Bill Gates Has Been Eating This One Food No One Expected — And It's a Powerhouse of Nutrients

From time to time, Bill Gates (@thisisbillgates) might have expressed his fondness for cheeseburgers and hot dogs, but lately he has been actively promoting foods that are more plant-based and less animal-based. Take his favorite lab-based butter or the dairy-free yogurt made from fungi. With each small step, Gates is crusading towards a healthier future by pushing the climate crisis a little bit farther in time and fostering a sheltered world for disappearing and ailing animals. In an April 2024 post in Gates Notes, Gates wrote about claiming an “ancient grain” from the fields of West Africa, just “south of the Sahara Desert.” 

Resembling the Indian ragi and Ethiopian teff, the grain, called “fonio,” is the new favorite Gates likes to have cooked in his kitchen. Fonio, he described in Notes, has been growing in Africa for more than 5,000 years, but it is only in recent years that people have started to become aware of it. The crop isn’t only nutritious, but also good for the soil where it grows. “To thrive there, a crop must be drought-tolerant and able to grow in poor quality soil. Fonio not only handles the dry conditions with ease but even rejuvenates the soil as it grows,” he wrote in Gates Notes.

“I am in Senegal and learning about a powerhouse ancient grain: fonio,” Gates said in an Instagram reel. “It’s tiny, full of nutrients, and drought-resistant,” he described. The problem with fonio, he said, “It’s hard to harvest and prepare.” He noted that only 10 percent of fonio is sold in the market. The rest of it is eaten directly by farmers and their families, probably because it is hard to produce it on a commercial scale. “The part you eat is surrounded by a hard hull, which was traditionally removed by skilled women using either a mortar and pestle or their feet to crack the shell. It’s a time- and labor-intensive process that makes it hard to turn a profit,” explained the leader.

But there’s a company that has attempted to solve this problem. Terra Ingredients, an American company that is helping to bring the grain across the Atlantic, partnered with a Senegalese company called CAA to build a commercial processing facility in the area, which helps the farmers distribute and sell the grains to a greater community and make their lives better. “I got to visit it during my trip, and it was inspiring to see how they’re enabling local farmers to earn a better living,” Gates said.

At the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event in 2022, Gates even took a cooking lesson from Senegalese chef Pierre Tham, where they cooked fonio with mangoes. “The mango salad we made was delicious,” Gates said. His goal, he said, is to discover, claim, and revive interest in the “lost crops” and “magic millets,” which will help the world fight malnutrition, wrestle with climate change, and provide the world with a healthy new ingredient to experiment with in their cooking. Fonio, also called "hungry rice" in Africa, is packed with proteins, fiber, iron, zinc, and several key amino acids. “Good to eat. Good for the people of West Africa. Good for the planet. Yum!”