Ever since Hebrew National became the best tasting hot dog and subsequently became embroiled (pun intended) in a huge controversy over its kosher status, people have been wondering, is kosher meat really better?

The answer is really depends on the question. Better for your health? Almost certainly not. Better for your wallet? Absolutely no. Better for your soul? Only if you’re Jewish. Does it taste better? Probably not, because kosher meat has to be salted before eaten, unless you are going to roast it or eat it raw.

So why does it have the reputation of being better? Most likely because it is not as mass produced as non kosher meat. Non kosher meat as a market of hundreds of millions of people. Kosher meat, at least in the US, has a market of maybe a three million at most. This means that packaging practices and distribution can have higher standards than the standard meat market.

Now that Agriprocessors for all intents and purposes has been shut down due to the incident involving illegal Guatemalan workers at the plant, kosher meat in America no longer has a large centralized station for its operations.

Another reason that Kosher meat probably doesn’t taste better than non kosher meat is the issue of blood. All blood has to be removed from kosher meat, since it is forbidden in Judaism to consume blood.

Well, then again, that’s no entirely true. According to the Talmud, it is only forbidden to drink certain kinds of blood. It is not in the scope of this article to go into the exact details of this issue, but suffice it to say that nearly every kind of blood is forbidden except for blood that is left over after salting. Now, since gravy is one of the most important components of tasty meat, and most gravy is made out of blood, kosher meat does not have much gravy. This means that either you make your own gravy made out of non-blood, or you don’t have gravy.

Another reason that kosher meat is probably not really better than non kosher meat is the fillet mignon issue. One of the first commandments the Jewish people got way back in the book of Genesis (one of only three in the entire book) is that they cannot eat the sciatic nerve. This is because of what happened to Jacob as he wrestled the angel.

Jacob was returning to the land of Canaan on his way back from a 22 year stint at Laban’s house when he was left behind for some reason and started fighting with an angel. Jacob demanded a blessing and the angel was caught and touched Jacob in the ham area and injured him permanently. He limped from then on, seemingly suffering from a bad case of sciatica. That’s alright, because he got a blessing out of it, and that’s why the Jews are called Israel. But for that reason that Jews don’t eat the sciatic nerve, which makes it hard for jews to be able to eat filet mignon because the nerve is wrapped around that cut of meat, which his a shame, because I hear it’s delicious.

You can get kosher filet mignon in Israel and specially ordered in the US, but otherwise it’s unavailable. Yet another reason why kosher meat is no probably not any better than non kosher meat. Then what’s so special about it? Just that God commanded the Jews something, so they do it.