Twinkie Trouble

I am truly blessed to be an American Muslim. I can confidently say that nowhere else in the world can Muslims practice their faith in relative freedom and safety. But being a Muslim in America has its challenges. I'm not talking about being harassed or profiled because of my faith, or seeing my faith be viciously maligned in the press, or having to undergo more intense scrutiny solely because of my faith. No, I am talking about the challenge of making sure I do not eat pork.

The Qur'an prohibits Muslims from eating pork, which includes lard and other pork-derived products. This posed a major challenge for me when I was growing up. Many of the most appealing childhood snacks contained lard: McDonald's cookies, Hostess apple pies, McDonald's hamburger buns, Oreo cookies, and--most devastatingly--Twinkies. Definitely a bummer. I can't remember a time when I didn't pick up a snack package and scour the ingredient list for lard. Whenever I saw that dreaded four-letter word, my heart sank in despair.

Sometimes, I would get away with eating tasty snacks that had this on their ingredient list: "...and/or lard." That little phrase, "and/or," was my saving grace. In Islam, the presence of pork in a food item must be confirmed for it to be prohibited. "And/or" introduced enough uncertainty to allow me to eat said snack. True, I was harassed by family members who asked, "If you had a food item that had 'and/or poison,' would you eat it?" Well, no, but that didn't matter to me.

Thanks be to God Almighty, more and more manufacturers dropped lard from their ingredient stocks. I was thrilled. I could eat Oreos, McDonald's cookies, McDonald's hamburgers, and Hostess apple pies. In fact, Hostess replaced the lard in their Twinkies with...beef fat! Life was good again.

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