by Marion Nestle
Mar
22
2013
Reading for the holiday weekend: Kosher!
Timothy D. Lytton. Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food. Harvard University Press, 2013.
I blurbed this one, and for good reason:
Kosher is one terrific book. It’s a wonderfully entertaining account of the squabbles, finger-pointing, and cutthroat competition that turned kosher certification from scandalous corruption to a respectable—and highly profitable—business. Today, if a food is labeled kosher, it is kosher, which is more than can be said of most claims on food labels. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate the fun in Timothy Lytton’s presentation of an unusually successful case study in business ethics.
Here’s Lytton’s flyer on how to get it. And his recent column in Food Safety News.