[maxerickson]

I don't think we think the same thing about using food science to optimize something.

I'm talking about turning tortilla chips into Doritos. Tortilla chips come out the way the person making them likes them to come out and get how much salt they like. Doritos are an industrial product with a flavor profile and texture explicitly designed to leave the consumer wanting another one.

[dogma1138]

Tortila Chips them selves are a modern (highly likely american) invention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortilla_chip They weren't mass produced till the 40's and even indepth research of Mexican and Mexican-American/Lantio-American cuisine can't find even a remote reference to them earlier than the mid 1930's. Nacho's are also not exactly "traditional" Mexican food.

If you refer to targeted optimization for mass consumption of a massively produced product then everything undergoes that process it's not like a "traditional" Chinese product will not be optimized locally to appeal to as many people as possible in the local market (insert a literally billion people pun here). I doubt that all Chinese like their fish sauce exactly the same so I'm pretty sure that which ever fish sauce brand dominates the Chinese market is quite heavily optimized to appeal to as many pallets as possible.

[maxerickson]

Yes, not an ideal example. I was trying to illustrate my meaning more than I was trying to stand up for the sanctity of texmex though.

It's also not the optimization I object to. It's the swaddling of the resulting product in marketing designed to sell it as authentic.