The FDA May Soon Require Corn Tortillas to Be Fortified with Vitamins

Entire civilizations have been built upon corn tortillas—the Aztecs, the Toltecs, and the Mayans, to name a few. In their absolute purest form, corn tortillas are made from corn, water, and lime (the mineral, not the fruit).

This ancient recipe has stood the test of time—drying the corn, soaking it with lime, and mashing it all into a dough, which is then flattened and griddled up—and is still used to make tortillas to this day. However, this formula may soon change ever so slightly for citizens of the US, as the Food and Drug Association mulls over whether to add a hefty dose of folic acid to the mix, according to Wired.

There is already a movement behind this FDA folic acid crusade, started in 2012 and including a petition spearheaded by the March of Dimes Foundation and backed by the Spina Bifida Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others. Their premise is that Hispanic women who eat tortillas every day instead of bread are losing the benefits of the folic acid added to all enriched flour sold in the US, based on a law enacted in 1998 that requires the vitamin to be included in efforts to prevent neural birth defects.

Which seems to have worked for a lot of non-Hispanic women, protecting an estimated 1,300 of their babies from said birth defects annually. But many of the 14.4 million Hispanic women living in the US right now who primarily consume tortillas rather than bread have been left out.

The petition states that because of this cultural dietary difference, Hispanic women are about 20 percent more likely to have a child born with a neural tube defect, such as spina bifida and anencephaly.

As it is now, the FDA has made the addition of folic acid—otherwise known as vitamin B9—illegal in tortilla manufacturing, despite the fact that the nutrient is naturally found in lentils and leafy greens, and is used to fortify corn flour in Mexico and El Salvador.

It is still too early to tell if the FDA will budge for consumer demands or not, since the extensive study (estimated to cost up to $800,000) funded by the petitioners as a call to action is just being completed.

But one ultimate question remains for any aspiring home taqueros who are not pregnant: Would tortillas' texture and flavor suffer with the addition of folic acid? It's not likely, at least not in the miniscule amounts used in enriched flours. But if you do happen to taste a subtle bitter flavor in your next carne asada taco—just think of the kids.