There are not many people today who like any kind of food plain. We must add something to our food in order to give it a little flavor. Perhaps the most common thing to put on food is ketchup. Between hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries alone people are consuming a lot of ketchup. But I bet there is a lot about ketchup that you didn’t know. That is why I’m here, to tell you some interesting facts about ketchup.
First of all, would you believe that ketchup hasn’t always been made of tomatoes? Early versions of ketchup were simply a fish sauce that was invented in Asia. Ketchup had different flavors, none of which were actually tomato. The early versions of ketchup had flavors like blueberries, lemon, and grape.
Today all the ketchup we have is tomato flavored but there are still other countries with other flavors of ketchup. There is a mushroom flavored ketchup in many countries as well as a banana ketchup in the Philippines. The banana ketchup used in the Philippines is actually dyed red to make it look like ketchup which is weird since a few years ago Heinz dyed their ketchup to make it not look like ketchup.
When ketchup was first created it was thought to be good for you and some people even took ketchup as medicine. Again this was before there was tomato in ketchup because at the time tomatoes were thought to be poisonous.
To this day there is still some belief that ketchup can be good for you. Ketchup has an ingredient called lycopene. Lycopene is an antioxidant that prevents cancer. However, the dosage of lycopene found in ketchup is very small, even if you used ketchup liberally you likely would not use enough for it to make a difference. Ketchup is still thought to be pretty healthy for you but since it is most commonly used on junk food like hotdogs, hamburgers and french fries most people are just canceling out anything healthy about ketchup.
The first ketchup recipe that included tomatoes is thought to be a recipe in a 1801 American cookbook called the Sugar House Book. It wasn’t until 1876 that F & J Heinz launched their own tomato ketchup.
As I mentioned before in 2000 Heinz began to put dye in their ketchup to make them look like different colors. The colors ranged from green, purple, pink, orange, teal and blue but the colored ketchups no longer exist.
