Passover 2016 Recap

Kashrut.com had a banner season for Passover 2016.

Kashrut.com has reached its 20th birthday. Kashrut.com is a kosher-food-information website that was established in May 1996. Since then, Kashrut.com has been providing information, alerts, and recipes, and serves as a clearinghouse for all of the Passover information on the web.

Passover 2016 Season: From March 7, 2015 to April 16, 2015, the site had over 36,900 page downloads and was viewed by 124,000 distinct computer addresses. The Passover index page itself had almost 37,000 visitors. The website transferred over 138 gigabytes of information.

We learned the following this Passover:

• Healthy ingredients-
  • Many kosher consumers are trying to eat healthier. Some Companies have started to reach out to the "healthy" Passover market that consumers are seeking with Passover quinoa, coconut flour and almond flour. Except for quinoa, these products were not available outside the major Jewish markets.
  • One of the biggest trends in the food industry today is "free-from". Many products produced for the "healthy, natural" market should be easy to make available for Passover since they are minimally processed, gluten-free, vegan, soy-free and corn-free. These products should be fairly simple to get Passover certiifed, but not available. Consumers who contacted kashrus agencies about many of these products were told that the agency had no information about them..
    We should re-educate consumers and companies that kosher for Passover products require "traceability", are corn-free, soy-free, and gluten-free.
    Perhaps kashrus agencies could provide a designation or list of products produced year-round that are inherently kosher for Passover products such as Maxwell House coffee, Bigelow tea or Lipton tea.

• Specific Products:
  • Coconut Oil: People are looking for healthier oils. Coconut oil is a solid at room temperature and so is a substitute for shortening or margarine in baking without trans fat. Coconut oil has unique properties such as being a solid at room temperature and melting around 76 ° F. It does have a strong coconut smell. There are many products now on the market that are virgin, expeller pressed a raw oils. In 2015, the OU said that virgin, cold-pressed Spectrum brand was usable for Passover. In 2016, the OU certified a run of Spectrum Coconut Oil for Passover. This is great for people who live in areas with large Jewish populations and large kosher stores that can then sell this product for Passover. It was a hardship for people who do not have access to these stores.
  • Coconut Milk: The second most popular question was about coconut milk. I do not know of any coconut milks that were certified for Passover.
  • Coconut sugar: People were looking for information on which brands they could buy.
  • Non-nutritive sweeteners such as stevia and xylitol: People are looking for healthier non-nutritive sweeteners particularly stevia and xylitol. There was one xylitol for Passover. I do not know of any consumer stevia products for Passover.

In most cases, I found that the kashrus agencies do not say that a product is usable for Passover unless it is certified as such. The OU has had no new products listed on the gray pages (products usable for Passover without Passover certification) in many years. However, they have looked at the usability of soy, rice milks and baby formula for Passover, because of great demand and listed this elsewhere on their Passover website. Both the manufacturers and the kashrus agencies are failing to address the healthy-food-for-Passover market, which is surprising, since many of these manufacturers are already careful with their processing or are aiming for the "free-from" allergen market, making them ideal for the gluten-free (non-gebruckts), soy-free and corn-free market of Pesach.

Passover is the most important time for the kosher-food industry and the kashrus agencies. From KosherToday: "As many as 80% of American Jews participate in at least one Seder, according to Jewish population studies, contributing to a dynamic Passover market, which represents nearly 40% of year-round kosher food sales. Retailers in Brooklyn, Monsey and Lakewood said that a growing community was simply buying more, an indication that demographics are playing a major role in the soaring kosher food market."
There is a lot that has been done, but a lot more that can be done to ensure a supply of healthy foods that are available for use on this holiday.

Large documents from the kashrus agencies that people do not read

The other thing that I noticed from the questions that I got is that the Kashrus agencies are producing large on-line documents that many people do not read or use. The kashrus agencies feel that this is the time that they get people's attention, so they produce large documents with many articles, not necessarily about Passover and which contain ads for products that they certify. These documents are very difficult for users to navigate and find information. I found some of these to be unreadable on my desktop, since they seemed to be designed for a tablet and they are so large, that people do not print them.
A positive development: The Chicago Rabbinical Council Askcrc.org website is a useful resource for kashrus and Passover kashrus questions.