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Why corn tortillas in California now must contain folic acid and why more states may do the same (www.newschannel5.com)

submitted 21 hours ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/investigativejournalism@sh.itjust.works

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Fifteen years after she lost her first baby to a rare and devastating birth defect, Andrea Lopez takes comfort in knowing that other Latina mothers might finally avoid the same pain.

In January, California became the first state to require food makers to add folic acid, a crucial vitamin, to corn masa flour used to make tortillas and other traditional foods widely used in her community.

It's a long-delayed move aimed at reducing Hispanic infants' disproportionately high rates of serious conditions called neural tube defects, which claimed Lopez's son, Gabriel Cude, when he was 10 days old.

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[–] Firebirdie713@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure if this is a joke, but the damage happens during fetal development. Folic acid is a vital nutrient that ensures proper nervous system development for the fetus. If the parent carrying the child doesn't eat enough food with folic acid during pregnancy, this deficiency results in incomplete or malformed parts of the nervous system.

Normally, prenatal vitamins are enough to ensure that this doesn't happen, but the levels in these vitamins assume the parent is getting a certain amount of it already in their diet. Now that it will be added to masa flour, same as how it is added to wheat flour, there will be far fewer people who end up with folic acid deficiency during pregnancy, which will mean fewer children being born with the resulting issues that deficiency would cause.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, kinda like iodine in Salt. ty.

Also, I guess I am just out of it today because I couldn't put together from the article that it was the parent's malnutrition somehow...

[–] fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeaaa. Iodine deficiency makes people cognitively impaired. Really bad when a pregnant mother is deficient.

Really annoys me when social media cooks bash iodized salt. American test kitchen did double-blind taste tests(link below)... No one could tell the difference consistently.

Iodized all day for salt. 1 tsp of iodized salt is all you need a day!

Here's a pretty decent video on YT about this trend: https://youtu.be/XRcwwZXJ8gk

People's throats (thyroids) used to swell up like a frog from deficiency! Pretty freaky.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 points 40 minutes ago

I've heard we have had a resurgence of iodine deficiency lately as every food influencer and their cousin push the fancier and fancier salts that often are not iodized, but I had not previously heard of people claiming iodized salt tasted bad. That's wild.