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With each passing day, dinner menus are becoming increasingly weird in my home.  Since the Jewish holiday of Purim concluded the night of March 10, the countdown to the holiday of Passover began—a holiday which forbids all leavened food (“chametz” in Hebrew) not only from being eaten but even owned. I have therefore begun the process of having my family consume whatever remains in our pantry, freezer and refrigerator.

The list of prohibited foods is long and includes bread, cakes, biscuits, cereal crackers, pasta, alcohol and vinegar made from any of the following five grains:  wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye.  For Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of Eastern European ancestry), like my family, rice, corn and legumes are also not allowed and must be removed from the home, or temporarily sold, prior to the start of Passover.

So what is left to eat during the holiday?  Fruits, vegetables, eggs, and if you are not vegetarians, as alas we are, fish and meat. The very basics of healthy and simple eating. So as I stare at the food remaining in our house at the end of the work day and try to figure out what to make for dinner that is nutritious and edible, I shudder at the thought of the Passover foods now arriving at an accelerated rate into the local grocery stores in my neighborhood, which has a large Jewish population.  As the matzah season rapidly approaches, stores devote an increasing amount of shelf space is to Passover foods.  Passover begins the night of April 8.  The supermarkets are therefore stocking up the shelves with the same intensity as I am emptying out our pantry.

Passover—a holiday which celebrates freedom and emphasizes that the pursuit of freedom is a never ending journey—has its ancient roots as an agricultural holiday.  Passover represents the spring harvest.  It is therefore ironic that the variety of Passover foods that increasingly appear in abundance at the grocery store almost without exception have the ingredient (and I use the word ingredient loosely) “cottonseed oil.”

And what in the world is cottonseed oil, I wondered many years ago when first noticing it on the list of ingredients in almost every prepared Passover food?  When I learned that indeed it is just as it sounds, oil from the cotton plant, I wondered some more.  Who eats cotton?  I love wearing it but eating it sounds rather toxic, like eating one’s shirt and pants.

Indeed, after doing some research on cottonseed oil I discovered that it is often used as a pesticide.  Cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops.  Adding to the reasons to avoid it at all cost is that it is high in saturated fat and low in monounsaturated fat.  As if it didn’t have enough going against it, according to Dr. Andrew Weil, “cottonseed oil may contain natural toxins and probably has unacceptably high levels of pesticide residues.”

Why then is something so toxic ubiquitous in Passover food?  I have no idea.  What I do know is that Passover is all about the business of freedom and that freedom is a pretty good idea for all people.  It took the Israelites forty years in the desert to absorb the concept of freedom after being enslaved in Egypt for a few hundred years.  For more than two thousand years the story has been retold annually, and Jewish law instructs each generation to remember what it is like to be slaves as if we had been in Egypt ourselves.  This is to remind us that we are meant to remember the pain of slavery so that we can be more sensitive to those who are not yet free.

Passover is the richest of all the Jewish holidays in symbolism beginning with the Seder meal—a banquet in which each item of food serves as a reminder that the pursuit of freedom is never ending.  From the simple green vegetable on the Seder plate representing the start of spring to the bowl of salt water symbolizing tears of injustice the meal in and of itself is a symbol and lesson in democracy.

Passover teaches us about overcoming suffering and fighting injustice.   It is a holiday that reminds us to return to the basics in life, a time to remove all leaven, which symbolizes such traits as egotism and corruption.  It is a time to feed and nourish both our bodies and our souls. In fact, cottonseed oil, along with much of the prepared Passover food industry, seems to represent the antithesis of what the holiday is all about. In the eyes of this mother and conscientious eater, cottonseed oil has no place at the Seder and no business in our lives.