Two weeks ago, an opinion piece by Joanna Blythman at the Guardian blared “Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?” In it, she argues that the high price of quinoa, driven almost exclusively by Western (although not necessarily “vegan”) demand, is making the nutritionally valuable foodstuff difficult for ordinary Bolivians and Peruvians to afford.

PETA’s Mimi Bekhechi was quick to issue a response, pointing out (correctly) that meat consumption is a key driver of a host of ecological and social ills, among them world hunger and global climate change, but failing to dispute the core argument at hand — that is, that Western demand is pricing out poor folks.

Slate’s Ari LeVaux then published by far the most nuanced response to the piece, containing actual reporting on the ground and avoiding the scapegoating that characterized the work by Blythman. LeVaux points out that most of the academic research on the topic comes to the conclusion that rising quinoa prices have benefited considerably Bolivian small producers, while acknowledging that poor urban consumers of quinoa have lost out in this new arrangement.