response 1 of 92:

Jun 24 08:28 UTC 2003

Jim was reading a Dannon yogurt container that someone must have given us.
Light N' Fit.  Same taste, new name.  Less calories than regular low-fat
yogurt.  Apparently regular has 190 calories per serving, and Light has 120.
Non-fat yogurt is made from non-fat milk, corn thickener, and sweetener.
Non-fat milk is 80 calories per serving (1 cup).  So this low-calorie yogurt
has added 50% more calories in the form of corn thickener and fructose (and
aspartame) and is bragging about being low-calorie.  I had no idea 'regular'
yogurt contained 110 calories of sugar.

The other interesting ingredient was 'kosher gelatin'.  People who eat kosher
do not normally mix parts of dead animals with milk, operating on the law
'thou shalt not cook a calf in its mother's milk'.  This law has been extended
to eating chickens within six hours of eating cheese (fishes apparently don't
have mother's milk, chickens do).  So we assumed kosher gelatin was from
plant sources.  The web tells us that it is from the skins of cows that were
killed in a kosher manner (list their throat and bless them) and that had all
the muscle scraped off.  According to a lot of Hebrew words, this makes them
non-food and therefore they can be mixed with milk.  So a calf consists of
its muscles but not its skin.
And chickens are calves but fish are not.  The skin is decomposed chemically
and passes out of the food category and then back into it somehow.

Jim thought only Catholics were this crazy.  

response 3 of 92:

Jun 24 10:53 UTC 2003

Heh.  Between the co$t, hassle, and complexity, my impression is that
most Jews don't even try to follow all of the dietary rules.  Not that
other groups of humans have any better a record on following religious
rules, Robert's Rules, generally accepted accounting practices, etc.

response 5 of 92:

Jun 24 13:15 UTC 2003

Nothing.  It's just early, and beady hasn't had his meds yet.

response 7 of 92:

Jun 24 14:48 UTC 2003

Lol!

Though those rules are pretty funny.

response 9 of 92:

Jun 24 17:16 UTC 2003

Once again Ms. keesan proves to us that a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing.

"IS YOUR "KOSHER" YOGURT KOSHER?, by Arlene Mathes-Scharf - Editor 
Kashrut.com, Copyright   Scharf Associates, 1999

"Yogurt is a highly nutritious food that is tasty, easy to obtain and 
transport. However, this cup of yogurt is not a simple product.
Manufacturers adjust the ingredients to make a creamy product and to 
control the calorie content.

"There has been a recent alert on Kashrut.com regarding the withdrawal 
of certification by the OU on some yogurt products because of the 
reformulation of the products to include gelatin.  Gelatin serves a 
number of useful functions in a yogurt product.  It forms a creamier 
product and keeps the fruit suspended in the yogurt.  It also serves as 
a bulking agent, reducing the calorie content, by replacing the yogurt 
with water.  Non-fat yogurt has 130 calories per 8 oz. without any 
sweeteners.  To get 100-calorie yogurt, less yogurt is used.

"Unfortunately there are a number of kashrus issues in the use of 
gelatin.  Gelatin, is by definition an animal product.  The gelatin
used in current yogurt products is produced from pork or non-kosher 
slaughtered beef.  Since there are rabbis who give kosher certification 
to these gelatins and the products produced from them, manufacturers 
call this gelatin "kosher" gelatin and put a "K" on the products.  The 
major certifying agencies do not consider this gelatin to be kosher.  A 
detailed summary can be found on the Star-K."

response 13 of 92:

Jun 24 21:56 UTC 2003

HEY!  I had a conversation this last week with a jewish Rabbi who had just
come back from Canada to bless some animals for slaughter.  Turns out he wrote
the book on Kosher Gelatin.

(Or at least he says he did.)

he said that the bones of animals, both beef, and pork, could be used to make
kosher gelatin since the bone was not considered to be living.

I didn't have time to get into it deeper with him, and sent him on his way.
But I did think it rather weird.

response 15 of 92:

Jun 24 23:15 UTC 2003

Is Kosher meat slaughtered differently from other meat,
same animal?  What makes a chicken "Kosher"?

response 17 of 92:

Jun 25 00:06 UTC 2003

Racists.

response 19 of 92:

Jun 25 01:56 UTC 2003

According to conversation I've seen go by in the mail, something
becomes "not food" by Jewish law if a dog won't eat it.  If a dog
isn't interested in calf skin, it's not food by the rule and
neither milk nor meat (even if it is made edible later).

Reconciliation of this with dogs' propensity for rawhide chews
is a question I leave for people who actually care.

response 21 of 92:

Jun 25 03:11 UTC 2003

        What we're really talking about is ancient social conventions about
what's safe to eat and what's not, long before any understanding of disease,
that have become ossified in the rock of a religious text.  Some rules are
bound to be outright superstition, others rules of thumb ("RULE OF THUMB? 
Do you know what the rule of thumb was?!?" - madwymmin) about what's safe to
eat which aren't completely inclusive but are easy to remember, and still
others social conventions that mark the difference between "them" and "us"
in a culture.

        None of it's anywhere near as silly as something like the Adkins diet,
though, so I'm not sure I should regard such rules as archaic.

response 23 of 92:

Jun 25 04:39 UTC 2003

resp:20 Blood is not kosher because if I remember right, it is written 
that the blood contains the life.