have undergone refinement where most of the nutritious part of the grain has been removed, so the flour essentially becomes a form of sugar. Whole wheat, whole bran or rice is unrefined. It consists of non-digestible carbohydrates and lignin, when digested it becomes fiber.

Wheat Grain

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Quinoa Pasta

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Quinoa pasta is an entire family of pasta made from quinoa instead of the traditional ingredient of wheat. I don’t know much about this product except to say the quinoa has been processed and made into a flour. Quinoa Flour is made from the Quinoa Seed but the Quinoa Pasta product pictured is also mixed with corn flour. Corn is questionable as to most Corn is GMO.

Quinoa may just be the super grain of the future replacing cereal, pasta and rice in one setting.

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Quinoa Bush

Quinoa – is pronounced as KEEN-WAH and in case you didn’t know it is a seed of a leafy plant related to spinach and is used as a whole grain. It is 100% natural and a safe replacement for white and brown rice or white or brown pasta. It is a little known seed which has been used as a staple food for thousands of years in South America

Quinoa has been cultivated as a crop in the Andes as far back as the 4th millennium BCE. The Incas referred to it as the mother of all grains, and it played a pivotal role in the agricultural cycles of the Incas. When the Europeans conquered South America, they shunned quinoa as a food, disparaging it as Indian food, and its cultivation gradually decreased outside of rural indigenous communities.

Quinoa’s is packed with nutritional benefits

Quinoa was one of the primary foods of the Inca Indians for more than 5,000 years. The referred to Quinoa as “Mother Grain”. Quinoa is very easy to grow. Most quinoa was grown in the Andes in South America. It is hardy for it favors a cold climate and can grow in poor soil. Quinoa is now available in Grocery Stores all year-long.

Quinoa’s Benefits

Antioxidants and anti-inflammatory – It therefore reduces the risks for cardiovascular, diabetes and other inflammatory diseases.

High in Vitamins, such as B, riboflavin (B2), B6, E, niacin, and thiamine

High in Calcium, copper, folic acid, magnesium, manganese, niacin, riboflavin, potassium,, thiamine, zinc,

High in Fiber

Gluten free

Complete Protein all eight of the essential amino acids needed for tissue development in humans. Carbohydrates or grains and many seeds are not complete proteins.

Sugar free – It is not a starch, there isn’t the normal sugar rush or Insulin High and low as in rice and pasta

Increases your Metabolism and promote energy production.

How To Prepare and Eat Quinoa

Quinoa like rice and wheat has an outer shell. Quinoa’s shell is soft but is very bitter-tasting. This covering is called saponins that naturally repel insects and birds. Removing this shell may take some time. Depending on the brand name, this process may already have been done for you. It’s believed that the bitter-tasting shell is what discouraged the Spanish from using Quinoa.

The shell is easily removed by rinsing the quinoa using a strainer, if the liquid runs clear the saponin has been removed.

You must first cook Quinoa then you can serve it warm, or cold. Quinoa has a nutty, smoky flavor.. You can mix it with just about anything for it picks up the flavor much like Tofu dues. You can eat it as a Breakfast Cereal, side dish, salad, soup, or serve as pasta or rice. It cooks faster than other pasta or rice or couscous.. Note Couscous is made from wheat it is a form of pasta.

To Cook

2 cups of water to 1 cup of quinoa.

Bring the quinoa and water to a vigorous boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook until the quinoa is tender but still chewy. White spiral like threads will appear around each grain. Quinoa cooks in about 10 to 15 minutes.

The Food Channel Quinoa

Video (3:51):

http://www.therealfoodchannel.com/page/10297.html