by Mark Tarses
Is Rocky Road really from pig snouts? Yes, some of it is, and nearly all brands of Rocky Road sold in the U.S. contains pork byproducts.
There are 3 ingredients in Rocky Road candy: chocolate, walnuts, and marshmallows.
Marshmallows, in turn, have 3 major ingredients: sugar, egg whites, and gelatin. The problem is the gelatin. Unfortunately, all brands of marshmallows made in U.S. are made from pork by-products, mainly pig snouts, skin, or gelatin extracted from lard. Why snouts? Pig snouts are cheap and contain a lot of gelatin. They have little commercial value.
Berkeley Nut Co. Rocky Road is made with kosher marshmallows from Israel. Israeli marshmallows are made with gelatin from fish.
For over thirty years, kosher food buyers have looked to gelatin as the yardstick to tell if a product was certified by a high or low kosher standard. Up until 1993, if a product listed "Kosher gelatin" in its ingredients, it meant that the gelatin was made from pigs. This was true of all "kosher gelatin" sold in the United States, Israel, and Europe. However, the kosher certifiers that adhere to a higher Kosher level, called Glatt Kosher, such as the O/U and Star K, always rejected giving their approval to any product made from pork. These agencies certified some other gelling agents, such as seaweed derivatives, Irish moss, Spanish moss, agar-agar etc.
However, due to the superior qualities of real animal gelatin, a method of producing a noncontroversial kosher gelatin was sought for a long time. In the late 1990s, odorless fish gelatin was invented in Israel and began appearing in kosher marshmallows and gelatin desserts.
Halal marshamllows, which are also made with fish gelatin, are now made in several Islamic countries and are available at Muslim food stores around the world.
Marshmallows are still a big issue for observant Jews and Muslims. Marshmallows and marshmallow cream containing pork are found in a great many products, including: ice cream, frozen desserts, fondant and nougat candies, fudge, cake frosting, pies, cookies, smores, and some breakfast cereals, including Lucky Charms.
If you would like to sign a petition to General Mills to take the pork-based marshmallows out of Lucky Charms, go to: Lucky Charms Petition.
Finally....Are Lucky Charms really "magically delicious"? An independent study (a serious, government-funded study) conducted at the University of Vermont found that "Lucky Charms are not magically delicious." A chemical analysis of Lucky Charms failed to detect any evidence of "leprechaun magic" in the cereal. The University of Vermont concluded that kids like the cereal because of it's high sugar content. (Isn't it nice to know that the government is using your tax money for important stuff like this?) For more information about this study, go to: Lucky Charms are not magically delicious.