Nearly Half of Supermarket Products are Kosher, New Study Finds

Posted by Menachem Lubinsky on May 31, 2010 under Kosher | View Comments

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By Menachem Lubinsky

New York…Most supermarkets in larger cities carry at least 20,000 kosher certified items, a Kosher Today survey indicates. In many stores, the number of kosher products is closer to 25,000, nearly half of all items on grocery shelves. Several food categories are virtually all kosher, including beverage, coffee and tea and cereals. Kosher consumers in the US have 125,000 kosher items to choose from, a far cry from the 16,000 items quoted in a 1987 survey just prior to the first Kosher Food and Jewish Life Expo at the Javits Center in March. With so many kosher products, kashrus agencies warn against “consumer complacency” in which labels are not checked for their kosher status. “Ever so often, you will find a flavored beverage that just is not kosher,” one kosher certifier said. Supermarkets continue to add new items with a kosher symbol, largely line extensions or new certifications on such well-known products as Gatorade. Despite the dramatic increase of the kosher fare in the nation’s supermarkets, those stores in most cases do not offer the variety, including products with many different kosher certifications, of the independent kosher stores, a major factor in the continued popularity of the kosher stores. Kosher certified items can be found in almost every aisle, including the growing number of snacks and frozen items that are kosher certified.

Some Supermarkets Still Confuse Kosher for Passover with Kosher

Posted by Menachem Lubinsky on April 15, 2010 under Kosher, Passover | View Comments

By Menachem Lubinsky

New York…A blogger in Santa Cruz found regular matzoh on a Kosher for Passover shelf but “not a single box of Passover matzoh.” An inspector for the New York State Kosher Law Enforcement Bureau found many Passover shelves with kosher products that are not kosher for Passover. In New Jersey, a Kosher for Passover aisle featured non-Passover croutons. In Queens, there was confusion about cans of mushrooms on the shelves, some with the P designation and others without. Sources blamed the turnover of store personnel as a primary reason, particularly those stores that do not rely on distributors to set up the Passover shelves. “It’s really a case of the blind leading the blind,” said one distributor who described a store where a new manager with little experience in kosher giving instructions to a worker about stocking the shelves. In the New Jersey case, the daughter of a local rabbi complained to the manager who then asked her to go through all the products on the shelf to find any items that were not kosher for Passover. Distributors found it ironic that the stores would invest into a Passover program but then not go to the trouble of setting it up properly.