On The Fight to Save the Traditional Tortilla for @TedNordhaus nytimes.com/2018/12/21/din…. No doubt that traditional handmade tortillas are delicious but if made from scratch, they involve 5 hours hard labor to feed a family of four or five. Traditionally they were the food of the rural poor while town dwellers, particularly the more affluent, ate white bread. Now

1. Modern food, for all its well rehearsed problems, is preferable to the peasant diet, or so I've been arguing for years. Perhaps it's time to have another go at explaining why. 2. Most pre-industrial societies (take that as shorthand please) depended (and still depend) on a small number of staple crops, usually grains or roots, sometimes others such as plantains.