Most supermarkets in larger cities carry at least 20,000 kosher certified items, a KosherToday survey indicates. In many stores, the number of kosher products is closer to 25,000, nearly half of all items on grocery shelves. Several food categories are virtually all kosher, including beverage, coffee and tea and cereals.
Kosher consumers in the US have 125,000 kosher items to choose from, a far cry from the 16,000 items quoted in a 1987 survey just prior to the first Kosher Food and Jewish Life Expo at the Javits Center in March. With so many kosher products, kashrus agencies warn against “consumer complacency” in which labels are not checked for their kosher status.
“Ever so often, you will find a flavored beverage that just is not kosher,” one kosher certifier said. Supermarkets continue to add new items with a kosher symbol, largely line extensions or new certifications on such well-known products as Gatorade.
Despite the dramatic increase of the kosher fare in the nation’s supermarkets, those stores in most cases do not offer the variety, including products with many different kosher certifications, of the independent kosher stores, a major factor in the continued popularity of the kosher stores. Kosher certified items can be found in almost every aisle, including the growing number of snacks and frozen items that are kosher certified.
{KosherToday/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
