/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8839392
>>8839391
>>8839415
All of these.
It's been 30 years since Mexico and most other Latin American nations actually had local masa available to make fresh tortillas with. Basically automation, NAFTA, and changes in agriculture subsidies drove the rise of corn flour (some sourced from the US) as a substitute which is cheaper, less nutritious, and reportedly blander tasting.

https://grist.org/article/masa/
http://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2017/04/06/la-tortilla-mexicana-en-crisis-menos-nutritiva-y-con-menos-ventas/
^Use Google Translate:
>In Mexico the corn flour market is dominated by two large companies : Maseca and Gruma , who, according to the COA representative , pressed to displace the traditional tortilla production process by arguing market reasons, such as the fact that one kilo Of maize dough that is prepared manually produces 800 grams of tortilla, while with flour they achieve 100 percent yield.

>" The tortilla is being lost ," said Rafael Mier, founder of the Mexican Maize Tortilla Organization, who in various forums has stated that the introduction of corn flour resulted in the appearance of a new "tortilla", which replaced the traditional And that not only has less nutritional qualities but also lower quality that is noticed from the taste.

>In a tour of Infobae by different tortillerías of Mexico City, some managers assure that they do not know how the mass is made, since they buy it by wholesale to some distributor and only put it in the mill that cuts them in pieces and passes them By a cooking process.

>The COA researcher, a member of the Alliance for Food Health - a civil society initiative to promote healthy eating among Mexicans - explained that Official Mexican Standard (NOM) 051, referring to food and beverage labeling, does not obligate the flour manufacturers to report the raw material they use for their preparation, so there exists a problem that prevents them from knowing what the tortillas are made of.

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