If It Has an OU D Don't Buy It

For years I kept kosher, although now I don't, so when I found out my son had a milk allergy I figured we could just go parve. Then I found out he also had an egg allergy so we had to be careful with that as well. Nonetheless a helpful tool to shopping for non-dairy products is to look for kosher symbols. There are a variety of them out there. The most famous of them being the OU symbol.

Near whatever kosher symbol there can be a few other abbreviations which can save you a lot of time at the store.

Quick checks:

• If the symbol is accompanied by a D that means the item is Dairy.
• If it is accompanied by a DE it means it was made on Dairy equipment.
• If it says parve that means there is no dairy what so ever inside the product nor was it made on equipment that had processed dairy foods. Therefore, you are safe from milk.
• If the symbol stands alone it usually means that it is either parve or meat. However, it is always wise to check.

I have saved a lot of time in the past few months from reading ingredient lists by just looking for kosher symbols. Many faux dairy products such as soy yogurts and rice cheeses are actually OU D and therefore, I don't even bother reading the ingredients.

It is also important to note that just because one product of food is OU D that does not mean another cannot be parve. For example the other day when I was at the store I was looking for graham crackers for my son. The Kroger brand graham crackers come in three flavors: original, honey and cinnamon. Both the original and honey flavors are OU D while the cinnamon flavor is OU parve. In addition it contains no eggs, thus I was able to get graham crackers for my son.

One peculiar product that stumped both me and my husband are the rice dream "milks". My husband went to the store and bought the one from the refrigeration section home. As I was about to pour it into my pancake recipe I noticed it said OU D. I was quite confused with why a non-dairy drink claiming to be completely dairy free and for vegans would be OU D. I called up the company (for which I'm still waiting for a reply) and also looked on the website. What I found out was their non-refrigerated drinks are all parve while their refrigerated drinks are OU D. I therefore decided not to use the carton my husband bought and went to the store to collect the correct drink. When I got home I compared the ingredients list and the interesting thing is that are exactly the same. Nonetheless, the one from the refrigeration section is considered dairy by the company and the other is not. In other companies I might have thought that they had made a mistake as I did at first, however, after looking at their website they understand Kosher food and do not appear to have made a mistake and must have a reason for labeling the product OU D. Therefore, I will only be buying the parve non-refrigerated one for my family.

If you are interested in seeing a list of kosher symbols to aid you in your shopping click on the following link: http://www.mazornet.com/jewishcl/Kosher/kosherorgs.htm

* It was brought to my attention that some children had an anaphylactic reaction to products marked parve. If that happens I would recommend calling the company that manufactures the product because no parve product should have even trace amounts of dairy. If they do they would be considered Dairy and not parve. People who keep Kosher are very strict about this and they themselves would want the company to correct the mistake. Here is an article that goes into more explanation regarding this topic. http://www.ou.org/kosher/dairy.htm