Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 56

Mm WHAT IS KOSHER? fiWlfi ill Tr -'ftiS 3 i fl 11 hat makes food kosher? I ff Some items can't ever be certi-I is I fied kosher such as anything ill made with shellfish, pork or animal gelatin. Every ingredient in a kosher product must be certified kosher, so food companies must have steady, relatively long-term suppliers whose products are themselves certified. Kosher requires total separation of meat products and dairy products. For instance, equipment used to make hot dogs with a dairy filler can't be used to make kosher hot dogs, which can have no dairy products in them. Similarly, equipment that makes pure vegetable oil can't be used to make a lard (animal fat) and vegetable oil combination.

Products are classified as either meat, dairy, or pareve, which is neither meat nor dairy and can be served with either. Pareve products fish, vegetables, fruit may carry designations such as DE, which means the product was made on dairy equipment. Food companies see, benefits in having their products certified iff lillH.H II KOSHER FOOD IS SEEN AS HEALTHIER Rabbi Joseph Krupnik, an official with the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Metropolitan Detroit, discusses chicken prices with a Farmer Jack customer. later. Opening is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.

"It's a lot easier to keep kosher now," says Lerner. "There's a lot more products available." A few doors down, Rita Jerome is opening Unique Kosher Carryout sometime this week. On a recent Sunday, a series of shoppers stopped in to tell Jerome that they eagerly await her opening. "We're going to grill hamburgers and make french fries, and make a lot of ethnic foods Hungarian paprikash and goulash, Romanian dishes, Italian dishes," Jerome says. There's no doubt that kosher food is coming of age and even developing a certain cachet among mainstream America.

About 6 million Americans shop for kosher food specifically and only 1.7 million of them are Jewish. (At last count, in 1989, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit estimated there were 96,000 Jews in metro Detroit. That doesn't include the thousands of Russian Jews who have immigrated here in the last few years.) Even consumers who've never thought twice about kosher food fill their shopping carts with cans and packages labeled with trademarked kosher symbols without realizing it That's because more and more food companies are seeing benefits in having their products certified. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are kosher. In 1990, By Janet Braunstein Free Press Business Writer nff osher food.

It's not just gefilte fish, ff borscht and chicken soup anymore. I And it's not just for observant Jews. Americans' search for healthier, purer foods has led more of them than ever to foods certified as kosher by 45 different U.S. Jewish rabbinical groups. Meanwhile, the search for variety and convenience has led the food business to cook up everything from kosher Chinese food and pizza to kosher microwave dinners.

Consider Kosher caterers, like Sperbers in Southfield and West Bloomfield, prepare spinach pie, quiches, crepes and chicken marsala, chicken frangelico and chicken Wellington things they wouldn't have offered 10 years ago. The American Bulk Foods store on Orchard Lake Road near Maple Road in West Bloomfield includes a kosher sit-down restaurant where customers can eat pizza, strudel, kugel, salads and "Slimmery" ice cream, which contains no fat and no sugar. Marty Lerner, owner of Lakewood Specialty Foods, a kosher grocery store in Royal Oak Township, is hard at work preparing to open Southeast Michigan's first kosher Chinese takeout. The food will be prepared under rabbinical supervision by a gourmet chef. Lerner plans to add Mexican and Italian lines I jftaawM IT-US Pareve products also face rigid inspection.

On leafy vegetables, every leaf is cleaned, held up to light and inspected for bugs. Kosher laws allow no consumption of insects. Meat has to be slaughtered under rabbinical supervision in a tightly prescribed way. Most of the blood, for example, is immediately drained. The animal's lungs are inflated to make sure there are no lesions or holes.

Even at a kosher slaughterhouse, of 125 animals slaughtered, only 40 to 50 will be certified kosher, says Rabbi Joseph Krupnik. The rest will be sold to non-kosher stores. The kosher butcher is responsible for salting and deveining the meat. For more information on kosher certification, contact: Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit, 17071 W. 10 Mile Road, Southfield, 559-5005, 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m. Or contact the Metropolitan Kashruth Council of Michigan, Rabbi Jack Goldman, at 6533 Post Oak Drive, West Bloomfield, 855-4324, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. By Janet Braunstein they believe it's cleaner and healthier. The required separation of milk and meat products, which cannot be served at the same meal, means that lactose-intolerant consumers can tell quickly whether they can eat a kosher product.

Anything not marked (for dairy) is OK for them. That saves much poring over the fine print ingredients list looking for terms such as "sodium caseinate" a milk phosphoprotein. The ban on eating pork prevents trichinosis, an infestation of larval worms once frequently found in pork and sometimes present if pork is not adequately cooked. Kosher purity standards mean that tuna certified as kosher has never contained dolphin. Dolphin isn't kosher, so tuna that contained dolphin could not be kosher.

By Janet Braunstein Kashruth Council of Michigan, .,1 'J ti, New York. Rabbis of Greater Detroit, Southfield. Council. Chicago. Used on manv ROGER HICKS Detroit Free Press Detroit Free Press April 26, 1993 UFl r7- Coors Brewing Co.

had its beer certified kosher still the only major kosher beer in the United States. From Betty Crocker mixes to Ortega Mexican sauces, Maxwell House coffee to Frookie Trolls graham cookies, from Quaker Oats to General Mills' Golden Grahams cereal, from Mott's applesauce to Lobby's canned peaches, the shelves of American supermarkets are stacked with mass-market foods bearing kosher symbols. Kosher food is certified by rabbis under Jewish kashrut dietary laws. The marks of the two largest of these groups the "O-U" of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, in New York, and the "O-K" of the Organized Kashrus Laboratories, in Brooklyn are the most common. Consumers go to the kosher meat counter looking for protection beyond government standards.

Companies that make packaged kosher meats, such as Hebrew National and Empire Poultry, tout the purity of their products with such slogans as: "We answer to a higher authority." "The (salmonella) scare a couple of years ago just about doubled our chicken sales," said Steve Teberian, kosher butcher at Farmer jack at Maple and Orchard Lake roads in West Bloomfield. Teberian knows that many of these customers aren't exclusively kosher because he sees them pick up meats from the non-kosher section as welL "In every food category," says Rabbi 1 Kosher versions of everything from Chinese food to spaghetti to a wide variety of wines have made their wa to the supermarket am- -w- is I I i 1 1 "1 T1 mi? mi II of kosher food is the perception that it 1 1 II is purer, healthier and prepared with more care and attention than other food. In the wake of scares such as the deaths from eating bad meat at Jack-in-the-Box restaurants in the Northwest, some consumers are looking for more assurance of quality and safety than a government stamp. Orthodox Jews believe the kashrut dietary laws are the word of God. But there are also sound medical reasons for many of the rules.

Kosher chicken is washed in fresh cold water after slaughter. This eliminates many problems with modern processed chicken which often sits in the blood and in warm water such as salmonella. Kosher butchers use no preservatives or chemicals to remove poultry feathers. Some people buy kosher chicken for the same reasons others buy Amish chicken 0 Mite, i'4 M'J -t 1 STEVEN R. NICKERSONDetroit Free Press spokesman.

There are other signs that the kosher food business is coming on strong: The nation's only kosher food trade show, held each November in New Jersey, attracted 150 food exhibitors, up from 75 when it debuted in 1987. Before then, "there was no kosher food show because although there was kosher food on the market, it was small in comparison with the surge in the last five to 10 years," says Mechachim Lubinsky, the show's organizer. In 1977, there were just 1,000 kosher-labeled packaged products on the market. At last count, there were 23,600 bearing kosher labels, according to Lubinsky. Twenty years ago, kosher-food consumers were primarily Orthodox or Conservative Jews, Muslims and members of other groups with dietary laws forbidding pork.

They prepared most of their meals at home. The only kosher food in a store would be found in the Manischewitz, Streits and Rokeach displays in the specialty foods aisle. Kosher foods tended toward the traditional European fare brought to the United States by Jews from countries like Poland and Romania gefilte fish, stewed or baked fish mixed with eggs and seasoning and formed into cakes or balls; bland roasted chicken; corned beef, kosher beef salami and other salted meats; and bagels and tox. See KOSHER, Page 19F Selling kosher foods has gone beyond the Jewish community. Here's a look at the kosher business.

Some products you wouldn't expect to be kosher Coca-Cola Faygo sodas Pepsi Hershey's chocolate morsels Cape Cod potato chips Rich's whipped topping Maxwell House coffee Most Betty Crocker products Hunt's and Heinz ketchups Tree Sweet, Tropicana juices Dannon yogurts (some) Ortega Mexican sauces Nestle's Quik and Ovaltine Upton Iced Tea Kosher facts The kosher food market has been growing between 10 and 12 percent a year over the last five years. In 1992 the kosher food market was worth about $2 billion, Up from $1.25 billion in 1987. Some $35 billion worth of products are available as kosher such as Coke which are bought by kosher and non-kosher consumers alike. About 6 million Americans shop for kosher food specifically only 1.7 million of them are Jewish. In 1977, 1,000 products were available with kosher certification.

At last count, stores stocked 23,600 kosher products. Of the 35,000 products on the shelves of the average medium-sized grocery store, about 40 percent are labeled kosher. These symbols are some used to identify which group certifies and supervises kosher foods. There are some 45 different groups. These symbols are the most prevalent in Michigan: 0 fl 0 Joseph Krupnik, an official with the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Metropolitan Detroit, "there is at least one product certified kosher." It's a striking contrast to 11 years ago, when Krupnik had to live on chocolate bars for three days when he was out of town on a business trip and could find no other kosher foods.

The council supervises kosher meat counters and kosher seafood counters at three Farmer Jack stores at Coolidge and 10 Mile in Oak Park, on Southfield Road in Southfield, and in West Bloomfield. The meat is prepared and packaged by kosher butchers who devein it and soak and salt it to remove the blood. At the Shopping Center Market nearby, one of the largest customer groups is Muslims, because meats that are kosher automatically meet the Muslim dietary standard called hallal, says Rabbi Jack Goldman, administrator of the Metropolitan Kashruth Council of Michigan. But even grocery stores in non-Jewish areas such as St Clair Shores, Port Huron and Downriver are including kosher foods in their gourmet or ethnic food sections. And kosher foods are in every aisle.

Although Coors has enjoyed increased sales in areas with large Jewish populations since it was certified, the main benefit the company sees is outside proof that its beer and ingredients are as pure as its ads have long claimed. "Even with their rigid standards, we had to change none of our processes nor any of our ingredients," said Gary Schmitz, Coors I The Michigan Metropolitan West Bloomfield. tu. ri. iu i UJ Orthodox Jewish Congregations, The The Organized Kashrus -V" 1 .1 .1.1 Laboratories, Brooklyn.

The Council of Orthodox The Chicaco Rabbinical meat products. Source: Free Press research, Kashrus magazine. Business Monday 10F April 26, 1993.