2006-04-13 - 1:54 p.m.
Some food restrictions to mark the Passover holiday adhered to by many American Jews strike me as, well, a bit ridiculous. Everything stems from a proscription on baked and risen bread. The idea is to commemorate the flight of the formerly enslaved Hebrews across the desert from Egypt. In their rush to escape, they had no time to wait for the bread to rise. Hence, unleavened matzo.
Some people have extended this thinking to increasingly removed extremes, following increasingly hazy logic. They may have decided that any grain that could possibly be turned into flour isn�t allowed. Some relative of mine once went off when I was little about how peanuts were verboten because they could be crushed up into peanut flour. My mom pointed out that when you mash up peanuts, you get peanut butter. (I suspect little credence was given to her opinion, as she was a converted Jew-by-choice�)
Some people have decided that since baked bread is not allowed, by extension wheat is not allowed, and by extension corn is not allowed, and by extension corn syrup is not allowed, and therefore you have to get special �kosher for Passover� Coca-Cola made without corn syrup! Uh. I think you�ve lost track of the point here. (I mean theoretically, to commemorate a hasty escape and stretch logic past the breaking point, everything should be cooked as fast as possible, like in a microwave.)
One time in high school, I called an Orthodox friend to ask if a certain food (I forget what it was � potatoes maybe?) was acceptable for Passover. Her mother answered the phone, so I posed the question to her. She asked me if it had �kosher for Passover� stamped on the package. I said of course not, but I wanted to understand the reasoning behind the food�s inclusion or exclusion. She said that wasn�t important, what was essential was that I only eat items marked �kosher for Passover�! Rabbis had ruled on these things, see, and they know!
Ah. I chafed at this as an anti-authoritarian youth, but only years later did I get an insight about the process of food getting certified as kosher. You�ll note in the story that follows that my friend and I seem to have had a lot of time on our hands. To this I can only offer that I was 23(-ish), not in my best frame of mind, and didn�t have a job. At least I used my free time to find out something interesting. This happened in the kitchen of Fat Day house on a sunny afternoon.
My friend Andrew was a pretty militant vegan. We were arguing about whether he could eat something that was made with white sugar. I said that the supposed nefarious origin of whiteness in sugar � that cow bones are somehow used in the process � was just a hoary myth. He insisted that bones were ground up to make naturally brown powdered sugar into a white substance. The Man wanted to bleach out all color from food and uphold whiteness as purity, just like he did with people!
I held that sugar had to be vegan because it was marked as �parve�, a kosher certification meaning it had no meat or dairy products (like animal bones) in it. We sat and simmered at each other for a bit. Then Andrew had a suggestion. Let�s call the toll-free number printed on the sugar box for questions and comments and find out how sugar gets white. Hmm. We both listened in on separate receivers and called Domino�s (or whoever it was).
�Hi,� said Andrew when we got through. �I have a question. I was just sitting here in my kitchen and wondering: how does sugar get white?�
There was a moment of silence from the other end. I can�t imagine who else calls the number on a package of sugar, but apparently they don�t usually ask questions like this. They wanted to know whether this was a question from the media. Andrew assured him that he wasn�t an investigative journalist. He just wanted to know how sugar got white. This seemed to meet with some consternation. Hold a moment. We were transferred around extensively, Andrew repeating his query to every new person.
Eventually the various administrative types must have gotten sick of trying to deal with us, because we were connected to a floor supervisor at an actual plant. I believe her name was Dr. Yang and she had a rather thick accent. I�m sure it wasn�t actually this way, but in my memory we could hear the whir of processing machinery in the background. Andrew repeated his question:
�Hi. How does sugar get white?�
Dr. Yang seemed rather excited that someone was interested. I guess she was rarely asked about her work. �When the sugar first come to us, it is not white. It is brown!�
�I know. How does it get white?�
�It is very complicated process.� It was going on behind her as we spoke. �I explain, walk you through!�
The sugar was liquefied then put through a series of filters. With each one, impurities were removed and the sugar became more refined and whiter. As she described the process further and the sugar got increasingly white, I started to feel vindicated. I wouldn�t have thought that so much machinery went into the production of something as simple as sugar, but no animal products were being used. Hah, I�m right!
�Then for the final step, the sugar is passed through the bone filter!�
Oof.
�Bone filter? Well, who�s bones are they?�
�Oh no, they are not a person�s bones! They are cow bones.�
Cow bones were used because they have the right level of porousness. Sugar particles are small enough to pass through the bones, while particles that are larger get lodged in the microscopic gaps within the bone. Sometimes these filters are made from charcoal, but this is just burned-down bone. An animal product was invariably used to refine sugar.
The sugar was now white. Andrew thanked Dr. Yang for her time and hung up. I looked at him in shock. That was a bit more explanation than I expected and at the end it turned out he was right. He nodded sagely and went back to nibbling on his carrot sticks. But while he seemed sufficiently satisfied and justified, I was a little nonplussed. Why was white sugar marked �parve� when it clearly wasn�t? I would get the number of some sort of rabbinical council and find out.
The first several numbers listed in the phone book either didn�t want to talk to me or said, as their particular board didn�t certify that particular product (there is apparently no single, central source certifying things as kosher; numerous groups do it), they couldn�t answer any questions about it. After a while I reached the Boston branch of whatever rabbinate had stamped that package as parve. I was transferred around to several people confused about what I seemed to be upset over. Eventually I reached someone who agreed to hear me out.
I explained that I had just talked to the sugar producer, who had walked me through their refining process. The sugar, in a hot, liquid form, passed through bone, some microscopic particles of which were surely carried on into the finished product. Yet it was labeled as �parve�, containing no meat or dairy products. Did bone somehow not count as a meat product? He chuckled at me. I had to understand that kosher standards were set by biblical law.
�It�s very exacting and stringent. No more than one part in seventy-five can be unkosher material!�
�One part in seventy-five? But that�s ridiculous! The FDA measures contaminants in parts per million, maybe even billion.�
�Well now, I�m sure no animal matter got into a product labeled �parve�. Otherwise, how would it get that label?�
�Right. That�s exactly what I�m asking you.�
He hung up on me.
I was flummoxed. I called a distant cousin who I hadn�t talked to in years. He joined the Lubavitcher sect of Hassidic Jews (the ones with the black hats and side hair locks) and had worked for a while certifying that the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn was kosher. I asked him what he knew about the process by which nationally-distributed food was declared kosher and parve. He said it was rather complicated, could be a bit arbitrary, and generally involved more politics than I might expect.
In some situations, no one even physically went to the food plant. A certifying organization just asked the producer whether any changes had been made to the process the item went through or whether it was the same as the previous year. If it was self-reported that everything was the same and the item had been stamped as kosher the year before, the certification was simply renewed. It seemed essentially that if someone had made a bad call umpteen years ago, that just got carried forward indefinitely.
I was picturing a kosher-ness official in 1930, first inspecting the plant and not having the technology to tell if all the liquid sugar passing through the filter was carrying bone particles with it. Was the sugar truly parve, with no animal products. I wonder if the manufacturer said perhaps you�d like some time to consider your decision to certify our product, a certification that will certainly increase our sales. Perhaps you�d like to think it over for several weeks at our expense at our beautiful plantation in the Caribbean�
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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