Food is one of the things that brings people together. Food unites people through dinner parties, holiday meals, and coming together to enjoy a type of food that you and your friends all enjoy. However, food can also be pretty divisive.

This can be seen with friends disagreeing on fundamentally important food related issues such as the well known Chipotle vs. Moe’s debate, the McDonalds vs. Burger King Debate, and the “should we order pizza or Chinese food for dinner” debate. And while these debates aren’t truly a means to end certain friendships, some people really do become very heated when defending their favorite food of choice.

Recently in an interview, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, created quite the outrage among his citizens with the claim that “quinoa is better than rice”. Malaysian cuisine is highly reliant on the existence of rice and rice definitely serves as one of the country’s biggest food staples. Razak claimed that his son introduced him to quinoa recently and ever since, he has stopped eating rice.

This didn’t just cause a stir in the community because citizens were offended that their Prime Minister claimed to prefer a different food to rice. The main issue with this statement stemmed from the fact that quinoa is more expensive than rice, and this Prime Minister has already previously been in some trouble for mishandling money and living in luxury while some of his citizens live in poverty.

Unfortunately for Najob Razak, it doesn’t look like his statement will be winning him any fans for the upcoming re-election.