How many mitzvos can be involved in eating?
You will be surprised at how many mitzvos are involved with eating! For example, before eating you must make sure your animals are fed. Depending on what type of food or drink you are eating can involve different mitzvos – e.g. fruit and vegetables, meat or drinks. Nowadays, many more ingredients are added to simple foods – we must check that they are on the kosher list. We get our meat from a kosher butcher under strict halachic supervision. These are end products that reach us and we then go ahead and eat. However, by thinking about the whole process of food, from its start to finish, or the meat, from animal to butcher, we will become enriched with a whole number of mitzvos along the way.
The mitzvos of eating that are better known
Some mitzvos involved with eating are known to. The positive commandment of bentching after satiation. When having fruit we have the negative commandment of not eating worms ((Vayikra, 11:42) found in fruit and therefore we check them before eating. We know the negative commandment of not eating milk and meat together (Shemos, 23:19) or cooking them together (Shemos, 23:19). Also, that of not eating non-kosher fish (Vayikra, 11:11) that do not have the kosher signs of fins and scales. We eat only kosher meat that comes from animals that have the kosher signs of split hooves and chew the cud. This involves the negative commandment of not eating non-kosher animals (Vayikra, 11:2, 4).
Mitzvos of eating that change during some days of the year
There are mitzvos with regards to eating that change depending on the time of year. On Pesach there is a negative commandment to eat chometz on the afternoon before the night of Pesach (Devorim, 15:3). Then there is a positive mitzva to eat matza on the first night (Shemos, 12:18) and a negative mitzva to not eat chometz (Shemos, 13:3) or a mixture of chometz (Shemos, 12:20). On Sukkos there is the positive mitzva of eating fixed meals only inside the Sukka (Vayikra, 23:42). On Yom Kippur there is the positive mitzva of affliction that involves fasting with no food or drink. During a Shemitta year, foods from Eretz Yisroel must be eaten with kedusha.
Some less well known mitzvos involved in the eating of meat
Since we get our meat directly from the kosher butcher, we may not be aware that here is involved lots of mitzvos – hence the need for strict hashgocha on this whole process. The animal must not be taken from idol worshippers who used it in their services (Shemos, 34:12-15). The animal must also not be fatally wounded meaning that it will die within twelve months. This is the negative commandment to not eat a treifa (Shemos, 22:30). One must not slaughter a mother and child on the same day (Vayikra, 22:28).
When the animal is slaughtered there is the positive mitzva of shechita to kosher animals and birds (Devorim, 12:21). This means that a knife of a certain sharpness is required and other conditions on where and how the slaughtering is done. If the animal was slaughtered in a different way or died without shechita, known as neveila, we have a negative commandment to not eat it (Devorim, 14:21). There is a negative commandment of eating part of animal taken from it when it is still alive (Devorim, 12:23). Once dead, the animal is cut up and there are certain parts that the Jew must not eat. He must not eat the gid-hanoshe (Bereishis, 32:33). There are certain fats, cheilev, that are forbidden (Vayikra, 7:23) as well as its blood (Vayikra, 7:26). This is why there is the melicha, salting process done to the meat to remove the blood.
Some less well known mitzvos involved in the eating of fruit
One cannot take two kinds of seeds and sow them together in the ground (Vaikra, 19:19), known as Kilayim Zeroyim. This applies only in Eretz Yisroel but is permitted to be done in Chutz LoEretz. While to graft trees is forbidden in all places. One cannot do lots of melochos involved in preparing food on Shabbos. A Jew is forbidden to eat fruit from the first three years of a tree’s planting, known as orla (Vayikra, 19:23). In the four year he must take the fruits and eat them in Yerushalayim during the times of the Beis Hamikdosh – known as Netai Revoiy. From the fifth year onwards the fruit can be eaten normally.