As growing number of Americans across the country are becoming more health conscious and their shopping carts are showing it – packed with organic produce; soy franks and burgers; spelt bread and pretzels; and a variety of vitamins and herb products. Today’s national supermarket chains are responding to this wholesome trend, featuring an expanding vitamin and herb section with multiple shelves of every combination, brand and potency. Thanks to the foresight of major vitamin companies, more and more kosher customers are frequenting these supplement sections, happily perusing an assortment of Kosher Vitamins Brands. Words like glucosamine, antioxidant and ginkgo biloba have made it into the kosher community’s vocabulary, kitchen cabinets and daily nutritional products.
Since vitamins are diet enhancers, meant to supplement the nutritional deficiencies in processed food; it is considered food and require kosher certification. Many of the vitamins on the market come in gelatin capsules, commonly derived from non-kosher sources and are off limits to the kosher consumer. Besides the issue of gelatin in the gel cap, vitamins may also contain many non-kosher ingredients.
As more kosher consumers become informed of the need for kosher certification on vitamins, companies are responding to the need for kosher vitamins.
THE PIONEERS IN KOSHER VITAMINS
The phonomonem of kosher vitamins on store shelves in the USA came about through the insight of a family-run “Mom and Pop” pharmacy in mid-town Manhattan. Abraham Freeda, a druggist who founded Freeda Vitamins in 1928, led the way for the kosher vitamin industry as one of its first producers and sellers, “My parents, being very innovative, decided to formulate their own nutrients,” says Phillip Zimmerman, Ph.D., current chief chemist at Freeda Vitamins. “They bought a tablet machine and started manufacturing vitamins.” The Freeda vitamins are certified kosher by the OU.
Over seven decades later, Freeda Vitamins are sold throughout the United States and also are distributed worldwide. Freeda prides itself on being the first kosher vitamin company and the only vitamin company in the world that provides an extra tablet in every bottle, in order to cover the possibility of a machine miscount.
By the 1970’s, America was in the midst of an explosion of research into the impact of nutrition on personal health. “You are what you eat” became the common catch phrase and health food stores sprouted up in towns and cities across the country.
In 1974, Jack Friedman, Ph.D., founder of Maxi-Health Research Inc, opened up a small health food store in Brooklyn with the goal of developing kosher vitamin products for the kosher community. Dr. Friedman worked together with physicians to create kosher vitamin and herb formulas that would address particular ailments. Over three decades later, the company currently provides over two hundred nutritional supplements. “Maxi-Health keeps updated on the latest in nutritional research and continues to get the highest quality products out there for the Jewish community,” says Dr. Friedman. “One can get Co Enzyme Q from China for a tenth the price of the Japanese product, which is of much higher quality, but we aren’t interested in poor quality.”
Ninety-five percent of the Maxi-Health line is under OU Kosher certification.
Dr. Friedman, who holds a doctorate in nutrition, receives many phone calls daily from consumers around the world seeking advice on how to treat various health conditions. “More than half of the problems, start with poor nutrition and lack of knowledge,” says Dr. Friedman. “People don’t realize that one cup of soda has seven teaspoons of sugar and how unhealthy hydrogenated fat is. They don’t even realize that they are eating poorly. Today’s foods are depleted of nutrients, hence, the need for supplements.”
He cautions that many are unaware that many vitamins on the market are not kosher. “There are not only non-kosher nutrients, but also non-kosher bindings and fillers,” he says. “We were the first to come out with the maxi-caps, a kosher capsule.” He reports that both doctors and chiropractors recommend Maxi-Health products to their patients.
Another kosher vitamin pioneer concerned about the dearth of available kosher nutritional supplements on the market, Hyman Landau, president of Lantev Distributing Corporation, which distributes Landau Natural Foods and Vitamins, opened up a health food store in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn in 1981.“Customers were requesting certain items that were not available in kosher form,” says Landau. He decided to develop items on his own private label. Lantev distributes to New York City’s five boroughs, the country’s smaller kosher communities, as well as internationally “The vitamins were very well received, especially the chew-ables for children.”
