As holiday sales start to go into full swing and 2005 starts to close, I want to get a head start and beat the conventional media in identifying the most Jewish story of the year. In my mind, the choice is clear. Over the summer, the Jewish world was startled to hear the following:

Duncan Hines, the only commercial brand of pareve, or nondairy, cake mixes, recently announced that it will add milk-based ingredients to its products in the fall, according to the industry newspaper Kosher Today.

This has rightly caused an uproar in the Jewish world. A dairy dessert is kosherly impossible after a Shabbat meal full of chicken and meat because we not only refrain from cooking dairy and meat together, and from eating them at the same time, but we also make sure to wait until the next scheduled meal before eating dairy after meat.
I mention this not just because earlier today I only narrowly escaped the misfortune of having to eat a Duncan Hines cake which, as US News recently reported, “tastes like a chemical plant.” Think of all the pot-bellied men who won’t be able to eat their favorite bland dessert after filling their stomachs with a full meal of fish, chicken, and cholent. And of the women who will have to take time from their other important activities in order to bake real cakes or simply serve – gasp! – fruit as dessert. The sociological implications of this story are nothing short of staggering.