Do You Know What's Inside Your Favorite Ketchup?

Have you ever thought about taking the time to really know and understand your plastic bottle of ketchup which is sitting on the inside of the door of your kitchen refrigerator right now?

Have you ever really studied and thought about the list of ingredients and other important information that's on the back of your plastic ketchup bottle? If not, then I would strongly encourage you to go fetch your plastic ketchup bottle from the refrigerator right now. Then carefully follow along with me as together we will learn to understand more about the wonderful sauce of ketchup that most Americans love to keep at home.

If you are holding your plastic bottle of ketchup in your hands right now, please turn the bottle over and take a look at the small label that is on the back of it. Currently, I have a 24 ounce plastic bottle of red tomato ketchup sitting in front of me as I write this article. On the front of my ketchup bottle, it says that the ketchup that is inside of my bottle is "thicker than ever".

For some unknown reason, I will have to take that statement at face value and just agree with the company who made my ketchup because it's really difficult for me to actually distinguish the difference in thickness between one brand of ketchup from another in my kitchen. I am a civilian product consumer, not a ketchup scientist.

As I turn over my plastic bottle of ketchup, I first notice a large red label on the back of it that gives a short list of ingredients, the nutritional facts about my ketchup, an address and toll-free phone number for the company who made my ketchup, the URL address for the company's website, the ketchup bottle's grocery bar code, and a brief statement from the company who made my ketchup. The company's brief statement is about how they have added more vine-ripened goodness to my bottle of ketchup to make it even thicker then before.

Well, I don't know about you, but as a man, I am not too worried about the thickness of my ketchup. In fact, most men usually don't care how thick their ketchup is, so long as they can squeeze it onto their favorite hotdog and eat it.

Now, when I look at the list of ingredients on the back of my plastic ketchup bottle, I notice the following words: tomato concentrate made from vine ripened tomatoes, high fructose corn syrup, distilled vinegar, corn syrup, salt, and less than 2% of onion powder, garlic powder, and natural flavors.

Now I know exactly what's hidden inside my plastic bottle of tomato ketchup. There is 2% of almost next to nothing and basically a lot of high fructose corn syrup and some distilled tomato paste. What else could you derive logically from such a short list of ingredients on the back of a ketchup bottle?

However, I do have one important question. Where in the world is all that vine-ripened goodness in my bottle of ketchup since it is not listed as one of its main ingredients? Maybe the company who made my ketchup also made a printing error on the label of my plastic ketchup bottle and forgot to add the vine-ripened goodness to the list of ingredients. If they did, that's okay because a lot of U.S. companies these days make a number of printing errors on the labels of their consumer products. No big deal for the average American citizen, right?

As I glance at the nutritional facts on the back of my plastic ketchup bottle, I noticed that 1 tablespoon serving of my tomato ketchup contains 15 calories, zero calories from fat, zero grams of overall fat, zero grams of saturated fat, zero grams of trans fat, zero milligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium, 4 grams of carbohydrates, zero grams of dietary fiber, 4 grams of sugar and zero grams of protein. There is also no vitamins, no iron and no calcium in my bottle of ketchup, either.

From looking at the nutritional facts about my tomato ketchup, I can only summarize that the actual vine-ripened goodness that the ketchup company is talking about has to come from the fact that there is hardly any nutritional value in their ketchup, along with no fat, no calories, and only 4 grams of carbohydrates.

Yes, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Especially when I just realized that the true underlining nature of ketchup is to make any other food item taste better and, yet, never contribute to its overall increase in nutritional value.

So, is buying a plastic bottle of ketchup worth the money spent since ketchup is a sauce that obviously doesn't have a lot of nutritional value itself? Only each individual person who owns a bottle of ketchup at home can answer that question.

Personally, I think spending the money on a bottle of ketchup is worth it because I grew up loving the taste of ketchup when I was a young boy. Now you have the truth.

Whether you love ketchup or not, it's always interesting to know a little more about the different types of food, liquids and sauces that you buy and keep in your home to consume on a daily basis.

The more you get to know your food, the better of a nutritional relationship you will have with it. With knowledge comes the power of making healthier eating choices, including how you deal with your ketchup, and I think that alone can help increase the overall longevity of your nutritional health for the future.

SOURCE: Hunt's Tomato Ketchup
SOURCE WEBSITE URL: http://www.hunts.com