Bnei Brak, October 27 - Manufacturers of drink pouches for the orthodox Jewish market have transformed into a selling point a feature of the beverages that any other market would reject as unhealthy: dietary law place severe restrictions on the growing, harvesting, handling, processing, and bottling of grapes and grape products, such that avoiding grape products entirely has proven not only the easier option, but the more appealing one to orthodox consumers, an industry trade group representative disclosed today.

“We didn’t even need reverse psychology to gaslight the clientele into it,” acknowledged Tzahi Schuster of the Mashkim Association. “In a standard market situation, the textbook move for a product with only artificial flavors and colors involves emphasizing taste, fun, good vibes, cute mascots. The last thing you want under discussion is how artificial your ingredients are. But we never found ourselves in a position where we felt forced to spin the fake as a plus - the consumers do that for us.”

Schuster recalled the relief among kosher drink manufacturers when they realized that the very feature that in any other market would be a drawback makes their product’s exclusively-heavily-processed product more appealing to buyers.

“When cubic zirconia makers wanted to advertise their ‘diamonds,’ one of the tactics had sales people pretend that everyone was buying cubic zirconia, not mined diamonds, anymore,” he explained. “They had to act like it was the obvious choice. It was manifestly untrue, but the gaslighting had some effect, not least because of the very real violence associated with the diamond trade. Some mind games were necessary to create the permission structure for cubic zirconia engagement rings. We faced none of that, and that was a huge worry just lifted from our shoulders.”

Under Jewish law, wine, even just in the form of unprocessed grapes, remains subject to the strictest protocols, a result of the beverage’s use in idolatrous libations. Only grape products harvested, handled, and processed exclusively by Torah-observant Jews may carry kosher certification, and the vast majority of such output goes into the kosher wine market. Kosher manufacturers must avoid the grape-based additives that manufacturers of non-kosher products use in their foodstuffs. Kosher consumers, as well, acknowledge the reassurance that seeing a “No natural grape content!” in grape-flavor drinks provides.

“You just can’t be too careful,” remarked a shopper at Osher Ad in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood. “We have to take extreme care with what we put into the bodies the Creator gave us.”

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