Posts Tagged ‘kosher’
“I’m not really a practising Jew but I keep a kosher kitchen just to spite Hitler”*…
We’re in the midst of Passover (Chag Pesach sameach!), a marvelous time to muse on the way in which kosher food has become important to non-observers…
While there are about 6 million Jews in the United States, according to World Population Review, [executive manager of certification organization OK Kosher, Rabbi Eli] Lando said Jewish people represent only 20% of the kosher product consumer base. By and large, consumers see a kosher certification as a verification that a product is healthy, clean and safe. And while the certification has roots in religious traditions that are thousands of years old, it now speaks directly to the modern consumer’s demand for wholesome foods…
Every day of the year, however, kosher is a hot market, period. Research in 2017 by Kosher Network International — commonly abbreviated KNi — found that the global market for kosher foods was worth $24 billion, and was projected to grow 11.5% by 2025. OK Kosher, which is one of the largest kosher certification organizations in the world, has certified around 700,000 products made by 4,000 manufacturers, Lando said. Its clients include Kraft Heinz, Kellogg and General Mills.
Kosher is one of the most popular certifications in the food industry today. According to one commonly cited estimate,the certification is on about 40% of all products in a U.S. grocery store.
“Everyone sees it almost as a necessary point of entry to the market to have this certification,” said Jamie Geller, founder of KNi…
While the “K” seal signifies that items meet Jewish dietary laws, it increasingly represents purity, good practices, and trustworthiness to non-observant consumers: “The ‘silent salesman’: How kosher certification went mainstream,” from Megan Poinski (@meganpoinski) in @FoodDive. TotH to @WaltHickey.
* Miriam Margolyes
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As we nosh, we might note that National Egg Salad Week begins today (as it starts on the first Monday after Easter each year)… a celebration of one of the favorite ways to use all of the Easter eggs that have been cooked, colored, hidden, and found.
And now for something completely different…
It’s the anniversary of the date in 1941 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill that officially established the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. But we got a jump on things this year; the leftovers are already gone… So it’s appropriate that we turn our attention to another cuisine, one for which we should surely give thanks– and one over which we must be watchful, lest it go extinct…
In 1936, the WPA Survey estimated that there were 5,000 delis and 36 appetizing stores in New York City. Today, there are only a handful of each left. For more on the plight of the Kosher Deli, see here, here, and here.
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As we pick up a pickle, we might recall that it was on this date in 1965 that (then 18-year-old) Arlo Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins were arrested by Stockbridge, MA police officer William “Obie” Obanhein for illegally dumping a bag a garbage after eating Thanksgiving dinner at Alice’s Restaurant. Guthrie and Robbins pled guilty, were fined $50 dollars each, and sentenced to pick up their garbage. Guthrie went on, of course, to memorialize the incident in “The Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” which he first performed live on WBAI radio (a listener-supported station in New York); the song was so popular that the station would play it only after a listener made a substantial donation. Since then, as some readers will know, it’s become traditional for many classic rock radio stations to play the song each Thanksgiving.
And speaking of Alices, we might also recall that this was the date, in 1864, that Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson– aka Lewis Carroll– delivered a handwritten and illustrated manuscript called “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground” to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.
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