****Food Profile: Tacos****

Tacos
One of the most common and widely recognized foods today is the taco. The taco has become an international phenomenon, and can be found all over the world. I chose the taco as my research project because I am very fond of tacos, and was interested in their history and place in our social world. Tacos are one of my favorite all-time foods, so I naturally felt drawn to the taco. I often prepare tacos at home, and my favorite type are ground beef tacos, topped off with lettuce, cheese, salsa, and sour cream. If I go out to a restaurant, I often have chicken tacos, topped off with cabbage, salsa, lime juice, and chipotle mayo. In this paper, I will explore the origins of the taco and how the taco has become another mass-produced fast food.
When Americans think of a taco, what often comes to mind is a fried corn shell stuffed with a spicy meat, shredded ice burg lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and grated cheddar cheese. The taco of today is vastly different from the original taco, which is thought to have been eaten by the Aztec people as early as 3000 BC (tacotoaster.com). The Aztecs used corn to make a “flat bread out of it and called it tlaxcalli” (tacotoaster.com). This flat bread was filled with various ingredients depending on the location of the people eating it. Aztec peoples who lived by lakes filled the flat bread with different types of fish, while the peoples who lived inland filled their flat breads with insects, ants, locusts, and snails (tacotoaster.com). The tlaxcalli was officially renamed the tortilla upon the arrival of Hernando Cortez and the Spanish conquistadors.
Today, the word taco is used generically much like the word sandwich. The Merriam-Webster.com dictionary defines a taco as a “usually fried tortilla that is folded or rolled and stuffed with a mixture (as of seasoned meat, cheese, and lettuce” (Merriam-Webster.com). There are many varieties of the taco, and location is usually an indication of the main type of taco found there. In the Southwest, especially New Mexico and Texas, the breakfast taco is found in many restaurants (whatscookingamerica.com). The breakfast taco is made from a “fried corn or flour tortilla that is rolled and stuffed with a mixture of seasoned meat, eggs, or cheese, and other ingredients such as onions and salsa” (whatscookingamerica.com). People living in San Diego are fans of the fish taco, which Ensenada, Mexico claimed to be the originator of. Fish tacos are “simply pieces of batter-coated, fried fish in a hot corn or wheat tortilla” (whatscookingamerica.com).
These examples of modern day US tacos are not very different from what is found in Mexico. Mexicans often wrap their choice of fillings in corn tortillas, and these tacos are eaten as snacks or as a dinner appetizer, but never as an entrée, unlike in the US, where the taco is consumed for lunch or dinner. Many Americans are surprised when they travel to Mexico and find that they cannot purchase a taco for certain hours during the day. Mexican tacos are often filled with “chili sauce, beef (ground or shredded), chicken, pork, chorizo, or sausage, egg, tomato, cheese, lettuce, guacamole, onions, and refried beans” (food.oregonstate.edu), similar to what is found in American tacos.
Tacos have also become part of the fast food revolution. This was made possible by the invention of “small-scale tortilla-making machines that could churn out hot, steaming tortillas every two seconds” (whatscookingamerica.com). Now, tortilla shells that had once been made by hand could be pre-fried, and “the shells could henceforth be mass-produced and shipped around the world, albeit with some breakage” (Pilcher 73). This new invention gave Glen Bell the tools he needed to found one of the most recognizable fast food restaurants in America, Taco Bell. After a successful run with various small restaurants that sold tacos, Glen and his partners built the first Taco Bell in Downey, California in 1962. In February of 1978, Glen Bell sold Taco Bell to PepsiCo for just “under $125 million in stock” (referenceforbusiness.com). PepsiCo began an aggressive campaign to challenge other leading fast food restaurants, by making “Taco Bell less of a regional ethnic food phenomenon and more a national fast food chain through Spartan simplicity in décor and menu, with a concentration on predictable quality, affordable prices, and clean and convenient surroundings” (referenceforbusiness.com). PepsiCo’s campaign was successful, and today Taco Bell is one of the most profitable and widely recognized fast food restaurants worldwide.
The tacos served today at Taco Bell are a far cry from the tacos that were first consumed in Mexico. Taco Bell tacos have undergone a standardization, “replacing the endless variety of local cuisines with the artificial choice of numbered selections from a value menu” (Pilcher 73). Tacos were now listed under the convenient category, and these “so called convenience foods became synonymous with saving effort, time, and money and with ending the drudgery of home cookery” (Haden 345). What could possibly be more American than having convenient foods available in every neighborhood, enabling an ever-faster pace of life?
While the tortilla making machines allow mass quantities of tortillas to be produced, it is corn that keeps their prices low and allows fast food restaurants such as Taco Bell to sell tacos cheaply and still make profit. Corn has become a cheap substitute for just about everything, and it is found not only in the tortillas, but was probably fed to the cattle that would become the taco meat and produced the milk for the taco cheese. Corn is also a key ingredient in the soft drinks that are sold at fast food restaurants. Since there is so much corn, and it is so cheap, “the smart thing to do with all that surplus grain is to process it, transform the cheap commodity into a value-added consumer product – a denser and more durable package of calories” (Pollan 103). This is exactly what fast food restaurants have done with the taco.