”QUINOA” has been searched more than 2,000 times on Google Malaysia since Prime Minister Najib Razak mentioned it as his substitute for rice yesterday.

Trendinalia Malaysia, a Twitter account that tracks trending topics in Malaysia on the Internet, said this morning that the word is “trending today on Google Malaysia (2000+ searches)”.

Najib, while speaking in a live broadcast on Facebook on the Budget 2018 With the Rakyat programme yesterday, said he ate the imported South American grain instead of rice as it was healthier and because he did not exercise as frequently as he wanted to.

“I have to control (what I eat). For example, I don’t eat rice, but quinoa. My son introduced me to quinoa, a food from Peru.

“It is protein-based, so it has less carbohydrates and a lower sugar content. It is better than rice,” he said in answer to a question on how he took care of his health.

A check online showed that a 250g bag of organic quinoa sold at the Tesco supermarket costs RM14.79, and more depending on brand.

In the same programme, Najib also advised young Malaysians to differentiate between high living costs and lifestyle spending.

He said they should spend within their means, making a comparison between dining at an expensive Japanese restaurant and a mamak eatery.

 “Lifestyle (spending is), for example, when we go to a Japanese restaurant in a well-known hotel, where you have to pay, say RM800 to RM1,000 per person, depending on what you order.

“But if you go to a 24-hour mamak, how much would the meal cost?” he said, to which programme moderator Fizo Omar replied: “RM8.”

Najib said he was not preventing Malaysians from enjoying a higher quality of life, but was merely reminding them about making choices that were within their means.

DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang also used Najib’s quinoa diet to point out the Barisan Nasional government’s disconnect with the cost of living struggles of the general population.

“Until the prime minister’s live session yesterday, I had never heard of quinoa – in fact, I did not even know that quinoa existed.

“Quinoa which Najib eats is about 23 times more expensive than rice, eaten by 30 million Malaysians.

“This reminds me of the Marie Antoinette story of the last Queen of France before the French Revolution in 1789 where she was supposed to have said ‘Let them eat cake’ when she learnt that the peasants had no bread,” Lim, the Gelang Patah MP, said in a statement today. – February 23, 2018.