Great Moments in Comparative Religion
This is what happens when neither reporters nor editors have any idea how to check the alleged facts in their stories.
Earlier this week, the Boston Globe led its Food section with a story on a local company that makes the ersatz fruit slices that are particularly popular during Passover. Alas, there are at least two bizarre mistakes in the piece that make one wonder whether anyone at the Globe has any conception about what is kosher and what is treif.
[General manager Rick] Hiera boasts that the local product is superior ... because of the fruit-juice flavor made at a "flavor house" halfway across the country (he won't disclose which one), because of the gelling agent agar (he says other companies use pectin, which makes the candy stick to your teeth) ...
So far, so good. But things get worse quickly.
The slices are kosher year-round, but to make it kosher specifically for Passover, the plant replaces the corn syrup ingredient with potato or tapioca syrup. (Corn syrup usually isn't kosher for Passover because its production isn't supervised by a rabbi.) The company also shrinks the number of flavors it makes from 13 to four during the holiday season to ensure all ingredients are wheat-free. The Passover slices come in cherry, orange, lemon, and lime.
At the factory, the day starts at 6 a.m. with fruit-slice makers boiling the sugar and gelatin mix in a stainless-steel cooking kettle only to immediately cool it.
The reason that corn syrup "usually isn't kosher for Passover" is that Ashkenazi Jews, who vastly outnumber Sephardic Jews in North America, generally regard corn, rice, peanuts and legumes as chometz during Passover because they are often used to make bread. (In Israel, corn products can and often do get certified as kosher for Passover because these grains are regarded differently.) It has nothing to do with rabbinical supervision—a rabbi could run the syrup plant and it would still be chometz to Ashkenazi Jews. A call to one of literally hundreds of local experts—rabbis, say, or professors of religion—would have cleared that up.
And if you want to describe agar as gelatinous, that is fine. But it is not gelatin.
Labels: candy fruit slices, chometz, Passover, Stupid reporting tricks
