Here's why Coca-Cola bottles have yellow caps right now
Talia Lakritz
·2 min read
On Passover, observant Jews refrain from eating leavened foods or foods with leavening ingredients.
Yellow caps on Coke bottles indicate the soda is kosher, or fit, for drinking on Passover.
It's made with Coke's original recipe of sucrose instead of corn syrup.
If you've perused the beverage aisle of your local supermarket lately, you may have noticed that some soda bottles are sporting yellow caps instead of their usual colors. That's because the Jewish holiday of Passover is underway, and if you're a devoted foodie, you might want to grab a bottle before it disappears until next spring.
Year-round, Jewish organizations like the Orthodox Union work with companies to ensure that the food they produce meets dietary standards as detailed in the Torah and codes of Jewish law. If everything checks out, their products are certified kosher — meaning fit or proper in Hebrew — with symbols on the packaging.
On Passover, Jewish dietary restrictions are different and require a higher level of certification
This year, Passover begins on the evening of April 22 and lasts through April 30.
Jews observing the holiday of Passover refrain from eating anything categorized as "chametz" — leavened foods or foods with leavening ingredients made from barley, rye, oats, wheat, or spelt — for the duration of the holiday. Eastern European Jews of Ashkenazi descent (which make up about 75% of the Jewish population) also avoid another category known as kitniyot, which includes legumes and other grains like corn.
A yellow cap on a bottle of Coca-Cola, indicating that it's kosher for Passover.Talia Lakritz/Business Insider
Coca-Cola is certified kosher year-round, but its high-fructose corn syrup renders it unfit for consumption on Passover.
Coke actually used to be made with sucrose (made from cane or beet sugar) instead of high-fructose corn syrup, but when the switch was made, Coca-Cola sodas became off-limits on Passover.
In 1935, Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, who served as the rabbi of Atlanta's Congregation Shearith Israel for 60 years, worked with the company to reinstate a limited run of the original recipe around Passover time so that Jews observing the holiday could still enjoy it, The New York Times reported.
Today, bottles containing the Passover-friendly soda are marked with yellow caps
The caps are also stamped with "O-U-P," the Passover kosher certification symbol of the Orthodox Union.
It's not just observant Jews who are grateful for Coke without corn syrup. Purists, foodies, and hipsters who can tell the difference between the two concoctions wait all year to buy up batches of Coca-Cola with sucrose, claiming it tastes better with the original sweetener.
The wife of a California doctor accused of deliberately driving a car off a cliff with his family inside has begged prosecutors to drop the charges against him, according to US media reports. Dharmesh Patel, 42, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder. Patel, a radiologist, was driving his white 2021 Tesla Model Y along the Pacific Coast Highway south of San Francisco, when it plunged several hundred feet off the cliff at Devil's Slide.
New details are emerging about the victims of Monday night’s deadly collision on Highway 401 after a wrong-way police pursuit. As Catherine McDonald reports, Global News has also obtained new video of the police pursuit through the streets of Durham Region.
U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez was reprimanded for judicial misconduct after he ordered the daughter of a criminal defendant handcuffed in court in what some witnesses described as a 'scared straight' tactic.
TORONTO — The two grandparents killed along with their infant grandson in a wrong-way highway crash with a van being chased by police were visiting from India, Ontario's police watchdog said Thursday, while the baby's parents were also in the car but survived. The Special Investigations Unit said the three-month-old boy's father and mother, who live in Ajax, Ont., were treated in hospital after Monday's crash. The watchdog said the 27-year-old mother was treated for serious injuries but offered
A police radio recording is providing a glimpse into the moments leading up to a fiery wrong-way crash that killed four people east of Toronto on Monday.
Canadian police have arrested members of an alleged hit squad investigators say they believe was tasked by the government of India with killing prominent Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., last June, CBC News has learned.
A 79-year-old man was charged with first degree murder on Monday for allegedly stabbing a woman more than 120 times nearly six decades ago, authorities said.
OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canadian police charged three people on Friday with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the province of British Columbia in June 2023, Canadian media said, citing court documents. Nijjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. The news broke days after the White House expressed concern about the reported role of the Indian intelligence service in assassination plots in Canada and the United States.
The teenager ran to the front desk to call police after allegedly being brought to a motel and sexually assaulted. He was booked into an Horry County jail.
Police shot and killed a Wisconsin student outside a middle school after receiving a report of someone with a weapon while class was in session, according to the state's attorney general. No one else was hurt and the student didn't get inside the building. An investigation is ongoing.
A prominent surgeon in Gaza has died in an Israeli prison after being held for more than four months, according to Palestinian prisoners’ groups, which decried his death as part of a “systematic targeting” of health care workers.
A former nurse who killed at least three patients and tried to kill more than a dozen more at nursing facilities across Pennsylvania has been sentenced to life in prison, the state’s attorney general said.
