Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 4The best of both worlds
I have fond memories of eating Good & Plenty as a kid; however, those were somewhat colored (pink?) by recently noticing what's on the label: carmine and shellac, this time disguised as "RESINOUS GLAZE."
Here's what really gets me: That little "kosher" indicator below the ingredient list. According to the Wikipedia article on kosher diets, "The consumption of insects involves five violations of Torah law, so according to Jewish Law it is a greater sin than the consumption of pork."
Really now. It doesn't take scholar on Jewish Law to determine that eating insects is worse than eating pork. Exactly what are these Hershey folks trying to pull here? (And as long as we're kicking The Hershey Company while they're down, what's with that grainy texture in Special Dark?)
Here's what really gets me: That little "kosher" indicator below the ingredient list. According to the Wikipedia article on kosher diets, "The consumption of insects involves five violations of Torah law, so according to Jewish Law it is a greater sin than the consumption of pork."
Really now. It doesn't take scholar on Jewish Law to determine that eating insects is worse than eating pork. Exactly what are these Hershey folks trying to pull here? (And as long as we're kicking The Hershey Company while they're down, what's with that grainy texture in Special Dark?)
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
It's a great resource, and I didn't know that such a thing existed-- I though that we were just on our own to figure out which agencies were reliable. Looking at that list does inject a little bit of sanity into these things!
let me explain.
(it WILL be long. sorry...)
first of all,what you described here is not eating an insect,
but eating a BYPRODUCT of it.
it makes all the difference.
Jewish people a allowed to eat a byproduct of an Un-Kosher animal, providing it is, quote
"...not worthy as Dog's food".
why is that?
you can use, say, a pig's glands or organs, to produce certain medicines or hormones.
while producing these medicines, or hormones (most likely), the un-kosher stuff is processed into a liquid or a powder, that even a dog will frown upon, if offered as food.
at this point, it is NOT considered as food,
therefore - CAN NOT BE UN-KOSHER !
Also, speaking of insects,
jews are specifically allowed to eat locusts, because , in olden times, if locusts plagued the land,
you had nothing else to eat, and you had to eat it to save your life.
Jews are allowed to eat un-kosher food if it is the last option, only to save their lives.
locusts are a "default" in this case, understandably.
it used to be "eat them or die of hunger" in old times.
by the way, according to scientists,
Jewish people ate a byproduct of insects while in the desert, on their way from Egypt to Israel.
yes, that heavenly bread they ate was a secretion of
a certain beatle.
it can be found on the desert-flora in the Sinai desert even today.
it's sweet , small and white,an appears in the early morning, just as described in the Bible.
(early morning= when the ants are less active. a few hours later it's eaten up by them. or as described in the Bible - it "melts away"...)
Carmine is actually made from the ground-up bodies of insects. That is unambiguously not an excretion or by-product. Common sense and most major Kosher-certifying agencies do not call this a Kosher ingredient. Go look it up.
The reasoning that I've heard behind calling shellac Kosher is that, since it's an insect excretion, we should view it like honey, which is a classic Kosher food. So, while lac should *in principle* be Kosher, the fact is that *in practice* lac is harvested along with the bugs. This is like collecting honey by grinding up both the bees and the rest of the hive, then extracting the honey.
This article is supposed to be about *not* eating insects, so I don't really want to list all the different cultures that allow eating some or all insects. However, a quick Google search about locusts suggest that even they are not unambiguously Kosher:
http://www.star-k.org/cons-faqs-insects.htm#locusts