Depending on one’s definition, there are roughly 5 to 10 million Jews living in the United States, constituting about 2.5 percent of the population. A smaller sub-group—perhaps as many as a million—keeps kosher, which means they follow a set of religious dietary restrictions to some degree or another. With many different customs and interpretations of the law, the rules about what’s kosher and what’s not are complicated—too complicated to detail in these pages. However, there are a few things that most agree upon: You can’t eat pork or shellfish, and there’s no mixing milk and meat (sorry, no cheeseburgers). And the whole idea that a rabbi has to bless the food? That’s a myth.
In general, the food is supposed to be supervised. The rabbi watches its preparation and the processes involved to ensure that nothing disallowed happens. When the food is shipped after preparation, it is typically sealed so that the end consumer knows that nothing has been introduced since. That’s why kosher airplane food, you may have noticed, is served in foil or plastic wrap, while typical in-flight meals are served already open.
It also may be why kosher meals are unusually popular in prison.
In the spring of 2013, the Jewish Daily Forward noted that an estimated 24,000 inmates ate kosher foods in American prisons, but only 4,000 considered themselves Jewish before their incarceration. The New York Times published an article in early 2014 suggesting that nearly 5,000 inmates in Florida alone requested kosher meals, with only a fraction having claimed to be Jewish prior to that request. Kosher meals, when in prison, aren’t just for those who subscribe to certain religious beliefs.
Media reports suggest that the reason ostensibly non-Jewish prisoners prefer the alternative menu isn’t only because of taste. Some feel the fact that the meals are pre-prepared and wrapped makes them safer to eat. As one prison chaplain told the Times, inmates are often concerned (rationally or otherwise) “about how the food could be adulterated, how the prison uses out-of-date products, how they use things that don’t meet U.S.D.A. standards, how sex offenders may be handling their food.” Pre-packaged, sealed meals make all of that less likely.
It also makes the meals tradable commodities. Citing the practice at one Californian prison, the Forward notes that “prisoners who keep kosher receive three daily meals in a sack that they bring back to their cells. [. . .] Inmates frequently trade kosher food for prison-issued paper money, which can be used to buy items in the facility’s canteen.” Kosher food, in an ironic twist, fuels the black market for contraband items.
Unfortunately for taxpayers, the kosher food isn’t cheap, costing two to three times that of non-kosher meals. While some states try to identify opportunists, it’s hard to do so. After all, and for good reason, American laws and culture generally allow people to be part of whatever religion they want, without any second-guessing by the government.
Ever notice a circled “U” on your food packages? That’s one of many symbols that certify the food is kosher. In that case, the certifying organization is the Orthodox Union, or “OU” for short—the circle around the “U” is actually an “O.” If you see a “D” next to the circled “U,” that means from a kosher certification standpoint, the food item is dairy, which, as noted previously, kosher-keeping Jews do not combine with meat.