The Torah provides specific guidelines for the kosher diet. People who follow the kosher diet must avoid certain foods entirely and refrain from mixing other foods. In order to keep kosher, you must also keep certain foods separate and prepare some foods in a specific way. Though the kosher diet follows strict laws, it does allow you to eat a wide range of foods, including meats.
Meat and Poultry
The kosher diet allows you to eat chicken, goose, turkey and duck. As for mammals, people keeping kosher can only eat animals with cloven hooves that chew cud. These animals include sheep, cattle, goats and deer. Pork, rabbit and camel meat are not kosher. Any food that has come into contact with non-kosher meat is also non-kosher, as well as food that has come into contact with cookware or utensils that have had contact with non-kosher meat. A certified kosher butcher must have slaughtered the animal for it to be kosher.
Seafood
Seafood must have fins and scales to be kosher. The kosher diet allows fish, but not shrimp or shellfish, including lobsters, oysters, clams and crabs.
Dairy
The kosher diet allows dairy products as long as they do not come from a non-kosher animal. The diet further requires that meat and dairy products remain separate. You cannot eat dairy or meat in the same meal, and you must keep dishes and utensils used to handle these foods separate. Ice creams, yogurts or custards containing gelatin, a product derived from animal bones, are not kosher because they combine meat and dairy.
Pareve
The word "pareve" indicates foods that contain neither meat nor dairy. You can consume these items, such as fruits, vegetables and grains, freely with meat or dairy products. The kosher diet requires you to wait until a tree or plant is 3 years old before you eat its fruit.
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