This week, my mother met a Jewish gentleman at the grocery store. He was stocking up on Coca-Cola. He told my mom that Coca-Cola is hugely popular over Passover, and (as I understood from my mom) that Coke kosher for passover was different from the normal kind.
Is there anything to this? I would’ve thought soft drinks generally would be kosher anyway, though of course all sorts of animal products can sneak into things. (And, looking at the can of Coke on the desk next to my computer here, I don’t see any of the kosher symbols.)
Thanks, folks! I always find the discussions of matters Jewish to be some of the most interesting threads around here.
Passover has its own, even more onerous kosher rules than the rest of the year. Coke is kosher during the rest of the year, but during passover you can’t have anything made from various prohibited grains (chametz). Among them: corn. That means no high-fructose corn syrup. Kosher-for-Passover Coke is made with cane sugar.
You don’t have to wait until Passover to get Coke with cane sugar, though. Most of the Mexican bottlers also use cane sugar instead of HFCS, and grocery stores in heavily Latino areas often stock Mexican Coke.
Yes, it is. Corn is not kosher for Passover, so Passover Coke contains sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.
Kosher for Passover is a totally different game than normal kosher. Some plant products are not kosher for Passover, despite containing no animal products.
Don’t only one group of Jews view corn as not Kosher for passover?
For some reason I thought only Sephardic Jews who avoided corn during Passover. I mean, they didn’t have corn (maize) in biblical times so what makes corn not okay for passover?
A bottle of Passover Coke will have the Hebrew words “Kasher L’Pesach” (Kosher For Passover) on the top of the cap. It will be in plain black letters, easily seeable (even if one can’t read Hebrew) along with the bottler’s name and other info.
On the cans, though, it can be extremely difficult to see, because it is not printed in ink, but merely stamped (engraved) into the metal of the top of the can.
(There’s an urban legend that Passover Coke DOES (or at least MIGHT) contain corn syrup. This arose from the fact that the ingredients list on the label says “sugar and/or corn syrup”. But that is simply to allow the same ingredients label to be used all year.)
You have it backwards. It is the Sephardim (Jews from Mediterranean countries) who allow corn, and the Ashkenazim (from North European lands) who don’t allow it. Corn (and rice, which is in the same category) is not one of the classic “Five Grains”, but because it is similar to them, the custom developed among Ashkenazim to avoid it.
Sugar-sweetened Coke (at least in the 2-liters) also has a yellow cap, while HFCS-sweetened has a white cap. In my local store, both versions are on the shelves around now, while only the white-capped version is available most of the year.
I tried the sugared version a couple years ago. Not bad, but I preferred the HFCS kind that I’m used to.
Was talking this past weekend with someone who works in this area (selling HFCS), and he said that they were making inroads into substituting corn syrup for cane sugar in Mexican Coke when the peso devalued and made it too expensive for them.
From what I’ve heard, the idea is that other grains might get mixed in with corn and be hard to tell apart (this would be plausible if the corn had been ground into cornmeal and the grains into flour). To avoid the possibility of eating those forbidden grains during Passover, we don’t eat corn.
Sephardim, on the other hand, supposedly around the time this decision was made had a diet that was based on rice, beans, and corn. Their rabbis decided that banning those things during Passover would be too much of a hardship, so they could still eat them.
Why is Coke so popular during Passover (as the gentleman in the OP explained)? Is it the only sweet mass-market drink that bothers to be Kosher For Passover?
Also, does Diet Coke have to be made Kosher or is it assumed that there is 0 trace of corn syrup in it?
I wonder about this. My understanding was the natural sugar was already cheaper than HFCS these days. Plus, Mexico has a huge corn and sugar industry; I wonder why the dollar exchange would make a difference? Perhaps because they can export sugar much more profitably?
I’d guess it has something to do with the conversion, not just growing sugar. Might be that it stopped making economic sense because of facilities, transport, etc. I’ll see if I can find out tonight.
So you’re saying that Coke itself is not more popular during Passover, it’s just that people who regularly drink Coke rush out to buy their Kosher For Passover Coke during this time because it is only sold for a limited time?
And what’s special about the Diet Coke, since it doesn’t have HFCS in it? Is it because the Diet Coke Making Machines were given some sort of Passover seal of approval? Does it maybe have different sugarfree sweeteners in it that are not corn-based?
Yes. Usually it sells out by the end of Passover, so we want to make sure we’ve got enough to keep us happy and productive through Passover. I also have to get some to take to seder at the in-laws- they don’t sell Passover Diet Coke where they are.
I don’t actually know. Maybe it is made on some equipment also used by regular Coke, so traces of corn syrup could make the Diet Coke also not kosher for Passover.
I’ve never seen Passover Diet Coke in anything other than 2-liter bottles. The 2-liter bottles have yellow caps with Hebrew writing (that says “kosher le-Pesach”, which means “kosher for Passover”). They’re generally in a special Passover section of the store, not with the other soda.
