Paraphrasing a speaker at an IFT seminar on ethnic foods a number of years ago: Food is an important part of my religion and the way I live my life. I purchase products from companies that provide for my needs.

The Jewish (kosher) consumer expects the same things of the food industry as any other consumer, i.e., safe, tasty, and affordable food. In addition, this food also needs to fulfill the religious requirements to be kosher. In most locations outside a few metropolitan areas, the consumer has few options to eat outside the home or to purchase prepared products. There are large portions of the supermarket that I as a kosher consumer ignore in my shopping, since they do not have any kosher products. Nevertheless, statistics from a Cannondale study that was presented at Kosherfest (an industry trade show) in 2006, showed that the kosher consumer spends about $1000 more per year at the supermarket than the non-kosher consumer.

The main and consistent kosher consumers are Jews who follow the kosher dietary laws. In addition, at my Kashrut.com website I get questions from other consumers who use kosher to fulfill their dietary needs. These include people with dairy allergies, vegetarians, vegans, people who tell me they keep kosher to follow the Bible, people who wish to avoid pork, as well as people who want an additional level of supervision on the products they buy.

Traditional Jews have a holiday every week called the Sabbath, where the homemaker prepares and serve a multi-course meal to the family and often to (many) guests. This is an often overlooked opportunity for food suppliers to provide higher quality kosher products.

A subset but important part of the kosher market is the market for Passover products. Passover is the holiday that nearly all Jews celebrate and for this holiday they need to purchase special kosher products produced specifically to meet the unique requirements of this holiday. Observant Jews who observe the holiday purchase everything that they are going to eat for the week especially for the holiday and use them to prepare multiple holiday meals, again often with many guests. There are also a large number of Passover hotel programs, i.e., where a hotel meets the special dietary requirements for the entire 8 days of the holiday. Many Jewish consumers find this a much easier and more relaxed way to celebrate this holiday. The use of wheat (except as specifically baked Passover matzos), rye, barley, oats and spelt is forbidden. However, the use of corn, soy and rice and similar materials is similarly restricted for Passover use for the majority of American Jews, so Passover products do not contain ingredients derived from these ubiquitous sources. Passover products are a boom for people with allergies to any of these materials. Those people looking for gluten-free products can also often find some very interesting alternative products.

The US government has finally recognized what the kosher food industry and their rabbinical supervisors have considered for years - processing conditions matter. There is often a residue on equipment from what has been previously processed. Companies are now keeping track of ingredients and what is processed on which line to conform to government regulations related to allergy control. This makes being kosher easier and being kosher makes allergy control easier.

There are a number of brand name products on the market where the kosher symbol has a dairy designation, but the product does not contain dairy and there is no dairy allergen detectable with the product. These products lose business that they could have it the product was labeled with the pareve designation or at least a dairy equipment (DE) designation. For example, there is a major brand of flour that is pareve but has a kosher dairy designation. I was told that the company found it easier to put a dairy designation on all of the products coming from that plant, rather than differentiating the pareve flour from the actual dairy products produced at the plant. I would not purchase this item, since all of the baking that I do is pareve, so that I can serve the baked goods with a meat meal. Some confusion may exist because of the difference between secular and religious authorities with respect to how equipment needs to be cleaned to deal with allergy and kosher issues. For example, a major brand of frozen meat substitute is labeled as vegan. There is no dairy allergen notice. The kosher symbol has it labeled as dairy, although it is probably a reflection of dairy equipment, which some kosher certification agencies do not permit on their products. Major brand of cookies that do not contain any dairy and do not have a dairy allergen notice, may have a dairy designation next to the kosher symbol because they are made on dairy equipment. Another major brand of cookies saw their sales drop when they added the dairy designation to their symbol as part of a planned product reformulation and saw their sales increase when they went back to being designated as pareve. (They never made the formulation change.) I asked about these products and was told that these products were made in plants where other products were dairy. The dairy designation limits the market for these items, since people who do not eat dairy will not purchase them. This includes people who keep kosher and want to use the product with a meat meal, vegans, and people with dairy allergies.

Related to processing conditions, different kosher agencies have different levels of stringency regarding processing conditions, There are products on the market which are known to use leniencies, and are not careful about processing conditions and therefore consumers who are careful do not accept their certification as valid.

There are large numbers of raw materials, snacks and breakfast products that are certified as kosher because they are the “easy’ products to make kosher.

Few “center of the plate” items are available outside of the major Orthodox centers. These including meat and poultry, kosher cheese, and fresh or frozen fish. These are the items that are more difficult to produce as kosher. Fish fillets (other than salmon), need to have at least a piece of skin on them to subsequently allow the customer to identify that it is a kosher species. Some agencies allow salmon to be purchased without such a skin tab since it has a unique color that is not found on non-kosher fish. Keeping a piece of skin on the fish for identity purposes would also be useful in preventing some fish fraud.

Yogurt is another issue. The use of gelatin that is called kosher but may be made from pork, has limited the choice of yogurts available. There is a halachic (Jewish Law) basis for this, but it is not accepted by the major Orthodox certifying agencies and by the majority of Orthodox consumers. See http://www.kashrut.com/trade/gelatin/ for information on kosher gelatin. Kosher bread may also be hard to find outside major kosher markets such as the Northeast. Kosher bread must be pareve.

Some of the trends in the kosher market are similar to those in the general market. Younger kosher consumers are not necessarily purchasing the traditional ethnic foods such as borscht, schav (sorrel grass with citric acid (sour salt)) or jarred gefilte fish. Kosher consumers are interested in exotic and ethnic foods and ingredients, and easy to prepare meals. Cookbooks such as those by Susie Fishbein have become best sellers in the Jewish community, hers selling over 340,000 copies. The recipes use exotic ingredients and make ethnic foods such as Thai available to the kosher consumer. In addition, many households have two earners and many Orthodox households have more children than the American norm. Since there are fewer choices to eat out or for the purchase of prepared foods, most foods are prepared from scratch, or assembled from fairly basic ingredients. There are major sections of the supermarket that do not have any kosher foods and, therefore, I, as mentioned earlier, as a kosher consumer ignore. I wish there were products I could buy in many of these sections.

The kosher consumer is loyal to the brands that they can purchase.

One may often be surprised as the willingness of the kosher consumer to try new things and to support companies who provide such foods. Sushi has become ubiquitous in the Jewish community. It is served at most Bar Mitzvahs (a young man’s turning of age) and weddings. It seems that today almost every kosher restaurant in Baltimore and New York serves sushi. There used to be a Moroccan Sushi restaurant in Los Angeles.

Increased awareness of allergens makes additional care and tracking of ingredients a requirement and this is extremely helpful in making it easier to document the kosher status of a product and determine its correct kosher designation. Thus companies might wish to consider (or re-consider) whether serving this dedicated community might be a sound business decision.