Newsflash: Chief Rabbi Slams "bug-free" Vegetables!

This bug-free product photo is for
reference only and might not contain deadly toxins

Newsflash November 1rst, 2012 Jerusalem, Israel

Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi, R' Amar announced today that the public should avoid "bug free" lettuce, scallions, and vegetables that are now very popular around Israel.

Due to [allegedly] toxic levels of pesticides found in routine checks of the "bug free' vegetables, R' Amar says its forbidden to eat them, and its far better to buy traditionally grown leafy vegetables, and simply wash them off, as done in the days gone past.

"The vegetable growers must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are correct [and that the products are healthy to eat with pesticides].  There is no justification [to buy "bug-free vegetables] for people who are careful not to eat worms and bugs, who pay good money, and for some very poor consumers who don't even have enough money for food for their children to avoid serious halachik infractions [by not eating bug-free vegetables], and yet endanger themselves which is far more serious."

This psak halacha (ruling) is now being reported throughout the internet in Israel in Hebrew, though I have yet to find the actual ruling (which is reportedly many pages long).  The latest kashrut bulletin from the  Chief Rabbi website in Israel is "unavailable", and I will post a link to it as soon as I locate it.

The Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, R' Yona Metzger admits this is a precedent setting ruling, and reminds us of the rule "חמירא סכנתא מאיסורא" -- the danger of eating toxic pesticides is greater than the kashrut issue,  and one cannot declare a poisonous toxin as "kosher."

Found in Hebrew: here, here, here, here, etc.


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Photo of the Day: Certified Kosher

(And extra crunchy as well)


hat-tip: JoeSettler

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Can "artificial meat" be Kosher?

Found the following article in The Guardian:

Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today.

But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

Instead, says Dr Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, two "wild cards" could transform global meat and milk production. "One is artificial meat, which is made in a giant vat, and the other is nanotechnology, which is expected to become more important as a vehicle for delivering medication to livestock."

Is artificial meat simply meat that is grown, based on existing meat? Would the original piece of meat need to be have come from a Kosher animal that was slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law, and then all meat "grown" from it, would be considered Kosher?

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Freakonomics: Is Mehadrin Materna better for your baby?

I do our "major" weekly grocery shopping. As with most guys, I get a list of what to buy, and then thanks to the wonders of cellphone technology, I end up calling my wife about 5 times during the shopping adventure to verify what she meant.

Last week was no exception.

Baby formula is on the list...since my wife is nursing, this is a relatively new item, which required a question.

me: Hi, which baby formula should I buy?

her: Materna, "Shlav (phase) 1". And make sure it's not mehadrin (ultra-supervised kosher)

me: Not mehadrin!?

her: I heard that the mehadrin has less vitamins in it than the regular kashrut one.

So, I get to the baby stuff aisle and I'm wondering about why the mehadrin powdered formula has less vitamins. I find the 2 types and start comparing. Interesting. The mehadrin version has more vitamin percentages than the regular one, but not exclusively. The regular kosher version trumps the mehadrin version for some of the nutrients...albeit less than the mehadrin version.

I grab my cellphone camera and take pictures of the back label of each container. Seems to me that the mehadrin version is "healthier" -- and since it only costs a shekel more (about 25 cents), I figure why not.

Only once I got home did I do some more serious checking and copied all the values into an excel table to compare. I didn't even need to copy the values from my cellphone pics -- Materna has the data on their website.

The mehadrin version won hands down.

What's different between the mehadrin version and the non-mehadrin versions of Materna? A quick call to the Materna hotline provided the answer: the only difference between them is that mehadrin uses "Chalav Yisrael powdered milk" from Denmark, while the regular kashrut version uses Chief Rabbinate approved Chalav Stam powdered milk from Finland.

The Materna representative assured me there's no nutritional benefit of one over the other, and that the differences are all within an approved range for vitamins and minerals.

So -- just when I thought my post was ready to be posted, I did a quick image search to put a graphic of mehadrin Materna in this posting...when I came across the EXPORT versions of Materna. Guess what? They also have different nutritional values!

Export Mehadrin vs. Export Regular Kashrut.

I've had enough. For an additional 1 NIS, I'll buy the mehadrin...though I'm not convinced its any better for the baby.



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