CORN tortillas are set to undergo an historic major recipe shakeup in the United States due to a new law.
The change will protect more Americans from being born with a fatal condition – where large parts of the baby’s skull and brain are missing.
California has become the first state to require food makers to add folic acid, a crucial B vitamin, to corn masa flour used to make tortillas and other traditional Hispanic/Latino foods.
Similar food laws are being rolled out across other states, including in Alabama in June.
Legislation is pending or being considered in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Oregon.
Texas, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have also all expressed “active interest” in the issue, according to the Food Fortification Initiative, an advocacy group that focuses on addressing micronutrient deficiencies.
“All women and children in the United States should have access to folic acid and have healthy babies,” said Scott Montgomery, the group’s director.
Folic acid, a key B vitamin, has been required to be added to enriched wheat and white breads, cereals and pastas in the US for nearly 30 years.
But, corn masa flour, a staple used in Hispanic/Latino diets, was left out of the original fortification requirement for healthy babies.
That anomaly has been blamed for high rates of serious birth conditions such as spina bifida and anencephaly among the Latino community.
Spina bifida happens when a baby’s spine and spinal cord do not fully develop in the womb.
Anencephaly is a type of neural tube defect where a baby is born without parts of their brain and skull. It is fatal and there is no cure or treatment.
Federal regulators did allow – but did not legislate – for folic acid to be added to corn masa products a decade ago.
But a shocking study in 2023 found that no corn tortillas contained the beneficial vitamin. And, only about one in seven corn masa flour products had it.
The rate of birth defects among Hispanic women in California is twice as high as for white or black women, according to state data.
California’s new law could spark its adoption nationwide, said state Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, who sponsored the legislation passed in 2024.
“You have to be the first oftentimes to get the ball rolling,” he said, adding, “so, I’m glad other states have taken up that mantle.”
Decades of research show the addition of folic acid to bread, cereal and pasta has slashed rates of serious birth defects by about 30%, preventing about 1,300 cases a year.
“The science is clear: Folic acid fortification works,” said Vijaya Kancherla, an Emory University epidemiology professor and director of the Center for Spina Bifida Prevention.
“It’s safe. It’s proven. And it’s cost-effective.”
Neural tube defects affect about 2,000 babies each year across the US.
One mom who is welcoming California’s lifesaving change is Andrea Lopez, whose son, Gabriel Cude, died from anencephaly when he was just ten days old.
“There is very little that I wouldn’t do to spare anybody this heartache,” said Lopez, 44, who lives in Bakersfield, Kern County, and is now a lawyer with two young daughters.
Lopez didn’t know about the importance of folic acid or that the vitamin might be missing from her diet when she was pregnant with her precious son.
“Trust me, you don’t want to go through this,” she said.
“He’s the love of my life. I have two little girls that survived, but he’s my first born. He is my only son.”
What is folic acid?
Folate is also found in small amounts in many foods such as leafy green vegetables, beans and lentils
Folic acid is the only form of folate (vitamin B9) shown to help prevent neural tube defects.
Folic acid plays a particularly important role early in pregnancy.
A woman needs adequate folate in early pregnancy to properly form the neural tube, which becomes a baby’s brain and spine.
Many studies have shown that taking folic acid before and during pregnancy can help lower the chance of neural tube defects.
Getting 400 micrograms (mcg) of folic acid daily can help prevent neural tube defects.
Neural tube defects are severe defects in a fetus’s or newborn baby’s neural tube, the structure that forms the early brain and spine.
The most common types of are spina bifida (1,400 US births per year), which can cause mild to severe disabilities, and anencephaly (800 US births per year), which results in stillbirth or infant death.
The risk of these defects is significantly reduced when people who may become pregnant consume adequate amounts of folic acid -a synthetic form of folate, or vitamin B9.
For this reason, the United States began adding folic acid to staple foods including enriched breads, enriched flours, enriched pastas, enriched rice, enriched corn meal, and breakfast cereals in 1998.
Sources: CDC and Center for Science in the Public Interest
But, there has been some push back from tortilla manufacturers, as they were concerned the addition of the vitamin would affect the taste – and cost – of products.
However, Jim Kabbani, head of the Tortilla Industry Association, said their fears have been gradually allayed, and they are happy to now comply with the new law.
“I think overall the [food taste concerns] train has left the station and it will be more and more states,” he predicted.
At fortification doses, folic acid “has never been shown to harm individuals or populations,” said Dr. Jeffery Blount, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who works to prevent neural tube defects in American and globally.
