The NYT on the Jewish diet's growing popularity with gentiles and conscious eaters
In the Michael Pollan world, people are always looking for new ways to eat more sustainable, healthier food — or at least convince themselves that they are. Today, the New York Times reports on a new healthy-eating trend (that may not actually be all that healthy) that’s becoming increasingly popular among gentiles and lapsed Jews: Kosher foods.
Writes Kim Severson: “Only about 15 percent of people who buy kosher do it for religious reasons, according to Mintel, a research group that last year produced a report on the kosher food explosion. The top reasons cited for buying kosher? Quality, followed by general healthfulness.”
But most people, Severson writes, aren’t buying it because they’re intimately familiar with the Jewish dietary laws that govern kosher eating (which include, “rinsing blood from carcasses with salt and water, never mixing meat and dairy, and allowing fin fish but not shellfish”) but because they associate the food with humane farming, health, and good taste — three assumptions that, Severson explains, may not actually be correct:
- Jewish dietary law requires that animals be treated well and slaughtered swiftly, but not all manufacturers obey these rules rigorously, and the level of animal treatment depends on the individual farm operation.
- While one study found that salmonella levels were lower in kosher chickens than in conventional chickens, as a result of the kosher practice of salting and rinsing the bird, another found that kosher chicken had the highest levels of listeria (which sickens people relatively rarely, but can also be deadly).
- There’s little taste difference between a normal foodstuff that’s been blessed by a rabbi (kosher Oreos?) and its non-kosher equivalent — and, while some chefs prefer kosher chickens, including Cook’s Illustrated magazine founder Christopher Kimball, it’s more likely the quality of the chicken, not the kosher-izing, that’s the clincher.
The New York Times isn’t the first publication to catch on to the growing popularity of kosher foods (the New Yorker recently ran a piece about China’s growing kosher export market), but it suggests, without saying it, that the real reason behind the growing market is trendy eaters’ increasingly desperate search for the “next big thing” in healthful eating and an easy, catch-all term to simplify their choices, like “organic — even if it’s not necessarily all that healthy. (Oh yeah, you’re eating slow foods? I’ve gone kosher!).
The facts: Beloved by raw food enthusiasts, agave syrup has become one of the easiest alternative sweeteners to find in grocery stores. It’s derived from the Mexican succulent plant agave, of which there are several varieties. It has to be processed to become sweet, and depending on that process, it can be comparable in composition to the dreaded high fructose corn syrup. True, agave has a low glycemic index — meaning it releases glucose into the blood stream at a slower rate than refined sugar — so it can help keep blood sugar levels stable. Eating agave as a “healthy” alternative to sugar, however, is pointless; the two have the same number of calories, no nutritional value whatsoever, and, even though it doesn’t spike blood sugar, the primary sugar in agave, fructose, has been linked to cancer and cholesterol problems when consumed in large quantities.
The facts: Brown rice syrup is what happens when cooked brown rice meets barley malt enzymes. The sweetness comes from starchy complex carbohydrates, which take a couple of hours to digest. As a result, the glucose is released gradually into the bloodstream, providing a steady supply of energy rather than the rush — and crash — of cane sugar. Plus, the syrup maintains some of the nutrients in brown rice, like protein, so it’s not a total nutritional bust like most sweeteners are.
The facts: Stevia’s not technically a sugar; it’s extracted from a sweet herb of the same name. Therefore it has no calories and doesn’t raise blood sugar. Though the FDA labeled it a “dangerous food additive” in 1991 after an “anonymous industry complaint” (read: shadowy figures in lab coats), stevia is now back on the market as a “dietary supplement.” In the rest of the world, particularly Japan, widespread use of stevia has been going on for decades.
The facts: Date sugar is so low-tech it’s kind of funny — it’s just dehydrated dates that have been ground into a powder. That means it’s completely unprocessed and retains all the nutrients in dates. It’s high in fiber and protein, and has lots of vitamins and minerals like iron and potassium. Plus, it qualifies as a raw food. It still contains sucrose, fructose and glucose, so it’s not a good alternative for diabetics or people looking to control their blood sugar.
My Washington: Not so tawdry, rather lovely 
Governor Walker to Face Recall Election 
A match made on Craigslist adult services 
Can’t see the forest for the wood 
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
