I see many occassions when Jesus explained the Law, but none where He annulled the Law. He corrected misunderstandings of the Law, but never annulled the Law. He confronted Jewish traditions which nullified the commandments of God, but never Himself annulled the Law.
If Jesus' statements about food were intended as an annulment of the food laws, wouldn't Peter have known that? He lived with Him for three years! Why then was Peter so surprised when the Lord later told him in a vision to "arise, kill and eat"? At first Peter objected to it. He had to be told three times!
So when Jesus said, "It's not what goes into a man that defiles him," those words don't annul any food Laws, do they? Didn't those words merely correct the Jewish leaders who were stressing over food Laws but were justifying adultery and murder? Jesus' intention was to put the food Laws back in their proper place as originally intended by the Law - rather than to completely annul what the Law had to say about food.
Jesus' words "...alter or ignore no Jewish law; they merely stress the obvious point that it is the disobedience, not the food itself, that is the essence of the violation".
I don't think Jesus was going around having roasted pig on the spit, do you? If He was, Peter failed to notice.
Jesus was ministering exclusively to the lost sheep of Israel under the old covenant. Whether or not those food Laws carry-over into the new covenant is a separate topic. The focus here is, What did Jesus actually say at the time.
This has ramifications for contemporary moral and political issues such as homosexuality and left-leaning policies. If it is thought that Jesus sometimes annulled the Law, then Jesus' statements about giving-up possessions and giving to the poor might be applied as the charter of a new economic system, as a new morality superseding the capitalism of the Law. In that case, you could use Jesus' words to justify socialism, or you could justify altering any part of God's Law you choose on any topic not restated by Jesus.
But if it can be shown that Jesus always upheld and never violated the Law, then Jesus' statements about giving-up one's possessions would need to be understood in the context of the capitalist ethics of the Law; and Jesus' silence about an immorality according to the Law would not mean He was condoning it. In which case you wouldn't see centre right policies as conflicting with any of Jesus' statements; and you wouldn't justify homosexuality.
[That the Law was capitalist in its economic ethics is established by the commandment: "Thou shalt not steal" - thus establishing the ethic of private property. And the Law instituted no enforceable large-scale redistribution of wealth as is done under socialism/communism beyond the Law's requirement of the flat-rate tithe. And the Law was against homosexuality.]
I've noticed that the people who turn-up at gay rights marches are often the same sorts of people who turn-up at pro-choice marches or anti-conservative marches. All of it is rooted in the same thing: lawlessness. And many of them - and even ministers - are claiming a basis for it in the words of Jesus. They call it "social justice" and "grace" and "compassion" and "tolerance" and "fairness".
That's why I think, particularly in Victoria, considering current trends in that State's political, legislative, ethical, moral and religious climate, that it will help considerably if ministers are deliberate in their choice of words when explaining Jesus' attitude to God's holy Law as revealed in the four Gospels.
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