Who is the Kosher
Consumer?
Jews comprise
only about twenty percent of the market for Kosher food. Though,
according to Jewish
historian, Jenna Weissman Joselit, in the beginning of the previous
century kosher-keeping Jews were fading away. "Between 1914 and 1924,"
writes Joselit, "the consumption of kosher meat in the Greater New
York area fell by 25 to 30 percent. By the mid-1930s ... levels of
kosher observance had fallen so low that [one magazine said] it made
‘Jew and gentile alike wonder that kosher is a still a word to four
million people in the USA.’"
However, the tide has turned. The kosher industry in the United States
is enormous and for years has been growing between 12-15 every year.
Currently, upward of 10 million people in the American market acquire
approximately sixty thousand kosher products, produced by nearly ten
thousand companies. Only two million of the kosher consumers are
Jewish. The other eight-plus million are people who choose to eat
kosher for religious (Moslems), idealistic (Vegans and Vegetarians),
and health reasons.
Expanding Demand
According to Dr. Judith
Leff, Doctor of Biology, and Director of Ingredient
Research, at the Kof-K kosher Laboratories, the demand for
kosher-certified food and ingredients is increasing at an astonishing
rate. Among many examples, some of the most select wines from the
aristocracy of French wineries now have supervised productions.
Surprisingly, this phenomenon is due mostly to the non-Jewish segment
of the population, which views kosher certification as a guarantee of
wholesomeness, naturalness and quality. Strict vegetarians, Moslems,
Hindus, and people with allergies to dairy foods, look for the kosher-parve
designation as their best assurance that a food contains no
animal-derived ingredients, including milk and all of its derivatives.
Are You Eating Kosher
Food? - You Most Certainly are!
You may not realize, but
chances are you and your family consume an array of kosher products.
Some well-known brands that produce certified kosher foods include Philadelphia
Cream Cheese, Post, General Mills, and Kelloggs cereals, Coca Cola,
Nabisco, to name just a select few.
Check your pantry, and you'll find a whole
lot of items with kosher symbols on
them. And you thought you didn't eat kosher :)
