We’ve signed up our kids for a very good summer day camp at the local Jewish Community Center. This will be our first summer there and we just got some of the orientation materials. One of the things they request is that the kids bring a dairy lunch every day. They go on to specify no meat or poultry, but that’s all the instruction given. Now, my son has had peanut butter and jelly every school day for the last two years, so he is not a problem. My daughter’s not really into peanut butter, though, so I have a couple of questions:
Would tuna salad be okay (tuna, mayonnaise, relish)?
No poultry, but what about eggs?
Would soy “meats” be acceptable, or would that violate the spirit of the thing?
I’m assuming cheese is okay, but do I need to buy specific kinds of cheese?
Are there any other things I might not thing of as being inappropriate that would cause a problem.
I’m assuming that most of the Jewish children there are from not terribly strict families, just from observation. There will also be a lot of non-Jewish kids–the Center also runs a very highly regarded preschool and many of the kids are Asian-American.
There are jewish business’ that certify food has not come in contact with pork etc. Huge industry. Apparently the Skittles company didn’t think it was worth it to pay for the certification, but companies like snapple pay for it.
IIRC Skittles uses gelatin. Under Jewish law, gelatin is a meat product. I can’t recall exactly why the gelatin in Skittles is unacceptable.
Boston Baked Beans, Junior Mints and anything else with confectioners glaze is not kosher. Confectioners glaze is made using the secretions of the lac beetle. Beetle secretions are not kosher.
“Gelatin (US spelling) or gelatine (British spelling) (used to make Jell-o and other desserts) is made from the boiled bones, skins and tendons of animals.”
But if you read the section of the article you linked to titled “What is Kosher Gelatin” it says
Tendons may “sound like meat” to you, stockton, but it seems like some kosher authorities may disagree (at least by the time they get converted into gelatin).
[QUOTE]
Two main questions are asked in connection with gelatin. One, must it come from a kosher source? The second question is: even when it is derived from glatt kosher hides, why isn’t it fleishig? The following is a brief description of the five steps involved in making pareve, kosher gelatin.[ol]
[li]The hide is chemically decomposed and rendered “Nifsal Meachila”. In other words, unfit to eat.[/li][li]Although it was considered unfit to eat, people, nevertheless, use it in food. This is called “Achshevay” and reinstitutes gelatin into a food category.[/li][li]Although gelatin is being used as a food, since it is not eaten by itself, but rather mixed in with many other ingredients, it is not fleishig.[/li][li]Even though gelatin is only one ingredient of many, we must bear in mind that it is a very important ingredient and has the status of a “maamid”. This means that it is considered a food stabilizer.[/li][li]In conclusion, Reb Moshe Feinstein Zt"l and Rav Aharon Kotler Zt"l, say that gelatin is “taam kalush” (a weak flavor), and is not fleishig, due to the major change it has undergone. However, it must be derived from kosher sources. If the gelatin was derived from a non-kosher source, such as pig or non-kosher slaughtered hides, although they have been chemically altered, since they originated from a non-kosher source, there is no way to ever render them permissible.[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Now I understand that Conservative and Orthodox Jews may differ on what’s considered kosher and that there are a number of organizations that certify food as kosher, so I don’t know if that analysis is widely accepted. I also don’t know what kind of gelatin is used in Skittles. Maybe it’s good enough for some Jews, but doesn’t pass the standards of the kosher certifier used by Mars. Or maybe its derived from pigs.
I don’t know how strict this program is, but at the Orthodox summer camps I attended, any artificial product like margarine or soy “meat” was assumed to be the genuine article and was thus not allowed.
You might also want to re-think mayonnaise-based or egg-based foods like tuna salad because, again from my experience, sufficient refrigeration can be a problem, especially if field trips or picnics are involved.
These are questions you’re going to want to clarify before camp begins.
[QUOTE=chukhung]
But if you read the section of the article you linked to titled “What is Kosher Gelatin” it says Tendons may “sound like meat” to you, stockton, but it seems like some kosher authorities may disagree (at least by the time they get converted into gelatin).
Fair enough and thanks for the cite - I did read through the link I posted, and disclaimed (IANAJ).
My point was that IF the Skittles folks use skin and bones and tendons, I can understand why some folks might call that meat. I’ve had bologna and hot dogs with less meat in them than Skittles.
The vast majority of gelatin products available in the US aren’t kosher, as they’re assumed to be derived from hides from non-kosher animals. (Almost all of animals slaughtered in the US are either non-kosher, eg pigs, or haven’t been slaughtered according to the rules of kashrut.) You’ll only find kosher gelatin in products marketed specifically to kashrut-observant people, and not generally in your average supermarket.
Kosher hard cheeses are harder to find than you’d expect, also, due to problems from rennet, an animal-derived product used to induce curdling in the milk. They’re also mostly made by companies that specialize in kosher food, so no Kraft Singles. Cream cheese and such are much easier to find.
Many non-kosher candies contain carmine, which is a red coloring derived from crushed beetles. Bugs aren’t kosher, so no carmine for me.
FTR, the only kosher-certified, completely non-dairy margarine available in the NY metro area that I know if is Fleishman’s Unsalted. (Just the unsalted - the original is kosher but dairy.) Not that this matters if you’re sending dairy/pareve lunches.
I don’t like peanut butter either, and my parents generally sent me to camp and school (with the same requirements you list) with lunches of: cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, tuna or eggsalad sandwiches (unless we were going to be in the sun all day), avocado sandwiches, noodles and stuff (tuna or sauces), or yoghurt and crackers. You might want to ask the JCC what kashrut certifying organizations they’re OK with, so you can look for those symbols on the food you’re buying. (Not all brands of the above are kosher.) The biggest and most widely accepted organizations are the Orthodox Union (a circle around a U), OK Labs (a circle around a K), and chof-K, which looks like a big letter chof (kind of like a backwards C; it’s the first letter of the word kosher in Hebrew) around a smaller K. The letter K by itself is uncopyrightable, as it’s just a letter of the alphabet, so anyone can slap a letter K on anything they choose, up to and including packages of bacon. (There are a few exceptions; Kellogg’s cereals with a K on them are very widely accepted as kosher.)
