How Coke pioneered Passover-friendly food biz

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In the 1930s, Rabbi Tobias Geffen of Atlanta began to investigate the hidden ingredients inside mass-produced foods and to evaluate whether those ingredients conflict with kosher laws. He then set a precedent by getting The Coca-Cola Company to make a kosher-for-Passover version of its soft drink, convincing the company to substitute the grain alcohol used in the processing of its drink to alcohol derived from molasses.

Geffen’s achievement was a response to the fact that in the 1920s, “Coke became an incredibly popular beverage in America,” and “Jews adopted a custom of making it avail-able to children during the Passover seder in lieu of wine,” historian Roger Horowitz—whose book, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food,” was published this month by Columbia University Press—told JNS.org.

This step by Coca-Cola stood out at a time when few mainstream food manufacturers were making kosher-for-Passover products. 

“Coke was an enormous consumer product in the 1930s, and jealously guarded its formula,” Horowitz said. Much of the company’s decision, he explained, rested on its confidence in Geffen that he would not reveal the drink’s secret ingredients, and the episode was “an enormous asset in persuading other conventional food firms to secure kosher certification.”

Geffen personally issued a kosher-for-Passover certification on Coke, eventually passing the baton to another rabbi. Meanwhile, the founder of the Orthodox Union’s (OU) kashrut division and kosher certification labeling, Abraham Goldstein, was another figure dedicated to the science of figuring out what’s inside foods and whether those ingredients are acceptable for Passover as well as for kosher-observant consumption year-round. He was particularly interested in ice cream, surveying its manufacturers to determine what they were putting inside their products and ultimately deciding that Breyers ice cream, for instance, was acceptable to eat during Passover. 

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