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Oatmeal is very dense. Calorie for Calorie Quinoa has more protein and dietary fiber than oatmeal.

100 calories of Quinoa

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=83+g+quinoa

100 calories of Oatmeal

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=26+g+oatmeal

However if you look at the vitamins, oatmeal wins.

I also wouldn't call Quinoa a super food, but it does fill a gap left by other grains and is definitely a worthy addition to a healthy balanced diet.



Unfortunately WolframAlpha is a little off on this one. It shows data for cooked quinoa which is very misguiding.

The "correct" macronutrient values with some comparisons:

Quinoa: 368kcal / Protein 14g / Fat 6g / Carbs 64g

Oats: 379/13/6/67

Regular pasta: 360/12/1/72

Couscous: 361/13/1/72

  "Quinoa is a low-calorie, gluten-free, high-protein grain that tastes great." says the author.

It's low-calorie compared to butter maybe, and high-protein compared with a cucumber. But compared with the usual suspect of dinner alternatives like pasta or couscous it's just the same. Just by looking at the macros, there's no need to buy quinoa, especially if it's more expensive than other options. This is of course disregarding that it's gluten free and not looking at the micronutrients.


Quinoa is low calorie in the sense that it has fewer calories per gram of total mass (see several siblings to your comment).


Side-by-side comparison: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=26+g+oatmeal+vs+83g+qui...

The vitamins is probably missing data-- Vitamin C is biochemically critical, so a plant would have some amount of it.


I checked, all the sources I found for it list 0.00mg of Vit C for any amount of Quinoa and .50mcg of Vitamin A per 100g.


Maybe I'm going cross eyed from a long day, but looking at that result... how can Quaker oatmeal have 2g of protein and be 5% USRDA, while quinoa has 4g of protein yet 7% USRDA? Shouldn't that be 10% USRDA for quinoa?


Rounding. The RDA is 50 grams. So oatmeal's 2g is closer to 2.5g and quinoa's 4g is closer to 3.5g. At least that'd be my guess.


Probably rounding issues, maybe intentional. Food vendors are known to fudge numbers in the low digits, legally, which result in problems like this when you extrapolate.


The source you really want to use for nutrition information is the USDA National Nutrient Database.

See http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/6359?fg=&man=&lfacet=... and http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/1866


These graphs are based on usda data:

http://food.vegtalk.org/nutrients/cereals/protein.html

It shows that some products, like wheat durum are richer in proteins but with the almost the same amount of calories.


100 calories of oatmeal is 26g. 100g of quinoa is 83g. Research [0] shows that portion size is important in controlling obesity.

[0] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/6/1207.full (note - this was just a quick google, I'm no expert in this area)




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