Thursday mornings at La Princesita Tortilleria in East Los Angeles are dedicated to making French fries, so customers couldn't get piping hot tortillas when I visited last week. But CEO Enrique Rodriguez made sure two fresh batches of corn tortillas were available for what we were about to make.
It's time for the Big Tortilla Folic Acid Test.
My older relatives have complained for years that corn tortillas in the United States don't taste like they should, because most contain as many ingredients as the fine print on an infomercial. That makes them as palatable as the lickable part of an envelope.
But over the past decade, a growing number of restaurants and tortilla makers have gone back to basics (using only corn, water and lime in a process called nixtamalization) to promote older, tastier and healthier forms. Some, like The Little Princess, never deviated from the practice and became loved for it.
However, health advocates have argued for decades that fortifying dough with folic acid is necessary and have pushed to make it mandatory.
They cite research showing that consuming it early in pregnancy dramatically reduces neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida, and that Latina mothers lag far behind in its consumption compared to other ethnicities. Folic acid is so important for fetal health that the Food and Drug Administration required its inclusion in 1998 in all fortified cereal products, and Mexico did the same with corn masa in 2008. A later study found that this reduced the number of children born in the US with neural tube defects by 35%.
Now, a proposed state law would require all commercial makers of California masa and masa products (corn tortillas, pupusas, tamales, tortilla chips, taco shells, and more) to include the vitamin starting in 2026. If the proposal, sponsored by Assemblyman Joaquín Arámbula, (D-Fresno), would effectively end a culinary tradition in California that dates back millennia.
A few weeks ago, the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States, Xavier Becerra, called a Zoom meeting on the issue with retail giants such as Kroger and Walmart.
“The general consensus was that it was a good thing and how do we make it happen?” said the Tortilla Industry Association. CEO Jim Kabbani, who attended. “One school of thought is a matter of public education: getting people to say, 'I want to buy the product with folic acid.' Another is: 'Put it out there and let people enjoy the benefits.'”
“The data really caught my attention,” said Arámbula, a former emergency room doctor. He was inspired to draft the bill, which passed unanimously in the Assembly last month and is scheduled for a state Senate health committee hearing next week, after he was approached by UC Davis researchers.
Arámbula knows what good corn tortillas taste like. Some of his favorites come from El Premio Mayor in Fresno, a taqueria that he fully vouches for. But focusing on mass products, he said, “really talked to our office about finding a culturally appropriate way to ingest folic acid.”
Rodríguez, 40, said he supports Arámbula's “idea and general intention.” But he has been in contact with the Assembly member's office urging a waiver that would allow tortilla makers like La Princesita, winners of the 2022 edition of my KCRW Grand Tortilla Tournament, to sell unadulterated products to restaurants, and to restaurants sell their own products. tortillas.
“Chefs specifically look for tortillas like ours,” he continued as we stood next to the La Princesita assembly line. “If the bill passes, if a chef wants an all-natural tortilla, he will go to manufacturers in Arizona, Texas or other states.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “It will change who we are.”
A bag of folic acid at La Princesita Tortilleria. Corn masa flour manufacturers may be forced to add a new ingredient to their products sold and produced in California. Two grams, in the foreground, is the amount of folic acid that would need to be added to 600 pounds of raw dough.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Carlos Salgado, who helped fuel the modern nixtamalization revolution in Southern California with the blue corn tortillas of his now-closed Michelin-starred Taco María restaurant, called Arámbula's bill “crudely broad.” by including small-batch manufacturers and restaurants. However, he also sees it as an “incomplete solution” because it does nothing to reduce prenatal costs or increase health coverage for Latinas. He noted that the state's artisan bakeries have long used unenriched flours without health inspectors pursuing them, as Arámbula's bill would do to tortilla.
“If food legislators can make exceptions for [bakers],” Salgado said, “then they will be able to allow for the resurgence and continued growth of an ancient food so important to the health and identity of so many Californians.”
Asking what an omelet might taste like thanks to a potentially life-saving supplement sounds petty. But requiring folic acid in the dough is not like adding fluoride to tap water; is playing with cultural heritage. Asking Latinos to accept a fundamental change toward something that is part of our essence in the name of a supposedly greater good is little better than culinary imperialism.
Arámbula said he did his own taste test and found no difference, arguing that the amount he needs (0.7 milligrams per pound of raw dough and 0.4 milligrams for finished products) equals “particles.”
“I think based on the data, we need to make sure we protect our mothers and families as best we can and lean on the science to use all disposable tools,” she told me. The assemblyman, who is Latino, didn't flinch when I pressed the idea that his bill would basically prohibit Mexicans, Salvadorans and others in California from enjoying his heritage.
“These disparities will not resolve themselves and it is important for us to strengthen them. I go back to, I don't see any people complaining [how bread tasted] before 1998. We see the benefits and we appreciate it.”
Their unsympathetic approach is Big Blue California at its worst: thinking the state should care for residents from conception to death and being willing to disrupt traditions if they get in the way.
Rodríguez said that he asked the Arámbula staff for the studies on which they based their bill; they declined.
“I'm not questioning the science,” he said. “But is there a way to be part of the solution and maintain the way we have always made our tortillas? “We want to continue making the tortillas we have been making for over 50 years and our ancestors for thousands of years.”
It was time for my taste test.
Rodriguez pulled out a 3.5-ounce bag of folic acid powder available on Amazon for $20. “This would last us a year,” he said as he put some in the palm of my hand and tasted it. Chalky, slightly bitter, not disgusting but not pleasant either. I washed my mouth with water, closed my eyes, and ate two hot corn tortillas.
The first tasted like a pure corn tortilla should: a nice initial tinge of acidity, a smooth texture, a final burst of earthiness. The second had a subtle flavor of… something. She lingered longer on the palate than an old-school omelette and became too rubbery in the mouth. The difference was obvious: it contained folic acid.
I opened my eyes. The tortilla with folic acid was also slightly yellower than the one without.
“All [at La Princesita] I immediately knew there was a difference and I was able to choose the original,” Rodríguez said. “It doesn't taste bad, but it's not the same tortilla.”
The production manager of La Princesita, Cesario “Chayo” Covarrubias, who has worked there for 35 years, walked by wearing a hairnet and a white coat. I asked him if he could tell which was which.
“They tasted the same,” he responded in Spanish, drawing laughter from Liborio Cano, who was shoveling chips into boxes his first week on the job. “No, you could tell them apart easily!”
I asked Chayo how he felt about the Arámbula bill.
“If they want us to put it in, we have to put it in,” he said with a libertarian ranchero tone, mixing resignation and naturalness. “If they don't want us to do it, we won't do it.”
Rodríguez looked at the shelves full of bags of white corn and yellow corn tortillas from La Princesita. Arámbula's bill would also require manufacturers to indicate on their labels that their products contain folic acid. “We can do a whole line with it,” he said, thinking out loud about the path forward for The Little Princess. “Make our packaging pink.” He pointed to the Little Princess logo, a smiling Jackie O lookalike. “Hey, we can get her pregnant!”
Enrique Rodríguez, executive director of La Princesita Tortillería, and La Princesita president Mónica Ramírez discuss the difference between corn tortillas that have folic acid and those that do not.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
We were accompanied by the president of La Princesita, Mónica Ramírez. She did the taste test and got it right too.
“On the one hand, I support [the bill] for health reasons,” said the 44-year-old man. “On the other hand, it hurts my heart because it is a process that my father did. It is what he learned and it is what he taught us.”
She offered a pained smile. “It hurts, but for me they both weigh the same.”
Rodríguez wants to ask his fellow tortilleros to write a letter to Arámbula and plans to request a meeting with state senator María Elena Durazo, who represents East Los Angeles. “This is the epicenter of tortilla making,” she said, “so she's going to have to listen.”
We left and walked towards an electrical box painted with an image of Francisco “Pancho” Ramírez, founder of La Princesita, father of Mónica and father-in-law of Rodríguez. He towers over corn stalks as he drops the kernels onto the dark ground. The sun's rays surround the scene while a hummingbird flies next to it.
Rodríguez sighed, resigned to the march of modernity. “That's how we did it forever.”
