Standing in a December kosher grocery store aisle, gazing at a wall of olive oil bottles, and contemplating carbon footprints is almost comical. However, more and more people are experiencing that. The holiday of Hanukkah, which was centered around a single flask of oil that famously refused to run out, has subtly evolved into a tiny but insightful case study of how climate change is altering culinary customs that no one anticipated.
The olive itself contributes to the issue. Longer droughts, erratic frost, and pest outbreaks that didn’t previously reach this far north are now plaguing Mediterranean groves that have produced oil for centuries. Yields have fluctuated greatly from year to year in Spain, which produces a significant portion of the world’s olive oil. Prices have increased since then. It’s odd to see a holiday symbol turn into a commercial narrative, but that’s essentially what has occurred.
Additionally, there is the frying aspect of it, which receives less attention but is likely more significant in terms of raw volume. Sufganiyot and latkes don’t make themselves, and a lot of the oil used to fry them is reused far more than it should be, both at home and in restaurants and food manufacturers. Reheated oil decomposes, produces carcinogenic compounds, and is ultimately disposed of—often without much consideration for its final destination. The environmental math no longer seems insignificant when you multiply that by the number of falafel stands and bakeries getting ready for eight nights of frying.
Some of the more intriguing work is being done here. Beyond Oil, an Israeli food technology company, has created a powder that filters frying oil and slows its breakdown using FDA-approved additives. This allows restaurants to use the same batch of oil longer before discarding it. It sounds unglamorous, almost insignificant. However, less oil waste translates into fewer truckloads of used fryer grease, cheaper ingredients, and a discernible decrease in the amount of oil that must be produced in the first place. One could argue that improving the uninteresting, unseen components of a supply chain has a greater impact on emissions than any one big announcement.
For years, sustainability organizations have promoted a parallel argument: choose RSPO-certified palm oil if you’re using it, buy organic, and use the holiday’s focus on light and renewal as an excuse to look into the origins of your oil. The original miracle of one day’s oil stretching to eight has also been interpreted by some rabbis as an early parable about energy conservation rather than abundance. It’s a generous, but not irrational, interpretation of an ancient tale.
This is not a revolution at all. It would be overstating the situation to say that Hanukkah oil production will significantly reduce global emissions on its own. Smaller and slower changes include improved filtration, more intelligent sourcing, and a slight increase in consumer awareness. The ability of businesses like Beyond Oil to expand outside of Israel and North America, as well as the ability of olive growers to continue adjusting to an uncooperative climate, will likely determine whether that results in anything long-lasting.
Nevertheless, there’s a fitting quality to it. Almost by coincidence, a vacation that was previously designed to stretch limited resources farther than anticipated is now serving as a tiny testing ground for doing precisely that with contemporary oil production. Carbon footprints were most likely not on the Maccabees’ minds. However, the intuition that “make less go further” works surprisingly well.