Community Magazine December 2019

38 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE DAVE GORDON T aking place at Meadowlands Exposition Centre in New Jersey November 12-13, products went far beyond typical supermarket kosher staples such as gefilte fish, matzo, bagels, and cured meats (though there were plenty of those, too). It may be surprising to some, but kosher food products do not necessarily hail from countries with large Jewish populations. In the hopes of grabbing a slice of the kosher consumer’s market share, exhibitors came from the far reaches of the globe, including United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, South Korea, Australia, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, and the Netherlands. The convention attracted about 6,000 attendees, some eight hundred more than last year. There were 360 exhibitors, and roughly 300 new products on the floor had been launched within the last 12 months, said organizers. Growing Trend of Consumer Interest in Kosher Products Some media outlets, such as The New York Times , have reported a growing trend in the general population’s affinity for a kosher diet. A recent Quartz article elaborated that it is “fairly astounding that more than 40% of the country’s (U.S.) new packaged food and beverage products in 2014 are labeled as being kosher. While it was on only 27% of packaged foods in 2009.” Explanations for this include the public’s desire for assurance that a product does not include certain allergens (or traces of allergens), such as shellfish, or animal products. Take the example of Oreo cookies, that once contained lard, prior to their switch to exclusively kosher ingredients. In an online essay by Star-K, a kosher certification agency in Maryland, it was noted that there are “35 million non-Jewish consumers of kosher products” who buy because of health and food safety, “as a trustworthy means of ensuring that these criteria are being addressed.” Food production companies, as a result, are increasing their lines of certified products, due to “more general cultural anxiety about industrialization of the food supply.” Menachem Lubinsky, CEO of Lubicom, the organizer of the event, said that kosher foods today appeal to a “more health- conscious consumer. Now it’s become almost fashionable to have ‘vegan’ or ‘gluten free’- so why not kosher? They don’t want any customer to be left out.” “It’s like a new generation of kosher. It’s different from those who have been there for many years, the basic kosher staples. It’s part of the process of kosher going upscale,” he said. “It’s not your chopped liver and stuffed cabbage anymore.” By 2025, the kosher industry will reach some $25 billion in sales each year, according to The Jerusalem Post , and Lubinsky notes, “I think they’re coming from the basis that you can’t produce an ingredient anywhere in the world and hope to sell it to the United States without being kosher – the idea there’s a significant market and they want a piece of it.” Not everything exhibited at Kosherfest was a food product. One company sold kosher cast iron cookware. Isaac Salem, president of New York-based IKO Imports, notes that his cookware differentiates itself due to the fact that its non-stick “seasoning” is created with a proprietary plant-derived oil base, rather than the typical animal fat, “which obviously can come from non-kosher sources.” He says that their cookware holds up against competitors, and appeals to vegans as well. A recent discovery in the kosher world has been the proliferation of tiny bug infestations in dozens of supermarket vegetables. This challenge is met by washing the vegetables thoroughly so as not to ingest those non-kosher critters. Boston-based Fresh Box Farms came to Kosherfest with a solution. They grow and sell hydroponically grown leafy greens, in a triple-sealed environment, using no pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. “It’s free of any pests. And we don’t wash our product, and the consumer doesn’t need to either,” said Jacqueline Hynes, senior marketing officer. Kosherfest 2019 It could have been any gourmet food exhibition, featuring cauliflower pizza crusts, high-end cognac, vegan cheeses, global wines, date seed coffee, and a pickle juice sports beverage, among three hundred other new products. But this was no ordinary convention. It was the 31 st annual Kosherfest, a two-day event that touts itself as “The world’s largest and most attended kosher-certified products trade show.” Goes Gourmet