Why is this candy bar forbidden? Is it just too delicious?
Would a kindly mod please put this in General Questions or Cafe?
I don’t know the status of this particular bar, but the most likely explanation (WAG) is that the chocolate is milk chocolate while the caramel contains some form of gelatin. Mixes meat and milk, you know.
Are there degrees to not keeping Kosher or is it always purely a binary yes or no? Is eating a trace of gelatin a greater sin than snacking on a big ham & cheese sandwich? If an observant Jew ate the non-kosher candy bar by accident what are his duties/options at that point?
I think it’s the pork center.
Looking at the website, the marshmallow bar also isn’t kosher. Marshmallows usually contain gelatin so that isn’t suprising. I’d bet you a bacon cheeseburger that gelatin is the culprit in the other bar as well.
Yes, kosher is binary. Either it is or it isn’t. Anything with any trace of animal products has to be inspected carefully. But eating something accidentally isn’t a sin, only if you eat something with reckless disregard. Which is why observant jews won’t eat in uncertified restaurants, even just to order vegan items since the dishes and silverware aren’t kept separate.
And of course, if you’re starving it is not only OK to eat non-kosher food, it is required…it would be a sin to starve to death if non-kosher food is available.
Yes.
Sorta.
I would nitpick this statement only to the extent of pointing out the “Kosher for Passover,” category of food. In addition to all the existing Kosher rules, during Passover edible fermented grain products (“chametz”) are forbidden. So something can be “Kosher” but not “Kosher for Passover”.
More than you wanted to know about Kosher Laws (from the guys who certify Hershey’s).
It’s not just the ingredients, although getting them right is the huge first step to take. You also have to consider how it’s prepared, and under what conditions. Non-kosher beef, for example. It’s just beef, but if it’s not handled in the right way, it’s not kosher.
And you can split that again, because there are things that are Kosher for Passover if you’re Spanish and not Kosher for Passover if you’re not. 
Even if the ingredients in that bar are kosher, perhaps it was made using the same equipment used to make, for example, marshmallow bars, so may have traces of marshmallow.
I don’t think that falls into the same category. You’re talking about the use (and possession) of kitniyos, things like rice, soy, chick beans, and other things that the Sephardic tradition permits but the Ashkenazim do not. That’s more of a variant in interpretation between regions and cultures than anything else.
But everyone agrees (well, every observant Jew agrees) that barley, oats, rye, spelt, and wheat are right out.
I guess it’s kind of smary for me to offer a nitpick and then cavil about being nitpicked, but to my way of thinking there really is a principled difference between these two kinds of distinctions.
I’d also like to point out with some amazement that we’re breaking the usual SDMB rule that requires we have discussions like this only after shabbos begins so our actual observant Dopers don’t have a chance to read and respond!
You must be a mind reader! I went to that page and you were indeed correct: There was more there than I wanted to know!
Fascinating reading, though.
Yet another nitpick: It depends on why the food is not kosher. For the most common violations of the laws, your statement is correct (unclean animal, mixing meat and dairy, etc.). But if we’re talking about meat which has been sacrificed to an idol (admittedly not too common nowadays), one is expected to starve rather than eat it.
Not “usually” – Marshmallow is a mixture of gelatine and sugar syrup. There’s a long and interesting history to this that I won’t go into now, but I don’t know of any marshm,allow currently manufactured that doesn’t have gelatine as a major constituent.
Either something is kosher, or it isn’t.
Different Jews, however, have different standards of keeping kosher. They range from not eating pork (but not necessarily reading labels to determine that there are no hidden pork products in food, just avoiding things that obviously contain pork, or ham, or bacon) but following no other kosher rules, to only eating kosher-certified products (possibly only products certified kosher by certain authorities) and only eating in kosher-certified restaurants. Some people won’t even eat something that is kosher but might appear not to be- they wouldn’t eat a kosher (dairy or parve) veggie burger with cheese, because it would look like they were eating a cheeseburger.
Different denominations of Judaism have different kosher standards, as well. For example, many Conservative Jews would say that gelatin is so processed from its original status, that it can’t be non-kosher, because it isn’t really a food, but a non-food food additive. (I like this view, because it confirms my belief that Jell-O isn’t food). That means we can eat non-kosher-certified marshmallows. Historically, Reform Judaism hasn’t cared about keeping kosher, but that’s changing.
For example, Mr. Neville and I are Conservative Jews who keep kosher. We will eat products that aren’t certified kosher, but only after reading the ingredients label to make sure there’s nothing non-kosher in there (and, if we’re going to eat it with meat, that there’s no dairy). We will eat vegetarian meals or meals containing only kosher fish in non-kosher restaurants or in the home of someone who doesn’t keep kosher, though we do have two sets of dishes to avoid mixing meat and milk in our home.
There are some Jews who keep kosher at home, but who don’t when they go out to eat. At least some of them probably wouldn’t order a ham sandwich, but they don’t always ask if there is ham in, say, a soup they order.
And if we eat something that turns out to not be kosher according to our standards- we feel guilty about it for a while, and try to be more careful.
There actually is such a thing as kosher marshmallows. I have no idea what’s in them, but they’re disgusting.
We eat them during Passover. ISTR they have gelatin from fish in them.
Also human flesh.
As for non-gelatin marshmallows:
http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/gail_marshmallows.htm
All the websites I could google up bemoaned the scarcity of vegan marshmallows and how hard/impossible they were to find, but apparently they do exist. Although it seems most kosher marshmallows aren’t vegan but contain kosher gelatin and so wouldn’t be kosher if mixed into a milk chocolate candy bar.