We need to have a serious conversation, Trader Joe’s. You know well that my family comes to visit you, on average, about once a week and sometimes more when the weather is nice and we want to take a walk in your direction. You may recall that a number of months ago, you decided to slowly replace your soy chicken-less chicken nuggets with something called chicken-less breaded tenders. At first you had both products at once, but then over time you stopped stocking the nuggets. This has had a negative impact on my family.

The nuggets, you see, were kosher certified and so we as kosher keeping consumers were able to purchase and enjoy them. The new tenders do not have any certification at all, and thus we cannot bring them into our home to enjoy. There is much value in kosher certification — many people who don’t even keep a kosher diet choose kosher certified products over those that are not because they are perceived as being better in many ways.

A strict vegetarian would know that there could not possibly be any meat byproducts in your chicken-less tenders. Someone keeping a strictly halal (translates to “permissible” in Arabic and is what followers of Islam use as a dietary guideline) diet would know that there is nothing haram (forbidden) in the nuggets.

My wife Elizabeth has been keeping a close watch on the nuggets and tenders and has noticed something very interesting. Whenever the nuggets happen to get stocked, they sell out very quickly. The tenders, on the other hand, seems to always be well in stock — every week a full bin of tenders.

I would like to suggest two routes to rectify this situation. The first route involves bringing back the chicken-less nuggets in full force — Chaim Yosef and I both love them. They are extremely delicious and Elizabeth makes sure to buy a box or two when they are available — only they have not been available lately and we have started looking online for recipes to make our own nuggets.

The second route would involve getting kosher certification for your chicken-less tenders. For vegetarian products such as your tenders, the path to certification is pretty straightforward and simple.

Trader Joe’s, we really love you. We want to buy your chicken-less tenders but they’re just not kosher certified — yet. We would also love it if you would bring back the nuggets. We thank you in advance for your consideration.

6 Comments

  2. It seems that’s the way things go for me constantly. I find something that works well, tastes good, operates correctly, then off the market it goes. It makes me wary of liking anything! 🙂

  3. Kosher certification is a joke. Things that contain unclean animal byproducts are actually certified kosher (such as Saccharine) Also things they refuse to certify are completely unscripturally supportable. Furthermore anything not containing animal products that obeys healthcode will be kosher anyways because any law that isn’t about meat is covered by health-code anyways.

    1. There are so many organizations that you cannot say there is any one “they”. Please find me any proof of animal byproducts in saccharine — I just tried to find some via our friend Professor Google. Also, there are many ways that things that do not contain animal products can be not kosher, too many to enter into in the space of this comment field however non-kosher powders that prevent kosher food from sticking to conveyor belts come to mind. Moreover there are issues of bishul akum, pas akum, the strictness on cheese and wine production, etc.

      Thank you, nevertheless, for your comment. On a tangential note, I also wonder how people who put graffiti on bridges get up there.

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