What is Jell-O????

As an aspiring and halfway-successful vegetarian, I eat a lot of jello. I thought JELL-O was made from plant slime and, therefore, I could eat it without regret. As it turns out, because Jews can eat it with milk products and still stay kosher, I can continue to eat it, but wonder if I should.

Sometimes
the most innocuous of foodstuffs contain constituents whose origins are less than appetizing. Such is the case with JELL-O, a dessert that has graced millions of dinner tables since its 1897 debut. Underneath JELL-O's jiggly wholesomeness lurks a secret many consumers are disconcerted to learn: JELL-O is made from gelatin, which is an animal product rendered from the hides and bones of animals. The production of gelatin starts with the boiling of bones, skins, and hides of cows and pigs, a process that releases the protein-rich collagen from animal tissues. The collagen is boiled and filtered numerous times, dried, and ground to a powder. Because the collagen is processed extensively, the final product is not categorized as a meat or animal product (huh?!?!) by the federal government. Very strict vegetarians avoid gelatin entirely, but more permissive vegetarians have no problem including JELL-O in their diets. Even Jewish dietary law classifies gelatin as neither milk nor meat -- so animal-derived gelatin (even the piggy part) can be certified as kosher (huh?!?!) and consumed with dairy products. That ain't right!!!

Popular belief has it that gelatin comes from horses' and cows' hooves. Kraft, the maker of the JELL-O brand, asserts that hooves do not contain the necessary collagen and therefore are not used in the production of their JELL-O brand gelatin product. (That's reassuring, isn't it!)

Would you not think that if the ancestry of JELL-O originally had breath, moo-ed and oink-ed and kicked around on the Earth that it would be animal???

Go figger!