Tortillas in Mexico
Raising awareness about their quality, addressing the impacts of industrialized food and protecting cultural heritage
During the last year of my master’s degree in Food Design, I chose to develop my graduation project around the topic of Tortillas in Mexico, more specifically:
How can design enhance the value of good quality tortillas to encourage Mexican consumers to eat better and protect cultural heritage?
This project has been:
Published in fourth volume of the the Latin American magazine of Food Design in 2023.
I arrived to two different design answers to the previous question, thanks to the dissertation I did, where I analyzed the evolution of corn and tortillas in Mexico, from the domestication of this crop, its diffusion in Mexico and its subsequent globalization. Along the text I touch on topics like the importance of corn tortillas in the average Mexican diet, the different qualities that they can have nowadays, as well as their health and social implications. I also evaluate the effects of the increased availability of ultra-processed foods as well as the industrialization of tortillas which leads to a variation in their quality.
Editorial Design by Daniel Berkstein Guillemot
Message in a Tortilla
Food carries a message, but do we normally see it?
The cultural importance of tortillas is not congruent to the lack of knowledge the average eater has about them.
What people were responsible of making their tortilla? Who was responsible for bringing it to their table? What was the process to make it, was it industrial or the traditional nixtamalization method?
To make eaters think about these questions, I left messages in their tortillas.
Tortilla degustation
A multisensory experience
A Mexican living in the capital eats between 60 to 90 kilograms of tortillas yearly, however few grams out of those kilos are eaten really paying attention to the organoleptic characteristic of each tortilla, and none are eaten with awareness of the variations in their nutritional qualities, so:
How could design take tortillas out of the daily routine to appreciate them and elevate them?
This project has been:
Presented at the Cencalli Museum, The home of corn and food culture, in Mexico City on January 2023.
