Tani Levitt
In 1994, Skittles launched its famous “Taste the Rainbow” ad campaign. The wildly successful campaign, which lasted for over a decade, told children and adults alike that Skittles were a quintessential American treat, and all should enjoy.
But for some Jewish folks, tasting the rainbow was simply not an option.
“Skittles were — in my eyes — like a Big Mac, a quintessential ‘non-kosher’ item,” Jeremy Rosenthal of Kemp Mill, who is of the perfect age to have seen the Taste the Rainbow campaign in childhood, recently shared in a LinkedIn post about Skittles. “Highly visible across the U.S., both in advertising and physical presence — I internalized that they were simply ‘not for me.’”
Observing kosher in and out of the house requires a fair amount of sacrifice. Not only in convenience, but in one’s ability to participate in broader American culture. In an interview, Rosenthal explained that “there’s something about the experience of being a kosher consumer in a mass market world that hinges on not being able to partake of some things.”
I once won a competition at baseball camp, beating out dozens of other teens for a precious bottle of Gatorade. With Gatorade still without a hechsher — a kosher certification — at the time, I had no choice but to say, “no thank you,” immediately putting myself apart from the other campers, who could not understand why I would pass up the sports drink in the summer heat.
Even without an audience of campers, the practice of scanning the packaged candies at a CVS for an OU or Star K kosher symbol is isolating. For many years, it was a reminder that you are not meant to taste the rainbow.
No longer.
Rosenthal is now a director of global strategy at Mars, and, last year, he spearheaded a campaign to get Skittles a hechsher from the Orthodox Union.
“To have such an iconic product now available to me and others who keep kosher … is a small but meaningful win that I want to celebrate,” he wrote at the time.
Rabbi Eli Eleff, in a post for the OU, wrote that “The reaction [to Skittles’ kosher certification] has been instant and electric. For years, kosher consumers had been asking when the beloved candy would become available to them. Now, with the news, the kosher community has let out a collective cheer — and the excitement has spread worldwide.”
Getting the hechsher for most Skittles on the market was not part of Rosenthal’s usual job at Mars, but his passion for the project and insight into the kosher community convinced his team that he should be involved in the process. He partnered with an intern in one of the factories and the person in charge of “lifestyle certifications” at Mars to make the case for why it would be a good financial decision to pursue a hechsher for Skittles, and added that among the “fruity” products, there are basically no American treats that are certified kosher, so Skittles would enjoy a market advantage. Then, they worked with the OU to certify the candy and its production.
Indeed, a representative from the OU told Rosenthal that “Skittles were the most requested product that the general public [asked] to [be] made kosher.”
Skittles join an auspicious list of classic American products to receive a hechsher after years without one. As long ago as 1927, Jews rejoiced as many Heinz products were certified kosher. More recently, Oreos, Jelly Belly and Gatorade received massive fanfare for their transition to kashrut.
Shockingly, the man who helped get Gatorade a hechsher is, like Rosenthal, a Berman Hebrew Academy alumnus from Kemp Mill. As I was saying “no thank you” to a Gatorade at baseball camp, Ronald Siesser was working in HR at PepsiCo, and the company was moving away from beetle-derived dyes to color its products. The replacement dyes were able to be kosher certified, and the rest is history.
“They did a market study after it went live,” Siesser said, “and they were able to measure the success in terms of sales. Hundreds of new stores started to take Gatorade orders because all the kosher markets around the country started ordering it.”
The numbers showed that the kosher food market loves a chance to have classically American foods, be it Skittles or Gatorade. The danger for kosher-observant Jews is that even products that are kosher now are under no guarantees to remain so.
Siesser and his colleague, Chaim Goldberg, recently wrote that Red Dye No. 40, a key ingredient for Gatorade to remain kosher, is potentially linked to “migraines, hyperactivity, irritability and concentration,” and some wonder if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration might require food makers to remove it from products, leaving Gatorade to return to its original, not kosher, dye.
Late last year, kosher beer drinkers were served this exact type of bad news, with the OU scaling back the longtime assumption that beer is kosher until proven otherwise.
At the end of the day, abstention is at the heart of kosher observance, and this give-and-take will always be part of the process. Even Rosenthal said that he’s a fan of getting hechshers for American food products, “but I don’t think I would wave my magic wand to make every single product kosher.”
For now, the news that Skittles is kosher is a source of excitement in the kosher world. Siesser saw them on the table at a party. Rosenthal’s LinkedIn post was flooded with appreciation, and he said he was “mobbed at shul” by people who wanted to talk about Skittles.
“It’s so cool that two influential change agents in the kosher sphere [came from] such a small town” in Kemp Mill, Siesser said. “It’s not our regular jobs — we’re not employed by the OU — we just saw an opportunity and managed to influence the key decision makers to make it happen.”
“It’s an amazing accomplishment, and now all [kosher eaters] reap the benefits,” he added.
Tani Levitt is a freelance writer.
