Back in the monastery in the Himalayas, they’re eating their daily bowl of rice. You get to eat three full meals of proteins, carbs and essential nutrients—plus snacks. But you’re going to eat it in a mindful, purposeful way. Not just because you’re hungry, but because you need energy to do good things. Like the things we talk about in this little presentation, and more.

When you eat that way, you elevate your food. After all, that cucumber would have never had a chance to put coins in a pushka. Now that you’ve eaten it, the cuke has a part in every mitzvah you do.

The catch is, not all food can be elevated. Some foods are just hopelessly bolted down. The foods that you can carry upward with you on your spiritual journey are called kosher foods. Here are some of the factors involved in kosher food:

  1. Meat and milk cooked together or eaten in the same meal are not kosher.
  2. Meat and chicken must be slaughtered, inspected and salted according to kosher rules.
  3. Pork, shellfish and certain other critters can never be kosher. Cod, flounder, haddock, halibut, herring, mackerel, pickerel, pike, salmon, trout and whitefish are all kosher.
  4. All processed foods need kosher supervision. Most brand-name products are certified kosher. At some point, ask a rabbi to help you make your kitchen kosher. He’ll fill you in on the advanced stuff.
  5. More info and tips here
    6. .

Today…

  • Over six million people are keeping kosher.
  • 30% of the foods in your supermarket carry kosher certification.
  • The amount of kosher foods available has increased by almost 2,000% in ten years.
  • Kosher cuisine is the fastest growing sector of the food market today.

If you want healthy, clean-tasting chicken, buy kosher. Kosher chickens are salted to remove blood and soaked in ice-cold water. Non-kosher chickens are soaked in warm water to help remove feathers—a great way to breed bacteria.
—Dr. Myles Bader, gourmet maven.