Take a look in your ’90s pantry: Americans are buying kosher as never before. Makers of products like Cheerios, Coke and Yoplait that qualify for the label are reaching out to kosher consumers–as well as Muslims and others with similar dietary rules. And kosher marketers are taking their cue from the old rye-bread slogan, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s,” enticing gentiles to try their products because they’re healthful and taste good. Today, 20,000 domestic food items are kosher certified - and a thousand new products are joining the list each year. Sales of those kosher goods climbed to $30 billion last year, prompting both Food & Wine magazine and Rolling Stone to declare kosher one of the decade’s hot food trends. “It’s not [just] gefilte fish and matzo,” says Phil Lempert, publisher of the Lempert Report, a food-trends newsletter. “It’s everything.”
What makes a food kosher? The word is Hebrew for “proper,” and the religious dietary rules date back some 3,000 years. Some regulations are well known: pork and shellfish are out, and dairy and meat products don’t mix. In all cases, a mashgiah, or supervisor, must thoroughly examine every ingredient, process and piece of equipment; on a kosher dinner-cruise ship in New York called the “Glatt Yacht,” supervisors blowtorch the ovens for quick purification before each trip. Products like beer and yogurt are inherently kosher or nearly so; meats require strict supervision. At Empire Kosher Poultry, the largest kosher-chicken producer, more than 100 rabbis scrutinize the raising, slaughtering, plucking and packaging of the fowl.
Kosher-food manufacturers are pushing for nonkosher consumers. Royal Kedem, the largest Passover wine supplier, now turns out prize-winning Chardonnays and Asti Spumante. Last week Kedem sales vice president Nathan Herzog pitched the company’s upcoming sparkling grape juice to a distributor. “When do we promote it, Rosh Hashana or Christmas?” the distributor asked. “Christmas,” Herzog said. Health claims by companies like Hebrew National–whose hot-dog ads proclaim, “We answer to an even higher authority” than Uncle Sam - helped boost sales of the all beef franks by more than 10 percent a year.
Are kosher foods always better for you? Kosher authorities make no promises. Rabbis check for cleanliness and adherence to religious rules, not vitamin content. “We have no expertise to determine the nutritional healthiness of food,” says Rabbi Menachem Genack, head of the kosher-supervision arm of Orthodox Union, the largest certifier. That won’t stop connoisseurs like Willie Brown, a 20-year patron of a New York kosher butcher. “It’s just better meat. " And for those who fret about cholesterol, both Slim-Fast and Weight Watchers now offer kosher-certified diets. So now you can eat kosher when you’re trying not to eat, too.
