They’re hip and healthy,and more than just a passing trend: superfoods

For me, superfood means what does you good, because superfoods are super for my body.

Quinoa, goji berries, and chia seeds:

just three of the countless superfoods

in big demand due to their nutritional credentials.

The points is what a person needs.

There's complete confusion on that issue.

And now you see these products where we’re told: "You need this.

If you eat this, you'll get well or you won't get sick."

But it's not really true.

How does superfood-hype impact on local people

in countries where the products are actually grown?

Does the continually increasing demand have the potential

to even destroy entire ecosystems?

We're on the road to disaster here if something doesn't change.

And the region will turn into a desert.

The superfood craze started as is so often the case, in the US.

And now, superfood restaurants are at home in cities around the world.

They serve dishes with exotic ingredients such as avocado, chia and quinoa —

which come with the promise of making you slim, healthy and happy.

The customers in this restaurant in Bochum, Germany, like it.

It looks healthy. And you know you're doing something good for your body.

I like to eat a lot, but I like to eat healthy, too. This a perfect mix.

There's lots of healthy stuff here,

and it's good to have a change from cafeterias or other places in town.

Florian Klar recognized a niche and opened his business about a year ago.

He came up with the recipes himself.

His aim is to offer a healthy alternative to fatty, fast food.

Another one of the reasons why we're here is because it's much easier to eat stuff

that's bad for you than eat in a healthy way.

We want to change that.

And with the term "Superfood" you attract more customers

than if you call yourself a "bistro for healthy food."

The food here is served in special bowls.

Warm ingredients are combined with cold ones, most of them raw.

The food is supposed to look tasty and have an exotic touch.

The nice thing about a bowl like this

is that there are lots of individual foods in it.

A — that makes it nice and colorful, and B, it's good for your body,

because each individual ingredient contains minerals and vitamins.

That makes it a perfect meal.

These are our kidney bean balls:

Chickpeas...

Here we have quinoa, an ancient Inca grain from South America.

It’s a grain that is cooked with water and contains loads of healthy proteins.

But are superfoods really all they’re cracked up to be?

The protein content of quinoa, for example is comparable to everyday millets.

Quinoa has more fiber. But millet has more than twice as much iron.

Florian Klar buys a lot of his ingredients at the Bochum wholesale market,

which boasts local products AND foreign foods like sweet potatoes, too.

As always: quality flesh inside.

The freshness of the products is important to Florian when he’s shopping.

I need some herbs.

You've come to the right place.

The mix is key to Florian's menu.

He combines local fruits and veg with foods from faraway lands.

Every fruit and vegetable has its own nutritional composition.

That's why it's so nice to combine the local with the exotic,

because many diverse nutrients, vitamins and minerals

come together, and they form a very complex meal.

And that’s great for the body.

But healthy doesn't necessarily mean sustainable.

The superfoods served up in Germany

come from countries thousands of kilometers away.

Quinoa is a good example. Among the major producers is Bolivia.

The variety that sells best in Germany, quinoa real, is harvested on salt flats.

The indigenous peoples of the South American Andes highlands

were already farming quinoa six thousand years ago.

The nutrient-rich grain has always been a staple food here.

Joachim Milz is a sustainable-farming consultant.

For years, he's been watching how quinoa cultivation has developed in the region.

On these relatively saline and poor soils with little rainfall,

we find a crop that can deliver fantastic yields.

And with the llamas it's an ingenious or ideal form of production,

and is good for the region’s economy.

But that's changing.

Shrubs used to provide food for the llamas and protect the soil from erosion.

After the harvest, the animals came to graze.

Llama dung provided fresh nutrients.

Since the quinoa boom started, farmers have been pushing for maximum yields —

while the scrubland has been cleared.

I was shocked by the fact that 150 to 200 thousand hectares of llama grazing land

has been ploughed up for quinoa.

There are now quinoa fields as far as the eye can see.

Rising demand has led to massive expansion in the plant’s cultivation.

Clearing the fields has left the soil without the vegetation

that had protected it from wind erosion.

When you walk along here, you only see annual weeds growing now.

The soil is completely unprotected.

Ultimately, what they're doing is promoting the development of a highland desert.

Farmers won't have the conditions they need to produce here,

so people will have to go elsewhere.

That change is already making itself felt.

With crop yields declining,

some farmers have already given up and gone to the cities

to make a living as unskilled laborers.

And Bolivia is just one place

where superfood monoculture has left the land scarred.

The problem we see here with quinoa is basically going on everywhere

around the world.

Take the avocado for example.

As a superfood, it’s grown as a monoculture on large farms.

Once profits become the priority,

short-term economic interests override everything else.

And hardly anyone really thinks about what will become of these ecosystems —

where people also live.

Massive demand for avocados has led to problems in countries that grow the fruit,

just as it has with quinoa here in Bolivia.

Within a decade, the area of land used to grow avocados increased by 30 percent —

with 15 hundred liters of water now needed per kilo.

Vegetables in Germany such as lettuce or tomatoes require far less.

Enormous single-crop farms, especially in dry regions,

only ensure short-term high yields.

Raising quinoa the traditional way is based on a different principle —

using less land, but yielding better quality.

Jobia Calani farms a small plot of land.

It takes her two weeks to harvest the field by hand.

Since tractors are now used to grow quinoa more easily everywhere in the flatlands,

there are few people left who want to toil away on hill farms.

Yet this is the cradle of quinoa cultivation.

This is the way our ancestors worked the fields back then.

Our grandparents taught our parents, and our parents taught us.

We have to plow this up every year.

Are these Quinoa roots?

Yes, exactly, the old roots.

And you leave these twigs here?

We rake them, using tools like this. That's our way of working the soil.

It's a traditional system that's been practiced for centuries.

Even here there's room for improvement in terms of sustainability,

but compared to the mechanized farming down in the lowland plains,

this is more environmentally-friendly.

The soil has time to regenerate between the two harvests here on the hillsides.

The plants are large, the individual kernels: plump.

See this plant here, it's yielding really well.

Look at the seed heads, the kernels are nice and ripe.

By our standards, these are the best grains.

We store them and use them as seeds.

Joachim Milz has brought along some quinoa from a German supermarket.