Kosher Certification and Supervision . Anyone can tell you that the term . But what does it actually mean? Many will have to admit that they have no idea.. These laws have been observed by Jews for over 3,0. Through the years, people have suggested theories about the health benefits of kosher food. Return to Transcripts main page. ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES. Note: This page is continually updated as new transcripts become available. If you cannot find a. I put together this simple guide to help you better understand what foods are considered Kosher for Passover. Passover is observed for seven days in Israel and eight. The Alarming Reason Bella Thorne Does Her Own Makeup: Information applies to products sold in the UK. Products on sale in other countries (even if manufactured in the UK) may have different formulations. KLBD is the largest Kosher agency in Europe. Kosher Certification of over 1300 factories worldwide. Offering Kosher to the London and UK community with Kosher. Some say that kosher food is less vulnerable to parasites and bacteria. Others theorize that the non- permitted species of animals are hunters whose natures might affect the characters of the people who consume them. If this is what G- d commands, the observant Jew trusts that this food is the best nourishment for him, body and soul. It is easier to understand that foods may have latent physical benefits or dangers of which we are unaware. Who imagined a century ago that animal fat would be regarded as a hidden killer? And who would have guessed that the humble carrot was really a cancer fighter in disguise? From the Jewish point of view, kosher food is the optimal diet for our spiritual health, while foods prohibited by the Torah are the trans fats and refined sugars of our unique spiritual metabolism. We may not understand exactly how it works, but we know that ! There are blessings that observant Jews recite before partaking of food, but that has nothing to do with making the food kosher. A food is kosher only if it conforms to the Jewish dietary laws.? Sure, I buy kosher- style food all the time: knishes, matzo ball soup, bagels..! Kosher is not a style of cooking. Chinese food can be kosher if prepared in accordance with Jewish law. On the other hand, traditional Jewish foods, such as knishes bagels, blintzes and matzah ball soup, can all be non- kosher if not prepared according to Kosher rules. In fact, when a restaurant identifies itself as ? Isn't that just connected to Passover?! Kosher dietary laws are observed all year round. What is "Kosher" "Kosher Meat". Is After Eight Kosher Diet DeliveryThere are additional dietary restrictions on Passover, and many foods acceptable for year round use, such as breads and pasta, may not be eaten on Passover. Foods that are kosher for Passover, however, are always kosher for year- round use. Food Sources. The written Torah specifies which animals may be eaten and which may not: Land mammals: Only those with cloven hooves and chew their cud. Cattle, sheep, goats, deer and bison are kosher food sources. Pigs and rabbits are examples of prohibited species. Sea life: Fish with fins and scales, such as tuna, salmon and herring may be eaten. Shellfish, such as lobsters, shrimp and clams, are all forbidden, as are eels, octopus, sharks, and whales. Fowl: The Torah lists forbidden birds, all of which are birds of prey. All other birds would theoretically be permitted, but in practice, only familiarly used fowl, such as chicken, geese, ducks and turkeys are considered an unquestionably kosher source of fowl meat. Rodents and insects: Virtually all are prohibited. Government requires.)Any product derived from these forbidden animals, such as their milk, eggs or fat, also may not be eaten. This rule proves extremely significant, as we shall see, in industrial production of many seemingly . All unprocessed fruits and vegetables are kosher. However, two caveats must be tacked onto that sweeping statement: Certain varieties of fruits, vegetables and grains are prone to insect infestation and must be inspected before use to avoid consumption of forbidden insects. Kosher preparation of meat. Even if an animal or fowl is of a permitted species, it will not be acceptable under Jewish law unless it is slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law. An animal that died of natural causes or was killed by other means may not be eaten. Jewish ritual slaughter, known as shechita, is widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible. In addition, the shochet performing the act of slaughtering is not simply a Jewish butcher. He himself must be a person of integrity, who is also well- trained in Jewish law. ![]() There are many intricacies to the laws of shechita (kosher slaughter). In any meat- handling establishment, it is crucial that a person who is rabbinically ordained and extremely knowledgeable in these laws be on site to insure that the highest standard of kashrus are maintained. Once meat has been properly slaughtered, it must undergo a process known as kashering in order to drain it of blood, which the Torah prohibits for human consumption. This entails soaking and salting or salting and broiling the meat. Liver may only be kashered by the broiling method, because it contains so much blood and many complex blood vessels. The kashering process must be completed with 7. Most kosher butchers and all kosher frozen food vendors handle this process as well. Separation of meat and dairy. The Torah prohibits eating meat and dairy together, and in fact states this three separate times to emphasize its importance. Is After Eight Kosher Diet PlanIn addition, the Talmud prohibits cooking meat and fish together or serving them on the same plate. This separation includes not only the foods themselves, but also the cooking utensils, plates and flatware, dishwashers or dishpans, sponges and kitchen towels. Therefore, a kosher household will have two sets of pots, pans and dishes - one for meat and one for dairy (unless the family is vegetarian!). Even a small amount of dairy/meat renders an item dairy/meat for these purposes. For example, most vegetable margarines contain a small quantity of whey to add a buttery taste, rendering the product dairy, as far as kosher law is concerned. All fruits, nuts, vegetables, and grains may be eaten with meat or dairy. Kosher utensils/equipment. Utensils and appliances used in handling kosher food, including industrial machinery, must be kosher as well. What renders a utensil non- kosher? For example, if a saucepan is used to cook chicken soup, and then employed to heat up milk, the meat status of the pot is transferred to the milk, creating a prohibited mixture and disqualifying both the milk and the saucepan from use. Generally, the status of foods is transmitted only in the presence of heat, sharp flavors, hot spices, or prolonged contact. These rules are complex and often require consultation with a competent Rabbi. On an industrial level, when kosher products and non- kosher products are produced in the same plant, close rabbinical supervision is crucial to ensure separation of kosher equipment from the non- kosher counterpart, and, where relevant, to supervise thorough kashering of equipment between the non- kosher and kosher runs. Kosher for Passover. The eight- day Jewish holiday of Passover, which occurs every year in the spring, (1. Nisan on the Jewish calendar) marks the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt and the birth of the Jewish nation. In addition to the widely celebrated Seder event on the first night, the most widely known aspect of the Passover holiday is its special food requirements. The food most identified with Passover is the brittle, unleavened cracker known as matzo which is eaten in place of bread. In fact, Passover is equally characterized by what may not be eaten. The special kosher requirements of Passover exclude all leavened grains, mixtures of grains, or derivative products (. A product gains the status of chometz when any of the five grains (wheat, barley, oats, spelt, or rye) is exposed to water or other liquids, and not baked within 1. In addition, Jews of European (Ashkenazic) ancestry customarily do not eat corn/maize/rice, and certain legumes on Passover. Products containing chometz, even in the tiniest amount or as a result of cross contamination from equipment which was not fully . In implementing industrial level Passover food production, it is essential that the process be overseen by a person who has mastered these laws through years of intensive study and experience. Additional Kosher- related Areas. Although it would be impossible to give proper treatment to the vast area of kosher laws in such a brief overview, we will provide concise definitions of a few additional kosher topics: Grape products: Although fresh grapes are kosher, grape products such as wine and grape juice are subject to special restrictions, related to their use for sacramental purposes. These laws can become a concern in regard to fruit- flavored drinks or candies which are sweetened with grape derivatives, as well as in products made with cream of tartar, which is a by- product of wine making. Bishul Yisroel: For certain types of food, even when all ingredients and equipment are fully acceptable, a Jew must be involved in certain stages of the food preparation in order for the product to be deemed kosher. Cholov Yisroel: Kosher Law requires that a Jew be present from the milking to the time of packaging, in order to ensure that the milk actually came from a kosher animal. In the U. S., federal laws relating to dairy production are so strict that many rabbinical authorities consider the legal compulsion equivalent to a Jewish presence, and deem all milk kosher. Kosher Certification Then and Now.. Both individual households and large institutions purchased basic raw materials (produce, meat, flour, etc.) and prepared all their meals . There were few kosher products to choose from, but then again the non- kosher consumer was almost as limited in his available options. Materials were purchased fresh, and, for long term preservation, were pickled, canned, or salted, and stored in the cellar. Now: Today, the packaged products available on the market are too many to count. Almost all of these products raise questions regarding their kosher status. What, you may wonder, could be non- kosher in a box of oat cereal, juice or a bag of potato chips? Here are just a few examples: A cereal may have raisins which are coated with a non- kosher, animal- based glycerin, non- kosher flavors, animal shortening, or gelatin. The vegetable oil in which the chips were fried may have been pasteurized on equipment used for non- kosher tallow production. How the Paleolithic Diet Got Trendy. On the timescale of evolutionary history, paleo enthusiasts note, agriculture is a fad. Credit. Illustration by Mike Ellis. The first day I put my family on a Paleolithic diet, I made my kids fried eggs and sausage for breakfast. If they were still hungry, I told them, they could help themselves to more sausage, but they were not allowed to grab a slice of bread, or toast an English muffin, or pour themselves a bowl of cereal. This represented a reversal of the usual strictures, and they were happy to oblige. It was like some weird, unexpected holiday—Passover in July. The Paleolithic diet—“paleo,” for those in the know—represents a new, very old form of eating, one confined to the sorts of food available in pre- agricultural days. These foods, as it happens, were not many. According to Sarah Ballantyne, the author of “The Paleo Approach,” a paleo diet consists of “meats, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.” According to John Durant, the author of “The Paleo Manifesto,” even seeds are suspect and should be avoided. Most days, my kids pack their own lunches, but since I had banned the standard ingredients, starting with the bread for peanut- butter- and- jelly sandwiches, I figured I was obligated to step in. I rolled up some turkey slices and arranged them in a plastic container with some cut- up avocados. Then I gave each kid a banana and some paleo “cookies” I had made using ground- up almonds. The cookies looked like little hamburgers and tasted like sawdust. There are, of course, lots of ways to resist progress. People take up knitting or quilting or calligraphy. They bake their own bread or brew their own beer or sew their own clothes using felt they have fashioned out of wet wool and dish soap. But, both in the scale of its ambition and in the scope of its anachronism, paleo eating takes things to a whole new level. Our Stone Age ancestors left behind no menus or cookbooks. To figure out what they ate, we have to dig up their bones and study the wear patterns on their teeth. Or comb through their refuse and analyze their prehistoric poop. And paleo eating is just the tip of the spear, so to speak. There are passionate advocates for paleo fitness, which starts with tossing out your sneakers. There’s a paleo sleep contingent, which recommends blackout curtains, amber- tinted glasses, and getting rid of your mattress; and there are champions of primal parenting, which may or may not include eating your baby’s placenta. There are even signs of a paleo hygiene movement: coat yourself with bacteria and say goodbye to soap and shampoo. The result is a small library of what might be called paleo literature—how- to books that are mostly how- to- undo books. Such is the tenor of our time that the ultimate retro movement is lavishly represented on the Web. From a site called Paleo Grubs, I downloaded recipes for Delicious Paleo Carrot Cake Muffins and Paleo Apple Nachos, and from a site called Nom Nom Paleo I got instructions on how to make Paleo Krabby Patties and Civilized Caveman’s Apple Cinnamon Cookies. My husband was ruminating on the tenuousness of existence, and, probably true to the actual Paleolithic experience, I found that I was spending more and more time preparing the few foods that we could eat. Agriculture was “invented” several times, in different parts of the world, by people making use of the plants they found growing wild around them. The first time was probably about ten thousand years ago, in southeastern Turkey, when early farmers began cultivating einkorn wheat. The crop was a big hit, and, at least by the standards of the day, it spread rapidly. Meanwhile, around nine thousand years ago, a group of proto- farmers in southwestern Mexico began cultivating maize. It, too, quickly caught on, and was being grown in Panama seven thousand years ago and in Colombia six thousand years ago. Also sometime around nine thousand years ago, rice was domesticated in the Yangtze Valley. In the standard account of human history, agriculture represents the ur- breakthrough. The domestication of plants and animals allowed people for the first time to build up surpluses of food. This, in turn, allowed them to think about something besides feeding themselves. They became merchants and priests and artisans and bookkeepers. They built villages, towns, and cities. Every subsequent innovation—metallurgy, writing, mathematics, science, and even paleo Web sites—could be said to owe its origin to those first farmers scratching with sticks in the dirt. Agro- revisionists also regard the Neolithic Revolution as a critical event. They, too, believe that without it modern society wouldn’t exist. What they’re not so sure about is whether it was a good idea.“The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered” is Jared Diamond’s dour assessment, offered in an essay titled “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.”Like Stone Age hunter- gatherers, early farmers left little behind—just some burnt grain, mud foundations, and their own bones. But that’s enough to reveal how punishing the transition to agriculture was. According to a study of human remains from China and Japan, the height of the average person declined by more than three inches during the millennia in which rice cultivation intensified. According to another study, of bones from Mesoamerica, women’s heights dropped by three inches and men’s by two inches as farming spread. A recent survey of more than twenty studies on this subject, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, found that the adoption of agriculture “was observed to decrease stature in populations from across the entire globe,” including in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America. Early farmers were not just shorter than hunter- gatherers; they were also more sickly. They had worse teeth—one analysis from the Near East suggests that the incidence of cavities jumped sixfold as people started relying on grain—and they suffered from increased rates of anemia and infectious disease. Many now familiar infections—measles, for instance—require high population densities to persist; thus, it wasn’t until people established towns and cities that such “crowd epidemic diseases” could flourish. And, by living in close proximity to their equally crowded farm animals, early agriculturalists helped to bring into being a whole set of diseases that jumped from livestock to people.“The adoption of agriculture,” Diamond notes in his most recent book, “The World Until Yesterday,” provided “ideal conditions for the rapid transmission of microbes.” According to Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard and the author of “The Story of the Human Body,” “farming ushered in an era of epidemics, including tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, plague, smallpox and influenza.”It took thousands of years for human bodies to recover; Lieberman reports that “it wasn’t until the twentieth century that Europeans were the same height as cavemen.” And, almost as soon as the stature gap closed, new problems arose. People began to grow not just taller but also wider. During the past several decades, rates of obesity, hypertension, fatty- liver disease, and Type 2 diabetes have soared. The increases were first noted in the United States, but, now that French fries and Coke have gone global, nations ranging from Mexico to Mauritius have seen similar—indeed, in some cases, worse—surges. Today, the highest prevalence of diabetes is in Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand in the South Pacific, where nearly forty per cent of adults are afflicted. Lieberman calls conditions like Type 2 diabetes “mismatch diseases.” Our ancestors hunted and gathered; we drive to Shake Shack and Domino’s. The result is a “mismatch” between our genetics and our life styles.“I don’t think it is possible to overemphasize just how important mismatch diseases are,” Lieberman writes. Anatomically modern humans have, after all, been around for about two hundred thousand years. The genus Homo goes back another two million years or so. On the timescale of evolutionary history, it’s agriculture that’s the fad. During our week of paleo, I made several trips to the nearest Stop & Shop, a hangar- size affair that sells something like forty thousand different items. In the store’s vast midsection, which is given over to processed confections, there’s aisle after aisle of salty snacks, soft drinks, sports drinks, and breakfast cereals, followed by more aisles of sugary snacks, candy bars, packages of multiple candy bars, and cookies. One afternoon, as I was pushing my cart along, searching for shredded coconut, it occurred to me that my Paleolithic ancestors would have had a hard time recognizing anything in these rows as food. Probably they would have had an easier time over in the produce section, but here, too, they would have found plenty to baffle them. What we know as apples, from the tree Malus domestica, are the products of hundreds of generations of careful breeding that started with the tree Malus sieversii, native to Central Asia. The author Michael Pollan once described the fruit of Malus sieversii as tasting like “a tart potato,” or, alternatively, like a “Brazil nut sheathed in leather.” Avocados, a staple of many paleo menus, have similarly been transfigured. The originals consisted of just a thin layer of flesh surrounding a giant seed. And what goes for apples and avocados also goes for broccoli, bananas, and Brussels sprouts. Beef cattle—and dairy cows, too—are descended from aurochs, which were much larger and fiercer animals. Aurochs, for their part, are no longer to be had for the same reason that moas, mammoths, and mastodons are unavailable: our ancestors hunted them to oblivion.
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