A Unique Child: Nutrition - Top crop

As well as growing vegetables at our nurseries, we love to take the children out on food fact trips in the local area to keep them in touch with where food comes from and how it grows.

We regularly visit Warleigh Lodge Farm, where the children can feed lambs, collect eggs, prepare fresh bedding for the pigs and scatter beets for the cattle from the safety of farmer Julian’s trailer. We love visiting the shops and garden centres nearby and once had a memorable trip to John Hurd’s organic watercress farm where we helped to turn on the giant water pipes that irrigate the water beds.

Our most recent farming trip stemmed from one of our parents at Snapdragons Keynsham. Emily Addicott Sauvao farms her parents’ arable farm at Corston, just five miles outside Bath. Since the 1980s the family have grown wheat, barley and oilseed rape, but when Emily’s daughter Rosa was diagnosed as gluten intolerant, she started researching alternative crops that she could produce to replace wheat in Rosa’s diet. Her research led her to a crop that was all the rage among health-conscious foodies but was rarely seen on Britain’s farms: quinoa.

The more she found out about quinoa, the more Emily was convinced that she should trial it, and then last year she harvested her first official crop – an impressive 40,000 tonnes.

WHAT’S SO EXCITING ABOUT QUINOA?

Quinoa is, surprisingly, classed as a vegetable, being part of the same family as beets, chard and spinach, and it really is quite a superfood. Not only is it gluten-free but it boasts very high nutritional credentials indeed for such a tiny grain.

It’s a good source of calcium, magnesium and manganese as well as several B vitamins, vitamin E and dietary fibre. It’s slowly digested so it doesn’t cause the highs and lows of energy associated with eating some other carbohydrates.

What makes it even more interesting, especially for vegans and vegetarians, is that it is one of the few non-meat sources of complete protein because it contains all nine essential amino acids.

Emily also told us that quinoa flour is better than other gluten-free options for baking because the high protein content gives it a little bit more elasticity which holds it together when it’s baked.

As a grain it’s extremely versatile and can be used instead of cereal for breakfast; to replace pasta, potato, rice or couscous as a side dish; mixed into salads; as a coating for croquettes and as an addition to crumble toppings and in biscuits. It cooks in 15 minutes so it’s pretty speedy too. The only slight warning is that it can taste a little bitter, so it’s advisable to rinse the grains in cold water before cooking.

HARVEST TIME

Emily sold part of last year’s crop to the British Quinoa Company, in Shropshire, which supplies Pret A Manger and Waitrose, and retained some branded with her own Bath Farm Girls packaging to sell to local farm shops, delis, restaurants and via her website. Incidentally, the Bath Farm Girls referred to are Emily and her two delightful little daughters.

This year the farm has given over 20 more acres to quinoa and we were excited when Emily asked us to see the crop growing and watch the harvest. On the day the quinoa was not quite ripe enough to cut, but we enjoyed a ramble through the field and then watched Emily’s dad harvest a golden field of wheat with his industrial-sized combine harvester. We even got to climb up in the cab to see the view from on high.

Back at the farmyard, the children helped to weigh and package their own bags of quinoa from the storage containers to take home along with one of Emily’s recipe cards.

THE ETHICS OF QUINOA FARMING

The relatively recent rise of quinoa consumption has caused some debate about the ethics of our growing fascination. It is traditionally grown in South America where, for more than a thousand years, it has been a food staple.

High demand has forced the price to rise and made it unaffordable for poorer people, forcing them to choose less-healthy imported processed food. This has caused a reduction in crop diversity, which is undesirable and unsustainable. For those who want to try the health-giving properties of this super-nutritious food with a clear conscience, buying locally grown produce may be the answer.

NUTRITIONAL CONTENT

A 100g serving of quinoa provides:

368 calories

14g protein

6g fat

64g carbohydrate

7g fibre

Nutritional breakdown has been taken from the BBC Good Food website, www.bbcgoodfood.com

MORE INFORMATION

To see Emily’s produce and find out where you can buy it, visit her website, www.bathfarmgirls.com

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