The Problem of Using Halal, Haram, Kosher, Parve, to Mislead
Posted by Health and nutritional matters on Monday, July 3, 2017
In the United States today, referring to 2017, there are a number of ingredients commonly used in foods that might not be permissible for all food consumers to eat per their belief, religion, diet plan, or medical and health restrictions. Conundrums involving food ingredients with respect to what is and is not permissible exist in other countries as well.
In the effort to discern what foods are permissible and what foods are not, consumers with food restrictions often look to the ingredient label and markings on the food package.
There may be food ingredients in the list of ingredients on a food package not easily understood on the prima facie, and therefore, a consumer might turn to a website to help them figure out whether the food is restricted or not.
Many consumers that constantly undergo the food ingredient dilemma know exactly what is being talked about when it is said, it would help if a website that states a food or food ingredient is halal, haram, kosher, pareve, and so forth, would actually be accurate with their information, know completely what they are talking about, and have strong enough command of the language they are posting their information in, often English, to present their ideas without adding to confusion.
Not all the points about how to clear up the confusion about food ingredients is going to be attempted at in this one brief article, however, there are a few overarching concepts that the details can be filled in on.
First, situations when there is the reckless or overly careless use of terms such as halal and haram used, spoken, and or written loosely and not reflecting what they really mean, can be a perturbing problem. These terms, halal and haram, have meanings as they relate to the Quran. The actual meaning of these words, might not be what a slickster has in mind when using the words to do nothing more than try to sell a product or undermine the sale of a product.
There are many terms pertinent to food.
There are many 'Revealed Books'; well known of these today are Quran and Torah. Well known food label markings are 'halal' and 'kosher'.
There are knowledge and matters pertaining to food that might not be adhered to regularly by a larger share of food consumers and market; for example meats like goat, cow, certain fish, such as when to eat them, and when not to, which ones and what extent, or recommended intake of them.
Words like kosher, have a literal meaning. Sometimes words like kosher are sloppily used by mischievous swindlers, for instance, by someone on a verbal level to quickly market a food product and sell it, when it might not actually be kosher in the sense that a Rabbi conducted an investigation of a food facility and made a determination.
When a berries are picked from a tree, do you await the results of a website to determine whether or not there are any forbidden ingredients in it? There are applicabilities using this base concept to other food ingredient situations.
There are or have been websites that attempt to chart out a list of foods and ingredients and whether they are halal and haram.
There are circumstances when a food is forbidden to eat that has to do with what rituals of a belief system was performed over the food.
Circumstance might arise that are common sense as to whether the food is permissible to be consumed; for instance, a food might, take a package of cookies, have the word 'halal' written clearly on it, but the package was opened, and some of the cookies fell into an animal's lavatory on a farm by accident, and resultantly had visible particles of substances that are not clean on them, the cookies were put back into the package, and the open package was negligently left on the store shelf; - the food cannot be eaten because of the impurities that got on them due to the spilling accident, even though there is a 'halal' marking on the package.
Knowledge point: There is a difference between when something is not forbidden by the law in Islam, Quran, Hadeeth tradition, and on the other side, weakly constructed opinions that are in error.
For example, there are Hadeeth about vinegar including its benefits.
For someone who is not an authority to jump into the food permissibility authority ring, and move to a blasé assessment, and say something like the ingredient is haram without valid substantiation, is strongly cautioned against. Of course when consumers see a comment online that is not valid or not validated, then they might want to consider researching further.
In a day and age where those that follow the real Islam system of diet, insofar what is permissible, halal, haram, forbidden, and so forth, and have cut out so many prospects for food in the USA due to the possibility of forbidden ingredients, they can ill afford to cut out from the list of prospects foods that are permissible due to being mislead by someone's erroneous website content.
Some companies make an all out effort to develop foods that consumers that abide by halal, haram kosher, and so on, can eat, only to have their food on the list of foods these consumers cannot eat, by someone's book or webpage.
Large web platforms like Google, are electronic systems, and often might display a generalized definition or rule about food ingredients on the top of a webpage before you even finish typing a query in the permissibility context, drawing from information from a website that is popular, but, might not have the accuracy that you really need.
Knowledge point: Kosher and parve, often indicated by symbols like a 'k' or 'u', (and there are others,), does not automatically mean the food is 'halal'.
A 'k' or u' in the kosher or parve systems used by a Rabbi might help in determining whether a food has pork in ingredients in them though, whereat, pork is a food that is 'haram' in the Quran to eat.
Some ways to start getting it sorted out:
Know for certainty what the meanings of terms like halal, haram, kosher are.
Know the facts about food ingredients you are researching, such as a simple bread is made of flour and water, and the ingredients are flour and water, most know what four and water is; 2 plus 2, most know the answer is not 3 or 5; most cars that have tires are used to drive on roads, if a tire popped while driving, the vehicle was probably not driving on water like a boat. This can lead to illustrating that compounds like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and a long list of ingredients, have their own innate qualities as to what they are; this a stepping stone.
This posting might be revised and added on to.
In the effort to discern what foods are permissible and what foods are not, consumers with food restrictions often look to the ingredient label and markings on the food package.
There may be food ingredients in the list of ingredients on a food package not easily understood on the prima facie, and therefore, a consumer might turn to a website to help them figure out whether the food is restricted or not.
Many consumers that constantly undergo the food ingredient dilemma know exactly what is being talked about when it is said, it would help if a website that states a food or food ingredient is halal, haram, kosher, pareve, and so forth, would actually be accurate with their information, know completely what they are talking about, and have strong enough command of the language they are posting their information in, often English, to present their ideas without adding to confusion.
Not all the points about how to clear up the confusion about food ingredients is going to be attempted at in this one brief article, however, there are a few overarching concepts that the details can be filled in on.
First, situations when there is the reckless or overly careless use of terms such as halal and haram used, spoken, and or written loosely and not reflecting what they really mean, can be a perturbing problem. These terms, halal and haram, have meanings as they relate to the Quran. The actual meaning of these words, might not be what a slickster has in mind when using the words to do nothing more than try to sell a product or undermine the sale of a product.
There are many terms pertinent to food.
There are many 'Revealed Books'; well known of these today are Quran and Torah. Well known food label markings are 'halal' and 'kosher'.
There are knowledge and matters pertaining to food that might not be adhered to regularly by a larger share of food consumers and market; for example meats like goat, cow, certain fish, such as when to eat them, and when not to, which ones and what extent, or recommended intake of them.
Words like kosher, have a literal meaning. Sometimes words like kosher are sloppily used by mischievous swindlers, for instance, by someone on a verbal level to quickly market a food product and sell it, when it might not actually be kosher in the sense that a Rabbi conducted an investigation of a food facility and made a determination.
When a berries are picked from a tree, do you await the results of a website to determine whether or not there are any forbidden ingredients in it? There are applicabilities using this base concept to other food ingredient situations.
There are or have been websites that attempt to chart out a list of foods and ingredients and whether they are halal and haram.
There are circumstances when a food is forbidden to eat that has to do with what rituals of a belief system was performed over the food.
Circumstance might arise that are common sense as to whether the food is permissible to be consumed; for instance, a food might, take a package of cookies, have the word 'halal' written clearly on it, but the package was opened, and some of the cookies fell into an animal's lavatory on a farm by accident, and resultantly had visible particles of substances that are not clean on them, the cookies were put back into the package, and the open package was negligently left on the store shelf; - the food cannot be eaten because of the impurities that got on them due to the spilling accident, even though there is a 'halal' marking on the package.
Knowledge point: There is a difference between when something is not forbidden by the law in Islam, Quran, Hadeeth tradition, and on the other side, weakly constructed opinions that are in error.
For example, there are Hadeeth about vinegar including its benefits.
For someone who is not an authority to jump into the food permissibility authority ring, and move to a blasé assessment, and say something like the ingredient is haram without valid substantiation, is strongly cautioned against. Of course when consumers see a comment online that is not valid or not validated, then they might want to consider researching further.
In a day and age where those that follow the real Islam system of diet, insofar what is permissible, halal, haram, forbidden, and so forth, and have cut out so many prospects for food in the USA due to the possibility of forbidden ingredients, they can ill afford to cut out from the list of prospects foods that are permissible due to being mislead by someone's erroneous website content.
Some companies make an all out effort to develop foods that consumers that abide by halal, haram kosher, and so on, can eat, only to have their food on the list of foods these consumers cannot eat, by someone's book or webpage.
Large web platforms like Google, are electronic systems, and often might display a generalized definition or rule about food ingredients on the top of a webpage before you even finish typing a query in the permissibility context, drawing from information from a website that is popular, but, might not have the accuracy that you really need.
Knowledge point: Kosher and parve, often indicated by symbols like a 'k' or 'u', (and there are others,), does not automatically mean the food is 'halal'.
A 'k' or u' in the kosher or parve systems used by a Rabbi might help in determining whether a food has pork in ingredients in them though, whereat, pork is a food that is 'haram' in the Quran to eat.
Some ways to start getting it sorted out:
Know for certainty what the meanings of terms like halal, haram, kosher are.
A source to go by when following rules established and clearly presented in Quran, is Sura (transliterated as) Al Maida, the third ayat, [some refer to this as 'Chapter 5, verse 3']. The beginning is translated at an introductory level, no English 'commas' in Arabic source: 'Haram, basically meaning forbidden, are, the condition of dead and blood and meat of the pig...'. Arabic to English translations are currently abundant online; slight variations of translations might exist. The ayat [some translate as verse] continues on with other descriptions of what is haram, forbidden; mentioning, transliterated, al munkhanqatu... waalnateeyhata..., translated, the strangled... died through goring...
As far as a product made from 'just a few simple ingredients', such as flour and water, there are issues that could arise. When a product is cooked in the same pan, same grease, same oven, all at the same time, with a food or ingredient forbidden to eat, such as in the case of haram rules wherein pork is forbidden, this a far fetched scenario, yet it illustrates that even though flour fresh from a clean farm, and pure water in itself isolated might be permissible, when certain conditions exist, whether it meets the requirement of not being haram or not, knowing the state of the affecting factors, like do the cooks lump the pork and simple bread in the same pan, then label the food 'made of 2 simple ingredients' before setting out in food store shelves, can be needed to determine whether or not one that does not eat haram foods, can eat it. On the other hand, when at a bazaar, and an old lady has a bag of flour sitting out on a table, and bottled water, and you are able to witness her cook bread right then and there, continuing to trip on the food being okay to eat, asking dozens of people in the crowd for hours on end, is digressing into unnecessary silliness.
Situations with more complexity might require a cooperative effort to get through, for example, when a consumer called a food producing company about the ingredients of a food he or she saw in a large grocery store, and the company said 'we can't guarantee there is no pork in it', then sees the exact same food sitting in a 'Halal Market', upon inquiry, the manager of the market said they called the company and the same producer said the food had no pork whatsoever.
Situations with more complexity might require a cooperative effort to get through, for example, when a consumer called a food producing company about the ingredients of a food he or she saw in a large grocery store, and the company said 'we can't guarantee there is no pork in it', then sees the exact same food sitting in a 'Halal Market', upon inquiry, the manager of the market said they called the company and the same producer said the food had no pork whatsoever.
There is the Seal of Prophets, who knows what the Torah is and who Prophet Musa/Moses is; this is in reference to food prohibitions that might be listed in what is said to be presented as modern day translations of the Torah into English.
This posting might be revised and added on to.
