The cost of a green-free diet

Remember how we learned that rabbinic injunction of the extra seven days of niddah have caused women with a short fertility cycle to become infertile? Well, more good reason to thank rabbinic add-ons to Jewish Law. This one is just heart wrenchingly awful.

The New Jersey Jewish News reports,

Just why Orthodox communities show higher than usual incidences of spina bifida has not been established. Krul said the causes may include a lack of leafy greens in their diet due in part to problems of washing such food according to the rules of kosher preparation, which is concerned about bug infestation.

Failed Messiah notes,

The Torah forbids eating bugs. The normal amount of bug forbidden to eat would be a kezayit, the size of a very large olive and, in practice today, about one ounce. But rabbis long ago cut that amount in half. And they did something else, something that has made keeping kosher all the more difficult – they created a category called baria. A baria is, in effect, a whole bug. A baria can never be negated (battel)[…]

It used to be a thorough washing of the greens followed by a quick inspection done with the naked eye was enough to render greens edible. But Rabbi Blumenkrantz, may God rest his soul, and other rabbis entered into a competition of sorts to see who could be more restrictive. Soon it became necessary to have special training to check for bugs, special equipment was now “necessary,” three bugs found in 100 pounds of lettuce became an “infestation.” And leafy greens became rare in the haredi diet.

I realize that many of you may be tempted to say that people should just pay the extra money for the bug checking, and eat their greens. But realistically, that won’t happen consistently enough, as many haredim are poor. Others will say that we should ignore the advice of these recent rabbis, and return to simply washing the greens before eating. But that won’t happen either, as haredim aren’t ones to back off a new stringency, even if it’s five minutes old.

Instead, they must use supplements (which many won’t bother doing either, because it’s expensive and a pain in the ass), and not rely on the simple foods God gave us, like we did for thousands of years. Some will surely cast doubts as to the idea that we really need to eat leafy vegetables in the first place, a response quite typical whenever science conflicts with haredism. There will probably even be comments to that effect even on this post, despite this sentence and the previous one.

Haredism has produced ignorance, poverty, and languishing. Now it appears, we can add physical deformity to the long list of blessings.

To read about the very big kashrut dangers of lettuce and leaf vegatables (and why an implicit corresponding increased risk of spina bifida is better for your newborn’s neshama and probably the way to go) please go here. Remember, it’s just spina bifida, it’s not pakuach nefesh. And the scientists are probably just saying this because they hate Judaism.

Checking a field alone is insufficient, as we are required to look at the general conditions of the vegetable as it grows in that area, not just a specific field. Washing alone is insufficient, since no cleaning system has proven Halachically reliable for this purpose. Post-packaging inspection alone is not reliable, because the Halacha requires that each vegetable be checked if it has the status of a Miyut ha’Matzuy [...]
“Salads, as nutritious as they may be, must be approached with the same attention to Kashrus that we apply to all other foods. We may be tempted to take the easy way out [editor's note: oh, no, no. no. We wouldn't want to do that!!!!], but Shlomo ha’Melech has already, and poignantly, admonished us (Mishlei 6:6), לך ×?ל נמלה עצל, ור×?×” דרכיה וחכ×? – “Go to the ant, lazy one – see its ways and learn!â€?

Update: There is a school of thought that claims evidence that there is a Jewish genetic predisposition to this disease. Please do not assume that a child has spina bifida because his/her mother did not eat her vegetables. But please eat your vegetables!