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by dogma1138 3875 days ago
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.

1 comments

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.