Stella D'Oro Stays Pareve, or "Kraft Caved"

There is a tale told in Dreamer Clan circles about the first time a package of kosher Oreos arrived on the scenes. Jordan Mann took a look at the cookies and commented, "Nabisco caved." It is of course far more accurate to say that Nabisco, discovering a growing population that would not eat cookies with lard - the kosher, devout Muslims, vegetarians - chose to alter many of its products to the point where they would be kosher.

Today, we can go one better. Last year, Kraft Foods bought NYC's legendary Stella D'Oro biscuit and cookie company. What made Stella D'Oro unique was that all its products were kosher and non-dairy. Kraft decided that to save money, it would alter the formula of the chocolate filling in its popular Swiss Fudge cookies. This would lead to all products from the factory being treated by Jewish law as dairy.

This did not go down too well with the Orthodox Jewish community. We love these cookies, non-dairy and tasty all at once, suitable for the lactose-intolerant, for those who use on "chalav yisrael" dairy products (and therefore who cannot buy most dairy-infused products); and for little kids who just devour them. There was a grass roots campaign to protest this decision.

Last week, the Orthodox Union's kosher supervision division announced that the OU-D symbol on the cookie packages did not indicate there was milk in the cookies, but that the plan was underway for milk to be added soon. But it hadn't happened. And it wasn't going to, after all!

In other words, Kraft Foods heard the voices of a community that was loyal to a product, did the math, and decided not to tinker with a good thing.

In short, Kraft Foods caved. :)

So rejoice, lovers of the Swiss Fudge cookie! The dessert of choice of generations is going to stay non-dairy. Amazing.

So amazing, in fact, that the NY Times ran an article about this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/nyregion/12STEL.html (registration required, but for free)

So, anyone up for Swiss Fudge cookies?